Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
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Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
So today's post from me is somewhat related to the troll we've been dealing with, who fortunately has been silent for a few days at least.
My daughter has been struggling with hatred in her heart. Her brass band music teacher has really been pissing her off. She takes her drumming seriously, but others in the band have been screwing around, making careless mistakes, and not caring. A girl in a grade lower than her has been flirting with the teacher, and he's obviously been enjoying the extra attention and is playing favorites. He's a young man in his 20s, and he's having that temptation to play favorites when cute junior high girls show him attention. I won't accuse him of having a Lolita complex, but at the very least he lacks the maturity to not let the flattery override his judgement. So when that girl screws up, he ignores it, but he comes down on others who screw up. My girl says that she hates him for that double standard.
So we live in Japan and there are no decent churches within reasonable driving distance. On Sunday we did "pajama church" and I did Matthew 5:43 or so, which says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. I shared that verse in this GenChat a few days ago. My daughter thinks that loving her enemies is stupid and unnecessary. But I told her that while she won't have to worry about her brass band teacher for much longer, when she grows up and has a crappy boss or somebody who treats her like crap, I told her that giving in to hatred will only make things worse for her. I gave her the example of when I had that crappy boss at the company I worked at before my current job. I'd refer to him as "the bosshole," but if I allowed hatred to overcome me, if I gave in to the temptation to hate him, then not only does that give him power over ME and my happiness, but it also opens the door for Satan to have that power over me as well. Because if I allow my heart to be filled with hatred, I am allowing the offender to have that dark power over me to break my joy in life, which separates me from the grace of God.
It's too tempting to hate those who persecute you. But when we do, that hatred interrupts the grace that flows from God. When I made the decision to forgive that cretinous villain for threatening my wife and my daughter like that, I felt a weight lift from my soul. Even though he made a disgusting, offensive accusation about me supposedly abusing my daughter, I chose to not allow that anger to have control over my life. For these past few days, I have felt more joy than I have felt in several months.
In other news, Gab's AI image generator still cannot depict Bob Saget riding a Pogo stick, nor Kaneda's famous bike slide from Akira depicted as a stained glass window. Stupid AI. I don't think the world is ready yet for AI to take us over if it can't even do simple stuff like that.
Wow. Low energy day today. Got some tough news. Hard to muster much energy.
BUT I want to comment: I like the way you think. It resonates. Very similar in some dimensions to my own thinking and approach, especially to emotions.
I don't experience hatred. Anger, sure, but not hatred. Very early on in life, I was taught some powerful things. One of those was to work on trying to see things from God's viewpoint. Now, this isn't easy, because it essentially hinges on how you see, think of, and understand God.
For the first 7 to 10 years after my rebirth experience, I consistently asked God how he felt. How he felt about this, how he felt about that. I would pray, and then the tears would come. I would find myself on the floor, curled up, with tears streaming down my face, and my heart hurting so hard that water would just run out my nose and my mouth.
One of the first times I experienced this was when I learned and understood how much Israel had left God, abandoned him, and deserted him in their unfaith. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing. I wept, feeling intensely how much God wept when he thought of Israel, how they eventually rejected and murdered Jesus.
God loved Israel above all the peoples of the world. He loved them as his own people, and through them hoped to rescue humanity, to lead the way. But they fell away, they broke his heart, more deeply than any parent or spouse has wept for their own children.
There is no anger in that pain, only sorrow and sadness.
For some reason, people think that Jesus in the garden wept for himself, because he faced the passion. Jesus never wept for himself. Can you imagine how deeply his heart was aching, how fervently he prayed, so hard that his blood vessels burst and he wept blood? Why?
Because he know that when Israel crucified him, it would face such monumental consequences. He was weeping for his people, for the ones who betrayed him.
So many of us carry such anger, hurt and indignation at the crimes we learn about. While it is understandable, the fact is, that Jesus loved each and every criminal we learn about so much, that he lived his entire life for them, and gave his life up for them.
In such love, the hurt, pain and anger one feels is immolated, and the sinful nature falls away, and all you see is the lost soul, faced with horrendous consequences of their action.
I'm certainly not suggesting ignoring or denying one's feelings. (As I said, what you wrote resonates powerfully with me, RT). But I am expressing the experience of gradually learning to feel what God feels, what Jesus feels, not by assuming that I understand or know, but by seeking them so intensely that eventually, they come to you and show you directly in your own experience, what it is like for them.
There is a maturation process involved, and I agree with you 100% that suppressing the feelings that arise only retards that process. And, as you say, certain emotions simply dissipate of their own accord, if not denied or held on to. (Denying them holds on to them)
In my experience, the only way to really learn about God's heart is to experience that heart. The more you do that, the more you automatically see someone from God's viewpoint, and that's where the capacity to love one's enemy comes from. When you value each person the way God values them, you are transformed.
If you find yourself really angry or hurt or hating a person, try asking how God sees them, how he feels about them, how he really, really FEELS about them. If you knock hard enough, the door will be opened. And once you experience that, no conceptual thought or idea will supercede that experience. It will be fused in to your heart.
Anyway, these are the thoughts your very powerful comment raised up in my mind.
$0.02
No, that is completely not what I have taught my girl. Much like you have said, I've told her that it is very natural to be angry with people, etc. I'd disagree a bit with your definition of words though. The way I described it to her, anger is a very valid, natural emotion. It's okay to get angry. Hate is when you refuse to let go of that anger. It is when we release that hate and refuse to let it control us is when we receive grace. Never denying one's humanity by saying, "I have no hate." Denying one's humanity is more like Buddhist philosophy.
I would suggest that RT's simply sharing an angle on the situation. And, I would expect, both of you are coming at this from different angles, with different focuses, and different ways of articulating your ideas.
It need not be this vs that. Each of the angles has something to share. Just try to imagine you are sharing two different life experiences, and see if there is some overlap, or something to learn.
Either way, thanks STF, for sharing. A prayer for your family's well being.
Ephesians 4:26 “In your anger do not sin” Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
Sounds like your life is a manga. Try smoking weed. It will put a new perspective on everything. I think you could really get it together. Probably hard to find I guess and just being in Japan would be wild enough I guess without dealing with any issues. I dunno. Try to get into the mindset though!
Manilla Road - Dragon Star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wXSgKryKI
Your comment is borderline inappropriate but then, op did well at answering you so I won’t get any further.
I actually comment because you remind me of that Manilla Road song.🥳
That's cool. I think it's appropriate. I'm just talking like I would with my friends. ...I love that song.
That's a good song, the first one that comes to my mind whenever Manilla Road is mentioned.
No thanks. Drugs won't compare to the grace of God. And I am not willing to throw my entire life away just to smoke something that'll make me stupid. Even people who've smoked weed say that the new stuff has been bred to be weaponized and isn't the same as it once was. No chemicals for me.
People don't know what they are talking about. It's okay. I thought god is supposed to have said he made all the seed bearing herbs for man to use. You know better than god though, I see. I think you need to hold on to what intelligence you have, you're right. Can't risk losing any.
I acknowledge in CBD oil's healing properties and such. There is a difference between eating a banana and smoking a banana peel though. I'm not interested in a conversation with you as you seem to be a troll yourself.