All of us have our friends that have their quirks along with us. Some are up to each individual such as their favorite color or if they’re picky about what food they eat, while other quirks are more serious.
“The Lord hates six things; in fact, seven are detestable to Him: arrogant eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood”, Proverbs 6:16-17
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Some are more serious because they have bigger consequences that come with them. For example, if your friend is a picky eater, then it generally will only affect their health or inconvenience you as their friend when you decide to go somewhere to eat. For more serious quirks though such as being a liar or being too prideful can have worse indirect consequences they get explained a little in parts 1 and 2 of this series.
While the two earlier have indirect consequences, having a friend that will shed innocent blood has obvious consequences for you and the friend in question. Now obviously, if your friend is a murderer then you should turn them to the authorities and get new set of friends, but this verse goes deeper into a persons character as well.
As said in Proverbs 22:24-25, you should avoid friends that have a quick temper. The reason being, that if you have this friend with a quick temper then you will have more strife and hurt in your life either directly in that they beat you up or they drag you into their arguments.
We should be quick to listen and slow to anger as said in James 1:19 so that we don’t say or do something that we’ll regret that would ruin the reputation of Jesus since we hear his name. (Christians). If it applies to how we should live our lives then it should apply to those friends of ours that have an influence on us if we like to admit it or not.
Now this is not saying that we can’t get mad every now and then but it needs to be righteous anger and not selfish human anger that we all struggle with(me definitely included, just ask my wife haha).
At the end of the day though, we need to stay away from friends that are quick to anger and even worse take it too far and take an innocent life. This also means that we should hate and avoid this trait in our own lives and ask God to help us in our battle against our flesh and sins.
Thank you for reading and if you ever have any questions or comments about the post, message or comment and I’ll respond when I can.
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