Love everyone, but ...

Teach your children to love everyone but to choose their friends carefully.

Every single person is made in God’s image. Every single person deserves to be treated kindly and with respect. And this is at the heart of the Christian faith. We are to love our neighbour, love our friends and even to love our enemies. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).

But loving a person is not the same as accepting them as your friend.

It is good to differentiate between the two, both for ourselves and for our children. It may sound right to tell our children to be friends with everyone but this is a confusing stance. A friend is someone who you can trust – someone who has your back at all times and who will be willing to call you out when you need it (Proverbs 27:6). No wonder we are told to choose our friends wisely.

Proverbs 13:20 says Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Psalm 1 speaks of those who do not walk in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. We are to avoid imitating the ungodly.

Proverbs 18:24. Explains it this way, ‘A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.’

The nature of friendship is that you share your life with someone, you share your hopes and dreams, you don’t just view them as a person to be loved and respected, but they are a person you want to share your life with who enriches you.

While we should teach our children to be willing to do anything to help anyone, we should also teach them to be wise in who they share their innermost thoughts with. This principle is clarified when it comes to the closest human relationship – marriage. 2 Corinthians 6 instructs us to not be unequally yoked. In other words, don’t share your life with someone who doesn’t share your values and beliefs.

So how does this work in practice.

1.        Teach your children to love everyone.

Help them to see that every person matters to God no matter who they are or how they treat others. Every person should be respected and we should be kind to everyone (even if we don’t think they deserve it).

Whilst kindness does generally lead to more kindness, sometimes acts of kindness lead to persecution (meekness is not weakness but it is perceived as such by those who are insecure). Kindness is not a measure of how deserving the person receiving it is, it is a measure of the character of the person being kind. Helping our children work through their thoughts and feelings towards someone who has made our children’s lives difficult and helping them to work out how to love them in spite of this is a key part of everyday discipleship.

No matter what others do, we are to love them. Even if they are our enemies! This is the radical call of discipleship.

And what is love?

Well, love is patient, love is kind, it is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrong. 1 Corinthians 13 is a great place to start when looking at how we treat others – especially those who we find it hard to get on.

2.        Teach your children to choose their friends carefully.

If the people we spend time with effect who we are, what kind of friends are they looking for. Remember our friends are not just the people that we see regularly, they are the people that we choose to share our lives with. Friendships matter and we should be praying for our children to connect with the right people.

We see this principle worked out in Jesus’ life. He loved everybody, from sinners to Pharisees, but there were some parts of his life that he saved for his friends. Jesus only explained the parables to his disciples while others were left to try to understand (Matthew 13:10-17) and he only took three of his disciples further with him at his transfiguration (Matthew 17:1). In John’s Gospel Jesus defined friendship as those who live the right way and as those who he could share with.

John 15:14-15, ‘You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.’

Let’s encourage our children to be more like Jesus in all their interactions and let’s pray for godly friendships to form in their lives.