Near and Far Faith

So this thought has been plaguing me in a morality sort of way. I feel very cold and mean for having these feelings but I feel the Lord's put them in my way to sort them out in light of proper biblical confrontation, as opposed to blog-vomiting my feelings of someone who has no immediate avenue for retort.

It's this feeling that there are some relationships that cross my path that I see no value in. Perhaps it's an acquaintance or one-time meeting with someone that I've seemed to click with, or maybe it's a faded relationship/friendship. I've been looking at these relationships for the past few years through an ongoing discussion about dual effort. Meaning that... to form a valuable relationship, both parties must put in decently equal amounts of effort. I've become calloused to the people that I always try to communicate with and see no return on. I have friends from college that I though I was close with, but close is not an event, as I'm finding, it's a constance in relationship effort.

So this has caused me to re-evaluate constantly the relationships in my life. Jesus held 12 in his circle and 3 of those in his confidence. It's not a number thing, it's a quality thing. As hard as it was at first, it has become easier to let go of friendships that are adding no value to your life. It's a big evaluation, but most relationships will show themselves out by simply ceasing communication. Those aren't worth the effort that you would sink in to re-establish time together. You will always be the one putting in more effort and it will leave you high and dry when the time comes.

There are always exceptions to every rule, but I know that the relationships that have added to my journey are the ones that put effort in equal to mine. Paul is a great example in my life. I view him as a very close friend and mentor in ministry. We worked together for a short time when I was in college and we've stayed close because of a mutual communication. Even more so then the communication and commonalities that we share though is Paul's willingness to spurn me on, honestly, in my journey. This is the kind of relationship worth keeping.

The trap is, though, to not do the right thing biblically when it comes to confrontation with the ones that we've let go. The truth is that they still deserve the same effort, despite the consequences or, often, lack of interaction, when there's confrontation at hand. God's not called us to avoidance, but to purity of motives (see Philippians 2:1-11). Taking the grown-up path is not complicated as we'd like to tell ourselves, it's just up hill.