"Be always humble, gentle and patient.
Show your love by being
tolerant with one another."

Ephesians 4:2

Or put another way:

"Never look down on anybody unless you're
helping them up."

Dear Foxy,

You quoted Ephesians 4:2 as saying:

"Be always humble, gentle and patient.
Show your love by being
tolerant with one another."

Is that a good sentiment? If one takes it seriously, it can create a burden of guilt when impossible to carry out. I certainly can't always be humble, gentle and patient. I would amend it to: "Try to be always humble, gentle and patient." That still may not be reasonable. I think that might be a bit of advice given more often to women than to men. It might be better to recommend that one be humble, gentle and patient where appropriate. Sometimes one should be assertive. Religious injunctions are rarely given with caveats.

It is probably easy to be tolerant with those we love. However, tolerance should not be restricted to those we love so I think that should be amended to: "Show tolerance to opinions which differ from your own but are humane regardless of how you feel toward the person who expresses those opinions." I don't think we should be tolerant towards expressions of bigotry.

Of course Bibles can differ in translation. The King James Version of Ephesians 4:2:

With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;

“In a threatening world religions gave security, explanations and a sense of community.”

Agreed david f. But as per my last post: ‘in terms of protecting our future and living more harmoniously with all the other creatures on this planet,’ religions haven’t had much to offer.

Even security, explanations and a sense of community, engendered by religious faith, has not always been positive.

A sense of community has all too often resulted in a sense of mistrust or outright contempt for people in other communities, or for those in the same town that follow a different faith and who are therefore considered to be in a different community.

Explanations have all too often been complete fables, and as scientific information has come forth and shown some explanations to be wrong, the faithful have been very reluctant to let go of these fables, with resultant tensions.

A sense of security was false if the sense of community helped create us-and-them situations and tensions between communities.

Dear David f,

The sentiment I quoted was intended as a guide.
Something to strive towards. That's all any of us
can do. Each and every one of us tends at times
to be less tolerant of others than we know in
our hearts that we should be. The only thing that
any of us can be responsible for is our own actions
and our personal commitment to the attributes of
fair play and integrity.

Marianne Williamson in her book, "Illuminata,"
tells us that:

"The search for God is a lifestyle decision.
Fill your mind with the meaningless stimuli
of a world preoccupied with meaningless things,
and it will not be easy to feel peace in your
heart. Fill your mind with the things of God,
and peace will flow into you like water into
the ground... I've heard it said that
prayer is when we talk to God, and meditation
is when we listen..."

"Make every effort to pray from the heart.
Even if you do not succeed, in the eyes of
the Lord the effort is precious."
(from The Gates of Prayer:
The New Union Jewish Prayer Book).

http://www.bom.gov.au/tsunami/nsw_alerts.shtml

God not happy tonight.

To the rat musical. You are gold.lol

sock