Friends...imagine that

Friendship is a virtue which die-hard Evangelical American Protestants tend to infer is only possible among fellow Christians. Some congregations go even further restricting "fellowship" to only those Christians who affiliate with their denomination. Everyone else is suspect because as it says in the Bible, "bad company corrupts good morals."

I shared Terry's surprise at discovering true friends among non-Christians once I was branded a rebellious wife and an unrepentant sinner by my used-to-be Christian friends because of my refusal to be restored to a marriage that remained fatally flawed and unhealed no matter how much spiritual authority pressured me to ignore the unaddressed issues between us.

Many of the Christians whom I had counted my faithful friends made caustic accusations and uninformed judgments against me without even asking to hear my side of the matter. Some Christians whom I counted friends elected to walk through those dark times with me. They remain my closest friends today and there are not many of them.

Like Terry in Pastor's Ex-Wife I discovered that outside of the walls of a church people tend to care about other people irrespective of their theology. Imagine that.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here. 

Orwell's Pigs

Discovering friendship, kindness, and sacrificial love outside of the four walls of the church was a complete  paradigm shatterer for Terry. The teachers at William's school accepted her without any kind of doctrinal litmus test just because she was nice back and because she had landed in the same inner city public school "war zone" as they had. The two men who were William's closest friends also made room for her to her great surprise WITHOUT crossing any sexual boundaries or expecting her to serve them. In fact, Terry had to allow her world view to shift and stretch because she met a few decent humans even though they don't believe in God. Didn't Jesus remind us that even a good man will sometimes give his life for his friends? Friendship and fellowship are not unique Christian commodities but some Christians who live in closed communities of like-minded individuals often become puffed up with the pride of their own spiritual exclusivity. They think that somehow their convictions make them more human than other people. George Orwell called those individuals "pigs." It is terribly similar to the untested prejudices of people who have never met people from another race. There is a culture shock that calls forth humility and Terry had a double dose of it after running away to William. Yes, those aspects of her story come from my personal experience.


You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.