Respect, love and bless them. Thus you are both teaching them about God's love and letting them experience it first hand by doing that.
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My thoughts right now: How to really help people be better people...?
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Respect, love and bless them. Thus you are both teaching them about God's love and letting them experience it first hand by doing that.
zephcom
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I suspect that the best course of action would be an attitude adjustment on your part.
IMMHO, friends should NOT be a clone of yourself. They should be varied in as many ways as you have friends. Every person comes with their good points and their bad points. That doesn't mean we can't love them as a whole person and find common ground between us.
I have dear friends I've known for 40+ years who have attributes which would drive me nuts if I only concentrated on their negative aspects. Instead, I concentrate on the good things knowing that deep down they are good people.
Enjoy the good points of others while being careful to not get involved in their bad points.
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ananda
Early Buddhist
Ignorance is the root cause of why people act unskillfully. Wisdom which dispels ignorance solves that unskillful behavior. Attention and concentration in one's self is necessary to see clearly enough to directly observe and absorb the knowledge that provides wisdom. Willingness to attend and concentrate is a necessary precondition for attention and concentration.
Therefore the best (and really, only) way to truly help others is by setting a wise example. If others are willing to see our wisdom in action, they might be motivated to change themselves. That is the only kind of change that is deep and lasting, as it involves a willing, conscious decision to dispel their own ignorance.
Any other kind of "help" is superficial, and involves compulsion upon others who are not necessarily ready or willing to dispel their own ignorance. Compelling others to act contrary to their own limited wisdom or ignorance does not dispel their ignorance and thus cannot produce deep or lasting changes.
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The deepest and most profound "wise example" was from the one willing to go even to death for what is right, without ever saying less than the perfect truth of what we need for the best life -- "Love one another" - "Love your neighbor as yourself" - "Love your enemy" [the person that wronged us in any way, was rude or short or insulting or took something, or even harmed someone.].
Jesus suffered our evil without striking back against us, and thus in effect took our evil with him to the cross where that evil was broken in a deep way.
It's like how Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. were willing to suffer while standing for what is right, and this moral standing for what is right without fighting caused profound change in the societies for the better.
But Jesus went so much further and deeper and more completely to the most key change. It's precisely true to say He is the (only and) "last and best hope" for humankind, and the full truth of what is best for life.
Put another way, Jesus isn't only a piece of the truth, partial, but instead He has all of it -- the most profound and necessary truths we need for good life are complete only in His words. He is more than just part, more than others who have a part of the truth, like Emerson or Lao Tzu or Buddha or other who say true things but not all that is needed the way Christ does.
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Exactly. You find exactly what you say there -- teaching by example, doing -- if and when you read fully what Jesus said and did (not something a person can learn in a church or by a causal reading once). He explained good action and then did it in all sorts of specific ways.
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If God did not love, then He would not care if people did intentional harms to others, like murder, rape, theft, and all the rest.
If He didn't love, He would not care.
But...He does love, and so therefore He does care what we do.
But He is also merciful, and forgives those that confess and repent.
Just exactly like a good parent, actually.
This is what we find when we read carefully and fully in the Bible. -- He does care enough to care about evil acts -- and will eventually act to end evil.
He is slow to anger, but not willing to forever tolerate evil without any Justice. Justice will happen. God will make it happen.
But God is amazingly merciful if we turn away from evil and stop doing it.
He will judge everyone, and in all they do, and nothing will be hidden.
But He is willing to forgive if a person turns from evil to good. Christ is good.
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ananda
Early Buddhist
Thanks, but that was not relevant to my question.
Doing wise actions & setting an example for others to follow is inherent in the definition of being a "wise example". If someone's actions & example are not to be followed, then that person cannot be a "wise example".
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stevenfrancis
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There is little to nothing we can do regarding other people. We can share the good news with them, (they will listen or not), and we can pray for their flourishing, as we are to do as an act of love for neighbor. The most prevalent advice that I have discerned from sacred scripture and sacred tradition is all advice and methods for making ourselves better people. After all....we don't stand in judgement for others. We stand in judgement for ourselves, and how we have treated others. Not how they have treated us. If we all work on ourselves through God, the world will naturally be a little better place.
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Some are wiser than others, but no mortal humans are as wise as the ultimate enlightened One Who has been since before the beginning of this plane of existence.
20 He [Christ Jesus] was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
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So right!
Being humble, in love, heart in the right place. Matthew 18:3 "Truly I tell you," He said, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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The best way for people to improve morally would be to learn morals in school. Churches tend to speak in generalities, and have a limited audience. Family also seems impotent in teaching morals. Schools have more 'authority' over the minds of people, and address many more people as well. People in college also are paying for their education so they might take moral teaching more seriously if it's part of the course. Also moral teaching in secular schools can be disconnected from religious teaching, which is unacceptable to many.
People today don't know right from wrong in the sense that as society progresses technologically morals that should be associated with these advances are not brought up to date.
People today don't know right from wrong in the sense that as society progresses technologically morals that should be associated with these advances are not brought up to date.
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