You want to be respected, so show respect. You want others to be gracious toward you, so be gracious.
You have views and opinions and beliefs that you would like others to embrace, so adopt an open and attentive posture when you encounter others who have a different perspective.
If you would like people to believe that your religious faith is genuine and that it is an important part of who you are, then be quick to acknowledge your own errors and slow to attack others who make mistakes.
The object of your faith is gracious, right? Should you not as the beneficiary, the follower, be gracious in turn?
Insensitivity, hasty generalizations, and undue focus on the mistakes of others…these do not accurately represent any religious faith I’ve been acquainted with.
It seems illogical that people who are pleasant and kind should be regarded as weak, while the habits of a bully are regarded as signs of strength.
I know I’m not perfect, but I don’t use the fact that I’m imperfect as an excuse to lack grace and tolerance. I am sometimes a jerk (maybe more frequently than I would like to acknowledge), but I am trying to be a better man and I hope you don’t find me making excuses if you confront me about slipping up in that endeavor.
2 comments:
Hi Mike,
I hope all is going well for you! I didn't know you had a blogspot and a lot of interesting post.
Your last post was somewhat intriguing and left me wondering if you were talking about Christianity? To me, there are many fundamentals in Christianity and life worth fighting for in order to keep the peace and an orderly society. Of course we accept murder, rape, robbery, illegal drugs to be wrong and illegal and worthy of punishment. But there are subtle things that have crept in over recent years that have found an acceptance in our society that decay and will eventually erode our society if we let them.
One of them is abortion. This effects the man and woman for many years to come, not to mention the baby. When the Pope wrote humanae vitae, he expressly warned what the use of birthcontrol and contraceptives would have on the psyche of society thus degenerating the value of the human, embryo, man.
Marriage has always, as long as we can remember been between a man and a woman, ordained by God and the family unit, a mini-Church within the Church where children are nurtured and raised with similar values.
These are just 2 areas of societal breakdown going on daily in our lifes.
These are issues that are worth fighting for.
The fulcrum of Christianity was when an innocent man was murdered in broad daylight showing his love for the people committing the act.
The Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, able to cut between the bone and marrow. What I'm trying to say is that Christianity is not just passive, it's active. It knows what God wants by his Word and it is not changed or dictated to by what feels good or what the most popular person declares. The Word does not change.
Another thing that I'm trying to say is that Christianity and other religions don't mix. A religion by any other name is not Christianity. And over the 2,000 years it has not always been a smooth and nice road. It was illegal to be a Christian for 300+ years, then heresies arose and coucnils were called and it was not always nice or pleasant.
I don't even wonder what they would think about men marrying men and women killing their babies. And I know that there was no need for a council to discuss that heresy.
We live in an age where people are readily deceived by the science and advancement of knowledge. While these things explain our world around us, they do nothing to explain the soul and spirit of the man. But in the mean time they lull the consciousness of man to sleep like a frog in boiling water until the man has gone to his death and didn't even know what happened.
There is a reason behind everything that God purposes for a man. And God wants what's best for Man. And while it may not be popular to the crowd, God does not change.
I think soul matters are very important. Like life and death.
What do you think?
Hi jhg63, I have replied to your comment in the form of a new post on the blog. It seemed too long for a comment box.
Post a Comment