Sacrificial Love

A few months back I was deleted by an acquaintance...a friend of a friend... during the whole Paula Deen thing.

He deleted me after publicly attacking me on his wall.  To be fair...he didn't reveal my name.  I owned the quotes he was prescribing to a "fb friend" and tried my best to clarify and put them in context.  The deleting came after I tried to persuade him that he was overreacting...misjudging...and being down right mean spirited.   I used facts and I used logic.  An appeal to reason.  Multiple appeals to reason.  To no avail.  This white male was offended by me for all blacks...and for all gays too...which btw...was completely off subject.  He's gay and it seems he had remembered my support of Dan Cathy during the whole Chick-fil-A thing.

After my attempts at persuasion...and a cooling off period...I did receive an apology of sorts.... privately.  It was short and sweet ( mostly addressing his regret at calling me names) and came before a long lesson on tolerance.  Publicly...the attacks on his wall continued though...in the comments section of his post which slammed me.  Oh my goodness...his friends were mean to the bone.  Angry.  Bitter.  Judgemental.   Some were vicious.

I tried to see the past the insults.  I was able to recognize the hurt and fear behind many of the comments.   There were no responses.  Only reactions.

Before long...I could no longer see the comments because I was defriended.

I took it as protection from the Lord and have never looked back.

Our mutual friend mentioned it once.  She handled it well.  At least as far as I am concerned.  She cares for both of us.

Cut to:  Phil Robertson and the whole A&E thing.

I have opinions.  I express them.  People who know me well...know me well.  Those who don't...have a pretty good idea of where I land in many areas anyways.

There is no way that A& E can rightly justify the suspension of a Christian reality star for expressing Christian beliefs to a magazine during an interview.

If anyone has a problem with what Phil Robertson had to say they have a problem with what the Bible has to say.  

If they someone has a problem with the way he said what he said...that person should write him a letter telling him so.

Anyhow....the Lord used a dear friend to encourage me today.  About an hour ago I received a message in my fb inbox.   From a dear, gay, male friend.

what's so strange about our friendship is that you and probably disagree on so many things. But at our core, we are friends with history. I think people can be friends and agree to disagree, right? but i will say that I do think you and I agree on one thing…I do not think Phil Robinson should have been fired for expressing his view even though i don't agree with him. this article is great because it simply points to the fact that he's a reality star and not a spokesperson for A&E. The guy is religious and from the deep south. how could they expect him to think any differently. I think they are so wrong for letting him go.

Back to where we started at the beginning of this post...the quote about sacrificial love.... above.

My friend needs to sacrifice something in order to maintain a friendship with me.  I think he sacrifices his pride in order to love me.  He puts it aside.  By pride...I mean the puffed up part.   I think he says to himself some version of the following....

I don't need to bring this up right now...I don't need to be heard on this right now... I don't need to let her know that I think I am right on this.  I don't need to parade.  I don't need to dig my heels in.  I let all that go in order to love her.  I let go of my comfort zone...I get out of it... so that I may love her.  

And that's what I do too.  I sacrifice all of that ^  in order to love him.