Not because of any moral absolutes, but just because that's their preference. And if I love my friends there are things that I do because I love to be with them. One of the things that I'm finally coming around to is that as much as I wish I was St. Francis, as much as I wish I was a Mother Theresa, as much as I would aspire to empty myself, there's an awful lot of me left in here. His friend Beaker might not agree. Rich says friends are a painful blessing.
Friendship has a lot to do with enduring people while they go through their weird times.
Beaker is a very close friend, who in the period of time we've known each other, has definitely exposed in me everything that I hate about myself. He has drawn out of me all kinds of things that I would love to have the illusion didn't exist. Stumbling Heavenward Writer Fredrick Buechner talks about the difference between something being a canvas, where, presumably, everything is right in front for you to view, and something being a transparency, where it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. Rich Mullins colors a canvas with his music, but he himself remains a transparency. His honest revelations of the struggles in his own life have brought those who listen that much nearer the truth of the One who lives through him.