Three Kinds of People in the World

1. Scenery
2. Machinery
3. Friends

Or so I wrote down when there was a guest speaker at my church. One thing I notice about these categories is I don’t want anyone to be Scenery or Machinery. They are people and should be worthy of my full attention.

People who are Scenery are just there in the background. We have no interaction with them. They are people passing by in the mall or waiting for the same elevator.

Machinery are people who can do something for you. In the neutral sense they might be co-workers on the uglier side they are people you can (ab)use to get what you want, like a waiter.

Friends are what you think they are. I don’t feel like I have a lot of them and that’s okay. I have to remind myself that not everyone can be my BFF. I give myself permission to be close with only a few people and everyone else outside of that will have to go on thinking that I’m an extrovert who only reads books by Christian authors. Even Jesus had the crowd, the seventy he sent out, the Twelve, and the Three (Peter, James, and John). He couldn’t be as intimate with the many as he was with the few.

But I wonder, what is our obligation to everyone else?