{"id":4092,"date":"2008-10-30T09:01:09","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T15:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=4092"},"modified":"2013-06-11T07:44:16","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:44:16","slug":"friends-through-adversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/friends-through-adversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends through adversity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in the midst of reading <a type=\"amzn\" asin=\"1414316178\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;If God Disappears&#8221; by <strong>David Sanford<\/strong><\/a>. It&#8217;s an interesting read thus far. It hasn&#8217;t made it to the top of any of my reading lists yet, but several points he&#8217;s made have stood out so far.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=malesurvival&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=1414316178&#038;md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\"><\/iframe>As we talk about relationships and our <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/www.encounterthis.com\/toolbox\/\">relationship toolboxes<\/span>, I thought these thoughts lined right up with several aspects Brian&#8217;s touched on over the last several weeks.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Over the years, I&#8217;ve discovered that whenever someone becomes enraged at me, odds are we&#8217;re only two steps away from becoming good friends.<br \/>\nWhy?<br \/>\nFirst, because that person is emotionally engaged in our relationship. That&#8217;s passion!<br \/>\nSecond, because <strong>if true Christianity is about anything, it&#8217;s about reconciliation<\/strong>. Once a matter is settled, the other person and I are bonded. Sometimes for a while. Sometimes for life.<br \/>\nThe same principles apply to a relationship with God. He isn&#8217;t defensive or threatened when we feel angry at him. After all, we&#8217;re passionate. And he&#8217;s equally passionate about being reconciled to us, whether or not we want anything to do with him right now.<br \/>\nGod is waiting for us to express our innermost feelings toward him and then ask ourselves, <em>Is that true, or is that how I feel?<\/em><br \/>\n<strong>Sometimes we&#8217;re not angry with God, it turns out. Instead we&#8217;re angry at a caricature of God we&#8217;ve painted like graffiti on the walls of our psyche.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can think of a couple times this has played out in my own life. Most of them came from my time working at a newspaper. Many people would write in and be angered about something I or another writer might have written. If handled correctly, we could often get to the bottom of the issue and with understanding and patience, a great friendship and bond grew out of it.<\/p>\n<p>Other times, if one side or the other is firmly set in their way and there&#8217;s no chance to agree-to-disagree or build understanding, the relationship may be doomed from the get go.<\/p>\n<p>I hope that I do all I can to avoid being to set in my ways to offer understanding and love to anyone and everyone &#8211; regardless of what we may disagree upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in the midst of reading &#8220;If God Disappears&#8221; by David Sanford. It&#8217;s an interesting read thus far. It hasn&#8217;t made it to the top of any of my reading lists yet, but several points he&#8217;s made have stood out so far. As we talk about relationships and our relationship toolboxes, I thought these thoughts &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/friends-through-adversity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Friends through adversity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,560,18,19],"tags":[751,1508,4650,1507,1011,1582,1581],"class_list":["post-4092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-club","category-community","category-faith","category-reflections","tag-christianity","tag-david-sanford","tag-faith","tag-if-god-disappears","tag-life","tag-relationship-toolbox","tag-relationships"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-140","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11195,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions\/11195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}