People vs. ideology

I recently finished reading Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem by Michael Austin. (It was a Christmas present. Thanks, Sam!) It was a good book, and I want to highlight something from the concluding chapter, where he’s listing some aphorisms that would apply to the different characters in the poem. One of the ones for Job’s Comforters says:

• Sometimes being a good friend means doing things that will make you religiously or ideologically uncomfortable. Be a good friend anyway.

I hear more and more about people ending relationships over ideological disagreements. This is very unfortunate; we should value people and relationships over beliefs and ideologies. When it goes the other way we end up with things like the New York Times’ infamous obituary for Pres. Thomas S. Monson. Here was a man who spent his entire, long life visiting widows and the sick and over and over again teaching, by precept and example, the importance of caring for one another, yet for the Times this was all overshadowed by his failure to sign on for their political priorities.

So even if you disagree with me, I’d still like to be friends.