The Bible says love thy neighbor as we love ourselves, what does this mean?
Should I push my neighbor to have the self-discipline that I do to eat right, exercise regularly and lead a healthy lifestyle?
Love thy neighbor as we love ourselves, the priest always mentions this every Sunday. It is easier said than done when you think about it. Sometimes the best thing you can do after telling someone what they should be doing and not seeing them do it is think about why they are not doing the right things for themselves and pray that good things happen for them.
Love thy neighbor as you love yourself, does this mean if you like to eat a half dozen glazed doughnuts every day you should encourage your neighbor to do the same. For that person that would be loving thy neighbor as he loves himself. The appropriate response from the other neighbor would then seem to be, “Don’t offer me any, that stuff makes you fat and prone to cardiac arrest.” But to truly love your neighbor as you love yourself you would go over there and take that half dozen doughnuts away from him. Or if you see Joe Cool with a pack of cigarettes tucked in the arm of his T shirt you would go over there and take it from him and destroy it. What if your neighbor is an evil person that harasses people what do you do then. You quickly utter in their presence, the nuns used to call this ejaculate, “Men don’t do what you do.” And by all means think before you spout off because there is nothing worse for a country than the wrongly righteous who disguise themselves as something they are not.
“As I would like for me I would like for you also.” Would Jesus have said this to his neighbor or would he have competed with his neighbor in terms of who has the better doctorate degree, makes the most money, has the best looking wife, has the more affluent friends, would Jesus try and attain great status? All rhetorical questions.
If you would not place something where you would trip on it, do not place it where someone else would. It is a similar philosophy to do onto others as you would have done onto you. Except the love thy neighbor would seem to suggest being a little more proactive. It would seem to imply imparting your knowledge of preventing something to them. Seeing how a neighbor can prevent something and telling them would be one form to apply this, but there are many other ways to constructively apply this principal in our everyday lives. And it often takes great thought and prayer to implement. Often choosing the right words to convince. Sometimes a more passive method works good. Passively or duplicitously leading by example. This used to be one of my favorite methods, pretend you are in the shoes of someone else’s situation and have their problems and ask them in a manner so they do not recognize that it is them you are talking about, what they would do in your situation. This is indeed teaching them translational learning. As they think they are thinking about you but they are really thinking about themselves. Sometimes they take the honey of advice they gave you and apply it to themselves as if it was their own stroke of genius that applied to themselves. Of course Blondie said, “All of my ideas are right as long as he thinks there his.” Sometimes they never get it. How do you help a neighbor that will not listen to you or worse? Sometimes solutions to our modern day problems defy readily understandable teachings.
Thomas Paul Murphy
Copyright 2010 Thomas Paul Murphy
Originally published on 10 5 2010 at http://politics-thomasmurphy.blogspot.com/
PS why did the money go to into the television set, "I pay you more
money to make more money for me." A Ponzi Scheme.
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