Gramps is correct here. If you want to have any influence with anyone, you must first be a friend. If you are only a friend as long as someone obeys the commandments, goes to church, does what you want, or anything else, you are NOT a friend, at all.

If you can set church and everything else aside and say and know in your heart that you love a person for who they are, despite any potential character flaws and failings, and desire to help them regardless if they care about the gospel or not for the sole fact that they are your brother or sister in the great family of God, then you are a TRUE friend.

Unfortunately, there are a number of people in the church who fit into the first example. If someone stops going to church, for example, they dump them like they are trash, don’t visit them, and spread rumors about them. This ought not to be and this is definitely NOT friendship in any way, shape, or form.

One thing I have sometimes questioned is how a missionary goes out and learns to love his fellow man where he serves and then upon returning home he loses that same love.

Frankly, some of the most kind and honest people I have met were inactive or non-members. Some people who have gone inactive I know have simply hit a rough patch at church with their children being beat on by other kids in primary or young men, and so on. I have also seen some instances of gossiping among the young women and that is going to make pretty much any young girl feel uncomfortable going to church if she finds out she is the subject of it. Sadly, some adults aren’t any better about it than their juvenile children…

Sometimes the reason for inactivity goes much deeperーa suicide in the family, a divorce (and how people perceive them at church), a tragic death of a loved one that causes one to question why God would take them away, etc.

I can only imagine that’s why President Monson uttered those two words with such force in his 2010 general conference talk when he said: “JUDGE NOT!” He also quoted Mother Teresa when she said, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

Remember the saying: Birds of a feather flock together.

People gather where they feel comfortable, and if you are a friend, they will come to you. All I can say is that if we ALL truly lived our religion like the prophets have said time and time again, the church would have plenty more than 15 million members right now; the same goes for numbers of temples. In fact, it is my belief that people all over the world would flock to the church in droves if we would hold up our lights a little higher, keep the commandments a little better, and love our fellow man/woman a little deeper. “Why then and not now when we already have the fullness of the gospel?” you may ask. But the answer is really simple. It is because they would see our GOODNESS for what it is, unstifled. Active member, inactive member, or non-member, I believe there is a spark within people (unless we have extinguished it) that we sometimes refer to as the “Light of Christ.” That same spark is attracted to other sparks.

As proof of that, D&C 80:40 states: “…light cleaveth unto light…” And if you are a TRUE friend who acts no hypocrisy, you radiate the light of God to which people will gather. You can also be sure that’s why people gathered to the Savior the way they did.