Helping your student understand friendship

"How can you say that homosexuality is wrong for everyone?" she asked, "He's my friend."

Have you had this conversation with your high school student? If you haven't, you probably will. Your student is at a place where truth has been supplanted as the most important thing; replaced with "love." But not just any love, the love that is felt between friends as complete and blind personal approval of all they do. In other words, a friend should always allow their friend to make any decision they want. "If my friend chooses to have sex with their current boy- or girlfriend, I approve . . . If my friend is experimenting with homosexuality, I approve . . .If my friend has to have an abortion, I support her decision." They are in the right because they are my friend--that's the bottom line.

There's no reasoning that cuts to the heart of this issue. After all, reasoning is just more of older people being caught up with being "right." Right?

If your student is a religious unbeliever he or she will even try to support their position with Scripture. "Don't judge them (isn't that what the Bible says?)" and "Forgive them." Christian virtues to be sure.

What's a parent to do with this issue?

First, you need to draw all of your strength and wisdom from Christ--His power and His example. If your student uses Scripture to make this case, do what Christ did--use Scripture and put it back into its appropriate context. Jesus challenged people's behavior ("judged") all the time. He challenged religious unbelievers (like Pharisees) most harshly, but he also challenged rich people and sinners. Students like to use the story of the woman caught in adultery as their grounds for approving of their friends' various vices. It's true that Jesus did not condemn that woman, but He also told her to "go and sin no more." Sin no more. It's true that he knew some prostitutes, but He called them to repentance and to follow Him.

Second, you need to help your student understand the impact of their approval. Share personal stories with your students of times when you gained boldness to sin because others approved of your wrong choices. Talk about the pain that you experienced because of those destructive choices. Any friend experimenting with something that would destroy them needs to be at least warned of the impending danger. Put your admonition in these terms. No friend can possibly stand by watching someone they care deeply about destroy themselves on purpose without warning them. If the friend continues in the destructive behavior you stay, you pray, you try to get them to change, you beg and plead with them to stop. But you NEVER tell them that their destructive behavior is morally "okay."

For example, I have recently spoken with a student who has a friend experimenting with homosexual behavior; I'll call him Jimmy (I call most of my fictitious people Jimmy). Jimmy says, "How can you say it's wrong." First and foremost, it's wrong because God says it's wrong (He made us, our world, and all the rules). He knows of the pain, brokenness and utter destruction that comes to the soul of the practicing homosexual. Paul tells us that no person who lives life in the pattern of sexual sin (heterosexual or homosexual) will inherit God's Kingdom (go to heaven) (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). So God warns that it will destroy their physical life now and their eternal life later. Second in this example, Jimmy, is the idea that you care about your friend. "I do," he says. If you care about your friend, then how can you stand by while they so permanently and severely destroy themselves? Even without Christ in the equation, that is what you are doing. If you value friendship, you can't stand by approvingly while they destroy themselves.

But we must stand by. I do love the way that student's loyalty to their friends causes them to stay with the friendship over a long time. It's a wonderful thing for a young person who can say to his (or her) friend, "What you are doing is going to completely destroy you. You are making one mistake after another. If you will change you will experience some peace and improvement of circumstances I will never accept your decisions as appropriate, legitimate or healthy. I am telling you this because I love you."

I hope you see the difference. What we value is to stay with the relationship while unswervingly holding to biblical values and teaching. That is love.

To be sure, no person not following Christ understands these truths.

What is friendship? It's not approving of destructive behavior while your "friend" flushes their life. It's challenging them that life is about something better than that. There are right and wrong choices that lead to good or bad consequences. Eventually, as your student perseveres, it is about introducing these friends to the One who can forgive sin.

Now that's a friend!