I’m teaching middle grades Sunday school this quarter, and we’re getting into all sorts of relationship issues. We’ve already talked about friendship and how your friends (and anyone else you’re around, really) have a powerful influence on you. Today we took the topic of friendship one step further and talked about how important friendship is to God — and how important it is that we treat everyone the way God would want us to, even if we don’t consider them our “friend.”

One of our Scripture verses was 1 John 4: 20:

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Can’t get much more blunt than “If you claim to love God but don’t love the people around you, you’re a big fat liar.” Youch.

We also talked about how the way we treat other people is a direct reflection of our relationship with God. If we love God and are truly trying to do His will, that love comes out in how we act toward others. If we claim to love God but keep being bad friends or keep treating people badly, then we don’t really have much of a relationship with God. Double youch. The two things (or relationship with God and our relationship with other people) are connected, like the two sides of a coin.

We’re a mirror, reflecting back to the world what we’ve let God do to us on the inside. Maybe I need to add Windex to my morning arsenal of make-up and hairspray and help make sure my internal mirror is clean as I start the day.