To David,

You probably did not intent this but your last post describes the notion I meant by letting the person go. Even to the point of having nothing to do with them. With so much talk on redeeming, this was ignored. In my opinion it's an important thing to consider and sometimes do. For me there are three reasons to do this, but for you, you can hopefully see the benefit of two of those reasons.

1) the help you offer is not wanted or isn't helping.
2) the help you think is right really isn't
3) letting go can be a trust thing too. Placing it in God's hands because there's nothing more you can do.

If you let someone go because they don't accept your help it might seem like giving up on them. Or if you let them go because they accept the safety and support you offer but use that to avoid the consequences of their actions. (Like not looking for a job or continuing in a drug addiction, sometimes your help just protects people from the consequences that would turn them around). Then it might seem like your abounding them. But if your help isn't wanted or isn't helping, forcing that help or continuing on with it has historically been a cause of more harm.

Conversely, often we want to help another but don't understand the situation. If after trying to help and failing, letting them go their own way might be better because you were in the wrong in their need or your solution.

Lastly (though you won't agree with this) letting a person go can be a part of trusting them to God. Let them face the world on their own and keep them in your prayers. It's not in your hands any more, and really it never fully is.

....

That said David, I would be grateful if you stopped trying to reply to my comments. From the very beginning it has been with a harsh and spiteful attitude you've addressed me with, and even when the topic wasn't about Christianity and my comments stayed on topic you've found an issue to drag my faith out and try to drag it through the mud. If that stops, for however long it does, I would be glad about that.

Once this bright eyed then youth thought the world would be fine.
That we humans, having won ww 2 had it it hand
A far different America, again, was rebuilding Europe as it did post ww1.
Colombo plan was in place,Marshall plan too
Young Americans spreading out over the world in hands on aid.
Today,s youth would do well to revisit those day by spending a couple of weeks goggling them.
We have traveled far mostly down, hate existed, always,see Nazi Germany, but follow the thought humans should be perfect, right back to America, the thought we should engineer humans was born there.
HATE? it blinds us consumes us we see it as an answer, even a reason to murder,those we hate the most, the others.
yes I will highlight till I die that hate blind deliberate hate is a tool for? look around you, try to consider the needless deaths of those starving all over the world,wars famine , some think it is just natural selection, some see it as just hate at work.

One sure way of perpetuating trouble is to keep tearing at the scab. One sure way of making decency perpetual would be to enlighten young people that the privileges of life are not based on selfishness, greed, drugs & indiscipline, jealousy & envy.
How can we expect young people to be decent when all they have for role models is the majority of adults among us ?
Get mature & decent teachers, weed out the corrupt officers in bureaucracy i.e. do a Trump here in this Nation. Of course the Left will fight tooth & nail but at least give it a go.

Hi Belly, I haven't been following your thread that closely. Just on HATE.

Hate is such a strong and emotive term, so negative when applied to others that I feel it serves no worth while purpose as an emotion within the human sprite. As a young bloke I held a high degree of anger towards those I perceived as doing wrong, which manifested as hate towards some people, both at a personal level, some family members, and some unknown personally to me within the broader community, politicians, bosses etc.

I have come to realise you can hate what people do, but not to hate the individual. My wife is a perfect example of a non-hater, she has replaced the negative hate emotion, if she ever had it, with positive feelings of love, compassion and concern for others. In that way she is a better person within herself, and lives a more fruitful life.

Belly
Are you saying that US social engineering is an ideal? It was largely to stop communism as in bombing Vietnam more than US did in Europe WWII.

At school cadets we were trained in bayonet practice , and told to imagine Indonesian boys were our target. It was a church school.