“Friend, I Love You, But I’m Closing the Door.”

It seems the world is becoming a battle field and landminds have been hidden everywhere.

Case in point: about six months ago, is was scrolling through Facebook and came across a picture with the biblical caption (I won’t go into details, but it’s a political hot topic right now).

Bright sunny post, showing God’s view on the topic. No hell and damnation. Just saying how God had things planned out.

“Cool!” I though and hit the share button.

That’s how the firestorm began.

A friend commented, telling me how hurtful my post was. That ruffled me some. The post was in line with biblical teaching, our church’s doctrine and my core beliefs – all of which she knew. She had been a long time member of the church up until a year ago.

I responded, letting her know I stilled cared about her, but this was how I felt.

She fired back, claiming I hated her.

Her friends chimed in – new friends. I was labeled as evil.

I laid out to them what God said about it and how it was in line with his character.

Now I was labeled as worst than evil: I was an idiot.

A mutual friend encouraged me to try to see it from the other point of view.

What other point of view? I wondered. The one where God says “No”, but you want this, so God’s wrong?

The offended friend tagged me in a post a few months later. The article claimed biblical scholars determined some of the wording in the Bible’s we are all using were changed from the original text so it would be in line with the ideology of the translators of the King James Bible and all other bibles are just translations of that.

“Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls?” I asked. “Thousands of years old, and yet today’s translations are amazingly true to the original intent of the scriptures. I would really question where those scholars got their information.”

She unfriended me. She unfriended our friends from church. She unfriended most of our Christian friends from work, where we originally met years ago, before she moved on to a different job. She even unfriended the mutual friend.

Sigh. I do miss her. We had been very close.

Yesterday, Pastor Teddy was preaching from Mark 6:11: “And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet in testimony against them…”

When the Jews of their day traveled, they would shake the dust off from the gentile land before stepping back into Jewish territory. It symbolically was leaving the heathen world behind and keeping it from entering and infecting the land of God’s people.

Likewise, God ask us to shake off the dust of those with deaf ears who have turned away from Him and His words.

Friend, I love you, but I have to shake you off my feet. The chapter has come to an end. I have to close the door.

May God be with you.