Mere Christianity

I won't say that I'm hooked on Facebook, but I use it a lot. It's neat keeping up with people; old and new friends, both far and near.

So recently I "friended" a former co-worker I hadn't talked to in 10 or more years. He's a He and back then he was cute. Okay, so I did have a little crush at some point. But, as we got to know each other better, the little crush fizzled. We did get to be good friends though. We can talk more later about my theory on men and women being friends.

Back to the fizzling crush. He wore black t-shirts. As much as I tried to rebel against everything I thought about black-t-shirt people, it just wouldn't stick. Did you have black-t-shirt people in your high school? They wore band t-shirts. Please don't assume that I don't love the hairbands. Oh, I do. And AC/DC rocks. But the clientele who chose to purchase and then wear band t-shirts in the 80's and 90's gave me the heebs. So anyway, thinking that I could have been wrong in my assessment of black-t-shirt people, I got to be friends with one at my first job out of college.

The guy was intelligent, funny and woefully lost. At that point in my life, I was growing in my faith, but I was not at a maturity level to be able to share much about it, and certainly not able to defend it well to a person who had spent much longer deliberately trying to disavow God.

I told him I was a Christian, but at that point in my life, I didn't know how to defend my faith well. I'm sure to him my being a Christian was akin to others being Alabama or Auburn fans.

So now fast-forward 10 years or so. Found him on facebook, as he is also friends with some other former co-workers of mine that I keep in better touch with. He still seems to be as lost as ever. Have I grown enough to be able to bear a stronger witness to him?

Gulp.

––> Talk to husband.
That's part of my theory on men and women being friends. Personally, I won't let myself have a male friend that I wouldn't want Ken to be friends with too. I do think Ken and this guy could carry on a decent conversation, though they would never cross paths in the real world. We talked for a few minutes, and I bumbled through my thoughts on this. He got sleepy and went to bed.

–––> (By the way, those little arrows are my notations for what I believe to be direct quotes from the Holy Spirit.)

––> You should suggest a book for the black-t-shirt friend to read.
––> Mere Christianity. That would be good.
––> Hello um, Em. You've never read Mere Christianity. And you made Ken clear out the bookcases in the corner of your bedroom to make room for your craft supplies, so the copy that he has is at the office.

Ken has some huge bookcases in his office that were stinking empty! Meanwhile, he's hogging a bunch of room here at home with a bunch of books that he's already read.

––> You still haven't read that book, and you can't really suggest it to someone if you haven't read it yourself. I'll show you where you can find the book online and read it there.

So He did. I read the first chapter of Mere Christianity tonight online. Here's a quote that I liked. Will share more later. thanks for listening.

If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much--we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so--that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.