Metaphor 15 - The False Friend

Since I have gotten personal with you now, I would like you to consider for a moment, personal relationships.

Imagine, if you will, that you enjoyed the friendship of a close personal friend. You have enjoyed for a number of years, all the outward trapping of a condition that is presumed to be an indicator of a inward condition, i.e., conversation that goes deeper than chit-chat, some degree of gift giving and gift receiving, mutual visits in each other’s homes, the sharing of food and drink, etc., etc.

Then, one day, you and your bosom friend meet a person who is wealthier, smarter and more interesting then you are. What would your reaction be if suddenly your so-called friend dropped you out of his life altogether, treating you as if you never existed, and then took up with that other person to the exclusion of yourself?

I imagine that you would feel something very like wrath that is thoroughly mixed with the cutting wound of betrayal. But I think the thing that would really get your goat would be the realization that all the time you were friends with this person, the possibly of him or her doing this thing to you was latent. It was there all along, just waiting to happen.

As with a human being, it is more so with the Supreme Being. Our personal Chicagoland, connected as it is to the first people who failed and damaged it, makes latent in us every characteristic and act that is contrary to the personality and character of the Supreme Being. And therefore it makes us subject to, and a target of, His wrath.

And by now, you would probably like to say to me "Who do you think you are, talking to me this way?" And now it comes to the point were I must get personal with you indeed.