[workingdog]

How we treat family members is the most accurate indication of our decency. We chose our friends, so their company is easy. It's when we're forced to reckon with people we don't choose. That is the actual test of our grace.

[happytoexplain]

Why would treatment of family be a better indicator of our decency than treatment of strangers?

[hackeraccount]

The parent wasn't talking about strangers, they were talking about people you have to have a measure of intimacy with. Friends in this comparison are relatively easy because whatever happens later at the start you at least get to pick them.

No one gives you a choice about your parents or siblings. That's the great thing about them in some ways. Except by chance of birth I would never have been friends with my parents and probably not my siblings.

That said these are all people I love who I would never be friends with so they can't be treated like friends. Family has to be treated like family.