love your neighbour...
I thought I'd start the first thought provoking discussion. I thought I'd like to call it 'love your neighbour'. So I did.
Jesus says to love your neighbour as you love yourself.
This gets translated as 'treat others as you'd wanna be treated'.
Let's face it, it's a principle that's been taken on board by the majority of people on this crazy planet we call Earth, regardless of whether you're Christian or not. Heck, a fair bit of the legal system is based on this principle - so much so that we like to call it 'the neighbour princple'
So do you think we're living up to this principle?
If you were to write a report card for yourself, your friends, your family, your faith (or lack of) and your nation on how well we're doing at this - how would you grade it?
Don't worry, all the non-Christians, there will be discussion without the word God in it.
posted by jessp @ 6:50 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
So does love equal respect in this context? Because if you can't respect yourself or at least reconcile your flaws, can you reasonably expect to be able to respect/love others?
As for the report card...
Myself - a C- with the comment "Jess has tried hard but needs more consistency if she wants to maintain this grade."
My friends - we're still waiting on comparative marking.
My family - B with the comment "willing to accept people but must try a little harder."
My faith - D with the comment "Christianity means well, sets about to do well but its fears of people different from themselves means that they fail to make the grade, more time spent studying the textbook and listening to the teacher would mean it would achieve better results in tests. It has potential and we look forward to seeing that."
My nation - F with the comment "Australia rarely does what it says what it will do. It hangs around with the bad crowd. In order to improve its grade, it should consider being less of a bully. Australia still has not learnt to share."
So...
Does love my neighbour have to include drunken yobbos who only want cheap (and nasty) bourbon??
Unfortunately, yes.
I get an E in that regard.
I'm currently referring to myself as a postchristian (due to my inability to love christian jargon as i love myself). However, I grew up in a very christian family and i find myself 'doing the right thing' anyway in most respects. They can't make me get up early on Sunday in order to go somewhere that sends me back to sleep though. I like that.
I also get an E in the loving-people-who-bore-me-shitless category.
I'm giving grades of E because my highschool did away with the F because it was too 'nasty'. Like E doesn't mean the same thing....
My scorecard goes a little like this:
Myself: mainly a C, i try to like people and be nice to people but sometimes all i want to do is hit them over the head with something heavy.
My Family: Doing pretty well. Dad's better at it coz he's so very logical. He gets an A (I've never heard him hate somebody). Mum gets a B (she's more emotional). My big brother is more normal. He gets a C.
And my little brother has an amazingly cruel sense of humour. And he annoys me. He gets a D.
(When i say 'normal', i mean human. Nobody is ever gonna get this right all of the time and, according to Jesus, its not that we need to be perfect, its that we need to be aware that we're not, and seek forgiveness for the things we do. Hey, look at me talking like a christian!)
My friends: It all depends on the friend. Some of them get an E, some get a B.
I get to miss the faith one if i like, coz i don't have one. But, if i were to rate the anglican church(that i grew up in), it would get an E for bigotry, power games and a complete failure to consider the feelings of the congregations under its power. Individual priests, bishops and so forth are ok, some of them, but as a group they get the lowest grade possible in this area. Maybe they should take a look at Centrelink and realise that a hierarchical organisation is never truly christian.
I like many christians individually, but i have a huge problem with the collective faith. Love your neighbour indeed.
It was mere coincidence that this week in my Perfect Diary (no, it's really called The Perfect Diary because it is perfect), there was a poem called 'A Captured Man' by Angela Costi. The first stanza goes like this:
In the game of truth or dare
he picked truth, she asked
'do you live a compassionate life?'
he took two days to answer, 'no'.
How's that for sobering?
I really appreciate the honesty that people are putting into this, I just thought I'd say that cos it's not easy to be critical of yourself and stuff. Keep it all coming along!
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