The Effect Of Poor Friendships
You can learn a lot about a person by who he chooses as friends. This is both because the people that he chooses to hang around have similar interests, but also because that friend group has an effect on him and what he finds fun to do.
Some people will choose to be friends with those that are closest to them. We were created as social beings– no man is an island. The problem is that if we are not choosy if we do not take into account the impact that friends will have on what we think, how we behave, and what we do, we will find ourselves doing things that we did not believe we would do.
Solomon, the wise king, gives us a couple of pieces of advice about friends and who we should have around us in Proverbs 22:
Drive out a mocker, and conflict goes to;
Proverbs 22:10
then quarreling and dishonor will cease
Here we are instructed to keep a mocking person away from us, because in that person’s wake is conflict, quarreling, and dishonor. The mocking person is constantly trying to put people down, to make fun of something or someone, and to find fault. This person sounds fun at first, but uses gossip, slander, and put-downs to try to create status, and infects the whole group and creates chaos. We’re advised to drive them out.
Don’t make friends with an angry person
Proverbs 22:24-25
and don’t be a companion of a hot-tempered one,
or you will learn his ways
and entangle yourself in a snare.
Like the last admonition, if we make friends with someone who is perpetually angry because they believe that they have been wronged, or some other reason for anger, you will find that you will learn that person’s ways and find yourself in the same place.
- If you hear the griping and complaining about one’s station in life, you will find that you believe that you should also be mad about things in your life.
- If you feed yourself with complaints about things that you should be thankful for, you will find that your attitude is also impacted
- If you listen to people being angry about the government, their family, their church, or their job, you will find that it can make you angry as well.
This leads to a life and an attitude of pride, perpetual frustration. and discontent– a snare indeed.
This is all fed by the friends that we keep around us– what we are choosing to feed into our lives. To break free, we need to change who we hang around with, what we feed into our lives from them, from our media, and from any other source. We need to fill our lives with gratitude and love, and look for the positive things, and be a positive friend.
We may think that we can fix the negative friend, that we can be that positive influence in their lives, that we can be the difference– but what we fail to take into account is that the longer we are with that person, the more that person is changing us. The more that we’re hearing their side, empathizing with them, and trying to see their point of view, which causes us to think like them in other areas and see what they are seeing in our lives– driving a wedge in other relationships because of the distorted view.
We need friends and family we can rely on and trust and push us to be better– surround yourself with this kind of friend.