Today's Devotional
May 10, 2006
Subject: A Wound Or A Kiss
Proverbs 27:6 - "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."
I had a long discussion with a few of my cadets on this whole issue of what a friend is. I, perhaps feebly, tried to make the point that you don't want friends who tell you only things you want to hear, but you want friends who feel that truth is more important than your friendship. It sounds ironic but that's the only way to be a true friend. It's like the old commercial says, "friends don't let friends drive drunk." A true friend stops their friend from things that they know aren't good for them.
My discussion with the cadets began over a simple prom dress. One of the students was showing pictures from their recent prom and I happened to notice one of our cadets in a dress that simply didn't work for her for a number of reasons. As I consulted with the other cadets and asked them their opinion of the dress, they all began to make excuses for why they didn't say anything to their friend about their real feelings on the dress. As you can guess, the chief reason: "I didn't want to hurt her feelings."
Proverbs makes it clear that the wounds of a friend are beneficial. That's because a true friend cares. Those who compromise truth for your feelings simply don't care enough for your well-being. They are in fact enemies coming to you with kisses that ultimately end in deception. I asked my cadets if they would prefer to have (a) friends who hurt their feelings with truth or (b) friends who never hurt their feelings and they all seemed to agree that they didn't want their feelings hurt. I think that will change as they get older.
I think that ultimately we surround ourselves with one of these two types of friends and in the long run I think that the friend who wounds is better than the one who kisses, because painful truth is always better than soothing deceit.
