Nice talking with you again! Here goes the response...

You can tell your friend he's your friend or you can show him that he's your friend. Actions speak louder than words and the omnipotent Lord allows evil to weed out the "real friends" from the "fakes".

In the words of one of my REAL friends, "you can tell who your real friends are when the sh!* hits the fan." I was about to get in trouble for something that I didn't do when he stepped forward and took all the blame (and rightfully so seeing as how he did it). A fake friend coulda got away with it and said "to bad so sad, better luck next time". He proved his friendship by doing what was right and putting my best interests first, even though it would ultimately hurt himself.

Perhaps God allows both sin and freedom of choice (a quite volatile mix I must say) to weed out his real friends from his fake ones. The fake ones will be plucked like weeds from a garden and tossed into a fire at the Day of harvest. He loves us, but do we really love him back? If you were going to build a utopia and everybody said "I want in, I want in, and I'm WILLING TO DO WAHTEVER IT TAKES!" wouldn't you at least test their sincerity considering that it only takes one bad person to make a perfect world unperfect? I'm glad that we're being tested because I'd sure hope that God wouldn't allow people with bad hearts to be around loving good people and contaminate heaven. Then it would no longer be heaven, and then there would be no point for a heaven at all. In fact heaven would be just like Earth again: wars, lying, cheating, stealing, politics, greed, power struggles, weeping, sorrow. Let sin tempt and lead the bad ones astray, so that they may not find their way into the eternal kingdom.

Thats just my take on it all...

• The Source of Sin - stormcrow - May 24, 2003 - 19:12 UTC
  • Tough, tough questions... - smartguy - May 24, 2003 - 21:10 UTC
    • yeah - whomi - May 25, 2003 - 02:20 UTC
      • Your humor is as welcome as always - stormcrow - May 25, 2003 - 02:30 UTC
        • how about reposting that list of Bible verses? - whomi - May 25, 2003 - 05:37 UTC
    • Very tough - stormcrow - May 25, 2003 - 02:44 UTC
      • I'm gonna take the easy way out... - smartguy - May 25, 2003 - 22:14 UTC
• Separating the WHEAT from the CHAFF - whomi - May 25, 2003 - 20:43 UTC