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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/05/2014 in all areas

  1. I see the questions similar to "What's the big deal? The earth being 4.8 billion years doesn't negate anything.... God is the creator when 4.8 Billion years ago so what?", etc... "God could've created instantaneouslhy or 20 billion years ago..." You miss the point - it's not about what God COULD do or COULD have done - it's what He STATED He did. Do we believe Him who was there at the beginning or do we believe the views of fallable man who weren't there? That's the underlying question.
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  2. 1) Try establishing common manners of communication. This is especially useful for online communications because so many problems can arise simply from one party misunderstanding the other's word choice. The more you come to know people, the more likely you are to understand their idiosyncrasies, but it would seem to be a good idea to keep them to a minimum. 2) Mutual respect. If one party feels the other party is not giving him a fair shake and/or only has his own interest in mind, he will likely get defensive and communication will quickly break down. 3) Don't have an agenda. This sort of ties in with 2. When one party feels like the other party is talking to him only to get something out of him or only to influence him in some way, paranoia and distrust will arise and communication will quickly break down. A degree of this seems to be mitigated if both parties understand from the beginning that one or both have an agenda in this manner. This is mitigated even more so if one party comes to the other expressly asking to be part of the other's agenda (ie. going to a car dealership and asking to be sold a car or going to a church and asking for spiritual advice about one's behavior). These are a few I thought of off the top of my head.
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  3. To avoid repeating what others have said, I'll go a different route. From my experience, recognizing hypocrisy in ourselves is a starting point to empathizing with the hypocrisy of others instead of hypocritically becoming judgmental about it. But empathizing alone will only at best only prevent us from dealing with those who present hypocrisy harshly. This is fine and good, but settling for simply not dealing harshly with others when they sin is not the pinnacle of the holy life and appears selfish if one is capable of going beyond this. Actually assisting others in decreasing their sin and cultivating repentance and better actions is much more in line with the Christian life. A quote that I am rather fond of from the the Talmud (can't remember exactly what it is commenting on) goes like this: "Whoever can prevent members of their household from committing a sin, but does not, is punished for the sins of their household. If they can prevent their fellow citizens from committing sins, but does not, they are punished for the sins of their fellow citizens. If you can prevent the whole world from committing a sin, but does not, they are punished for the sins of the whole world." Actually doing this, however, is easier said than done, and would seem to require understanding the origin of the hypocrisy, how to decrease it and replace it with a better behavior, and the specific actions one needs to do to bring this about.This would seem to require a lot of introspection and prayer to determine origin and treatment of hypocrisy in ourselves before we do so in others, hence the whole beam/speck thing Jesus talked about and others brought up earlier.
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