Loyalty Revisited and Settled

"...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."  Phil. 4:8

Struggling with how to be a good friend and have a good friend, I threw out the question back in June ... 'What is a Loyal Friend?'

Some of my friends responded in the comments and gave me some food for thought.

Lara said "A loyal friend doesn't judge you if your kid throws a tantrum. Would be genuinely and truly happy for you if your husband got a ridiculous promotion. Doesn't try to compete with you. Doesn't secretly hate you (how many woman friendships are like that?!). Doesn't covet you or look down on you. Tells you like it is. Defends you if someone speaks ill of you."

Liz added, "A loyal friend knows the hard questions to ask, and asks them anyway.....and then is there for you when you answer them."

Amy said, "I would like to add that a loyal and "true" friend is someone you can be 100% yourself around. You can be vulnerable and honest with each other and have no fear of judgment or regret for showing who you are."

Denise... "Knows you are a George sometimes and can see you in your George moments, still love you just as much, but will gently call you out on them."

And some wise words from Kerri, "loyalty in friendship has to require real humility and a lack of expectations and it never judges. It is unconditional love . . . meaning that if my dearest christian friend who may even be a mentor to me suddenly tells me she's getting a divorce, forsaking her faith, abandoning her children (the worst things I could think of) I still love her, I don't badmouth her, I don't permit others in my presence to badmouth her and reach out to her with unconditional love. I think a lot of friendships today seek the best of each other and even expect the best of each other, but few seek the best FOR each other. "

Honestly, my initial post was motivated by how often I hear this coming out of my own mouth or the mouth of 'friends' ...  "I really like Suzie, BUT..."  You can fill in the blank behind the conjunction.     Too frequently, I hear from both women and men the type of sentence above.   Or I stand in the midst of a conversation where someone is speaking about another person who is supposed to be a good friend, but the friend is nodding their head as if they agree when someone else is bashing their supposed friend.   What is UP with that?  Why do we do that to one another?

Do our churches need to teach more about the devastation that the tongue can do?  Do we deceive ourselves into believing that we are not gossiping when we preface our negative with 'I love so-and-so, BUT..."

I simply do not know the answer to this...   A pertinent verse on this very topic is from Philippians...  if you read through it slowly, maybe you will see that we simply aren't dwelling on the things that God has asked us to dwell upon.    The point is settled in my heart... let's see if it can be settled with my tongue!!!  

"...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."  Phil. 4:8