One time a young boy came to his mother with a question that was troubling him. He had an acquaintance at school who was trying to make friends with him, and he was not at all sure about it. As it turned out, his suspicions were quite correct, but the problem was that he could not justify how he felt.
“Mom, whenever I am with him, I always feel like he is putting everyone else down.”
“You feel that he does?” she said. “How do you know? Through a disturbance in the magnetic force?”
“Well, I feel this way because he does put everybody down, all the time I am with him.”
“Then that is not how you feel, but what you have heard. And do you think that he talks about you the same way whenever he is with someone else?”
“Well, yes. But I feel bad about thinking that. Because everything I have heard him say about me is praising me. The way he praises me is actually kind of creepy.”
“Son, he is full of envy and strife, and evil-speaking. You need to stay far away from him.”
“But mom, how can you say that? You have never met him!”
“Then how do I know that he loves to argue?”
“He does love to argue and quarrel! How did you know that?”
“Have you ever tried to point this out to him?”
“Yes. He argued with me.” The mother and son both laughed together, and then she said, “The reason I know that this young man is like this is that the apostle Paul describes this kind of person in 1 Tim. 6. And Paul meant for us to identify a particular kind of person from his warning. Here is just part of the list: proud, ignorant, envious, abusive, full of evil suspicion, and ready to dispute.”
“Well, that’s him, all right.”
“Now Paul never met this fellow either—no more than I have. But he still tells you this—”from such withdraw thyself.”
“I would like to. But I don’t want to be unfair to him. Maybe I am misunderstanding him.”
“If you really think you might be, then wait. But more often than not, tender-hearted Christians obey Paul too late in this rather than too early. Why don’t you talk with your dad about it tonight?”