Here is a triad of thoughts about the kind of friends we should seek and strive to keep, as well as strive to be. They are those who will speak the truth to us, regardless of whether or not it is what we want to hear. How often in this crazed culture of self-pleasing and self-exaltation do we discard someone just because they told us something that we don’t like to hear. In fact, cancel-culture has become the rage in every area of our lives. When someone speaks something we don’t like, instead of hearing, listening or even briefly considering we unfriend them, ghost them, or otherwise ignore them until they go away. Systemically, social media platforms and other media outlets will villainize and ultimately un-person someone who continually speaks that which is against the collective desire. Make no mistake it has nothing to do with truth or "fact-checking" it is all about agenda. But what is more dangerous still is the product of that mind-set in the individual. When we surround ourselves only with those who agree with us, when we refuse to even allow someone to disagree with us, we make ourselves weaker than we can possibly imagine. For those who will always agree and never challenge are by nature lying to us. And if we believe lies, the foundation itself it under siege. The solution is simple, if painful. Seek those who will speak truth regardless of your good pleasure, make them your closest friends, make them you dearest allies. For truth itself is the basis of all things. And only that which is built on the truth will ultimately stand in the day of reckoning. Notice the character of the man we should seek as friend - willing to openly rebuke us based on truth and love; faithful even when he must wound me, and his counsel is hearty, it is honest, in all ways consistent with the way that truth is revealed. We must be courageous enough to risk honesty, to risk the pain that comes with the truth, to chance the censure of the world for the sake of the truth that honors God. These are the kind of friends that we should seek to be, that we should seek to have, and never should we ever abandon someone for the simple "crime" of speaking truth where we wanted lies.