Friendship and judgment

When someone starts doubting your friendship, and calling your words of rebuke "judgment" I think it is high-time to evaluate what you think true friendship really is. A google-search brings up all the corny values of it; some of them are that they accept you for who you are, they don't judge you; they walk in when the rest walk out, etc. etc. I think that those things are true - in part, but that they paint a partial picture.
The ultimate source of truth (for me anyway) states that

 "the wounds of a friend are faithful",

 and

"As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." (Proverbs 27)

If true firendship means that I make you feel good about yourself and I make you feel valued, that i think you are wonderful and without fault and that you are right when all the others are wrong -  then I think that we have missed the point. Yes - hopefully some of the time, that will be the case, but once our mutual love and respect for each other have grown, I feel that friends are also there to tell us the nasty truth when no-one else will. 

I remember very often - a time in my life when it felt like I was in a sort of a glass container, where I could still see everything - but not as clearly, and I could still hear everything, but not as clearly. It felt like I knew that there was truth, but I just couldn't remember what it was. In that time my true friends could remind me of it. They could tell me where I went wrong and how corrupt my mind was. And although it hurt, and although not everything everyone said was true - I learnt a whole lot from it, and from the love of people - including my own.

A friend's wounds are faithful. Oscar Wilde once said that "a true friend stabs you in the front." The do not go behind your back to tell everyone how crooked you've become - they say it to your face. Why would anyone do that - you ask? Which one would you choose? I would rather hurt a little now from hearing my friend's words, than a whole lot later, because no one told me I was going the wrong way.

I hope that my life is filled with true friends. And that whenever I need to hear truth, that my true friends will have enough courage to come and remind me of it - however hurtful it may feel at that stage.

Someone recently said something that I loved, and want to say as well - " I smell the stench of my own soul - can you smell yours?"

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