To Purplesunshine:
"I can’t stand many of the people who practice the occult, mostly beucase they’re crazy feminist hippies who believe that they can channel mother earth. I find that a bit wackadoodle and tend to not involve myself.
That being said, I don’t walk up to someone and say, “Hi my name’s purple, do you worship Satan?”
We are not called to walk into the middle of a sance and start hugging people and handing out birthday gifts, just to live normally. If we meet a person at work or school we are called to be friendly and some of those people become our friends. It is typically during the friendship that you talk about these sort of things. I have a very dear friend who was into witchcraft. Slowly, she’s come back to the church through the example of good and lovign people. There’s a phraze in modern occult following…“washed-up christian” apparently most of their members are not born into the occult, rather left christianity becuase of the hyprocracy and judgementalness. I really can’t blame them for that, seeing the sort of questions you ask."
Again,sorry.My quote function doesn’t work at all (I’m going to have to rectify that someday). Now let me also apologize for seeming judgmental; by temperament I’ve never been particularly given to what most would call amiability. Nonetheless a certain amount of judgment is necessary in human life -figuring out what is the necessary degree is where the trouble begins (and ironically that’s sort of what this thread is about -judging people viz. friendship).
But let me continue to satisfy my curiosity re:the friends one can have. (1) perhaps we’re equivocating on the word “friendship”. When you say “friends” do you mean friendship for the good, or friendships for the useful, or friendships for shared activities? (2) If you mean friendship for the good, I’m still rather confused since I don’t know a good way of avoiding this objection namely, why should a good man associate with a bad man or why should God associate with the devil? If one really could be friends with anyone, then why would there exist an admonition similar to the one I just wrote (what fellowship exists between light and dark?)? Wherefore it follows that the ideal friendship necessarily is a friendship between two persons where at least one is not dramatically worse than the other. But there clearly comes a cut-off point, right or wrong and why?
Again though, I don’t think I’ve gotten an answer that satisfies me regarding the possibility of friendship with dangerous persons. We probably shouldn’t hand out gifts at a seance, but if that’s so, then people shouldn’t say that we can be friends with everyone. Where is that cut-off point?
Finally, I ask in all seriousness, I’m not trying to advance an agenda or thesis of my own, I’m here purely to learn.