hisstorythroughmine

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Five years ago, I may have said “We can disagree and still be friends.”

I had thought that to love one another was enough in itself, that it could transcend even the harshest of disagreements.

But when the truth cannot be met, then there was never an option to “love” at all. If proof is denied, if inconvenient facts are called “fake,” if unproven claims are called “true”—then to humor such a position is to enable a destructive delusion. To let you drive off a cliff. To enter a minefield of falsehood. If we cannot even meet on the grounds of reality, then any semblance of friendship would require me to pamper a dangerous fantasy. And if I love you, which I do, I cannot do that to you.

If you can “disagree and still be friends” but you deny the incontrovertible evidence of domestic terrorism, racism, and double standards, then no, you are not “speaking the truth in love.” Evil must be called what it is. It cannot be explained away by cowardly conspiracy theories meant to tidy up the ills of our fractured systems and hearts.

If you can “disagree and still be friends” but you do not see your neighbor as having equal worth made in the Image of God, then all truth has been revoked from the equation, which also removes love in all its capacity. Then no, we cannot be and were not ever friends.

To “disagree and be friends” is possible, yes. But we must begin with the good will that we are grounded in truth. Otherwise, any sort of friendliness is a false truce. And so long as we dance on that thin ice, we risk drowning in lies. To love must include the truth.

— J.S.

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