I keep trying, with increasing desperation, to say the same thing.
But it is exactly the ones I most need to hear it who never will hear it.
And what I want to say is: “You won’t hear me.”
Sometimes people need to not hear you.
Their world depends on it.
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Does it seem improbable to you that a person would murder to avoid feeling like a murderer?
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Once I realize a person needs to not understand my core truth — needs to not understand me — friendship ends, even if it takes time for that truth to fully dawn.
People who are incapable of understanding can be dear friends… if I believe that they would understand if they could. They might not be able to share doctrine, but they can share faith, and faith matters most.
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The powerful get to dictate truth, including, most of all, who is — and who is not — powerful.
“Once I realize a person needs to not understand my core truth — needs to not understand me — friendship ends.”
I’m not sure why this must be. I’m a friend to others and a loving brother to others despite their embrace of “core truths” that I utterly reject. But as friends and siblings we give each other space for profound differences of belief because despite these differences we have so much we value about one another.
Perhaps I don’t understand the difference between utterly objecting to a set of beliefs held by another versus needing to not understand another’s core truth.