Speak The Truth With Love

I've blogged a few times in the past months about my close friend who decided she was a man. I haven't agreed with that and it's led me to being excommunicated in the literal sense. We used to see a lot of each other and in the last year or so, she hasn't seen fit to see me, call me or even text. She wants to get together tomorrow for reasons that are unclear to me.

What do you say under such circumstances? Do you argue, do you stand your ground, do you agree with whatever she demands?

Listening to the Clerically Speaking podcast, which I can't recommend highly enough, I heard Father Anthony say, "Speak the truth with love." I now have an opportunity to put this wisdom into action.

My approach going in will be to say that I love what God made. She is a beautiful person and I love her. I'll be very careful not to use names or pronouns and do that out of love for her. I don't know what else I can do. I won't join in with the Social Justice mob and tell her she should hack off body parts and jam herself full of testosterone. By the same token, I won't assume that strident, biology-based arguments by me are going to change her mind. As Zig Ziglar would say, a prospect never buys your product because you won an argument with them. They buy based on emotional responses to what you're saying.

The truth is I love her the way she was born. Mutilating her body and drugging herself aren't an improvement on what God created.

I'm under no illusions that some golden oration by me is going to make huge difference in her life. I certainly have enough examples from my own life where people made wonderfully logical arguments against me taking one stupid action or another and I went right ahead and nuked myself anyway.

All I can do is speak the truth with as much love as possible.