100 Ways to Simplify Your Life

I am reading this right now, by Joyce Meyers.  And I'm not trying to pick apart Joyce's work (though Tammy would love that LOL).  I actually like her work.  But something in the book has me stumped.  And she isn't the only person I've heard these same things from.

Ok, so there's Chapter 40 - Have Simple Friends.  In this section, Joyce says that the people we spend time with affect us, so if we want a more simple life, we should not have complicated people for close friends.  She says to avoid relationships with people who are extremely insecure or negative. 

Then you hop over to Chapter 48 - Have a Broad Circle of Inclusion.  Here she says God called us to love everyone.  God doesn't reject anyone and we shouldn't either.  The world is filled with lonely people who are perhaps a bit different.  Instead of avoiding those people, we should make every effort to reach out to them.  There's a reason each of us are the way we are and we need to remember that except for the grace of God, the people we reject could very well be us.  We need to keep our circles of friends broad and inclusive and avoid being exclusive to only those we feel are most like us.  She talks of how she felt rejected most of her life and felt people didn't like her (insecure).  She said she was desperate for love and acceptance. 

These two chapters are in contradiction to one another, and so is a lot of the body of Christ.  There is truth that hanging around negative people can affect our own outlook, but there's truth too that if positive people refuse to hang around negative people, negative people don't have anything to base a change in their life on.  We learn by example and role model, and if all the role models are me first, are they really doing what God called us to do?

There has to be a balance in there somewhere, but to say to avoid negative or insecure people...in my opinion, that chapter needs a do-over.