Reply #134: Have had to do that, but easier because I have in a way [View All]

[The Straight Story]

It is something I think that the RW does not often embrace or understand at a core level. What I often find odd is how many christians are right-wing (I am a Christian myself) and practice great acts of kindness on their personal and professional level but not in a political arena.

I look back on my years of really bad times, and I guess include today in that as mom is still in ICU as I type here, and in a way I am thankful I went through such a trying time because it taught me to be more caring in a deeper way. That does not mean I give hand outs all day long to guys on the side of the road (I simply don't trust them to be honest about it) but I do what I can for others as I am able.

It does cause me heartache sometimes, I intereviewed three people for 2 openings recently and had to rank them in order. I wish I could have given them all a job. One guy we had to let go awhile back, I still talk to him and have given him a good reference - he was just going through a bad time in his life at that point. I let him slide a lot too when he was there (he would leave his shift to go home and get something and never come back, more than a few times). His dad was sick, and so was he (he later found out he had some stomach disorder and was in the hospital not long ago). I wouldn't have minded so much if he had just said something, but he just disappeared and didn't call.

I won't let people who have screwed me over in life affect me as a person or how I view others. Sure I don't trust employers in general, but I do give them a chance and hope for the best in people as a whole. I feel the same with people of faith and others I have met, people from iran, pakistan, et al - all of whom I have met and been friends with over the years. Some have been cool, others idiots, but I see them as individuals who represent their own values and not that of a whole group (ie I look at belief systems based on tenets of them and not the people who try to live up to them mostly).

We NEED to walk in the shoes of others, and that to me is one of the reasons I felt Jesus came here, to see what it was like to live as a human (not the main reason, there were deeper theological reasons that necessitated it) but he tried to see people as who they were and not merely how they performed within a set framework - because he illustrated to many that no one, but him, can honestly be perfect and live 100% in that framework. We all screw up, we all fail. How we handle that as people with one another defines, to me, how human we really are and how close to god we hold our values.

I made mistakes, part of the mess in my life was, is, my own stupid fault. It does not make me worse than others, it makes me just like them - I just had different screw ups. The important thing we must do with such screw ups is learn from them, grow ourselves, and try to improve and pass along that knowledge to others to help them in avoiding making the same mistakes we did (much like our parents try to do). Wisdom is listening to it with an open mind, even when we think we are right and those telling us something are wrong. To me perhaps there is hidden in all that the term moderate - someone who is not overly condemning and cold (it's your fault, deal with it) and someone who does not blame others and try to fix everyone's problems, or potential problems, through legislation to protect them from themselves. I may be way off base on that, but to me on a personal level it makes some sense (and others it won't I am sure, but we are all different).