Hezo Kittie

I'm going to use the pronoun She from now on because that's what philosophers use

"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to do menial work. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord. On the contrary:

'If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.'

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

Romans 12:9

I like this one. "Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody" kinda trips me out though. Shouldn't we be careful to do what is right, whether or not everybody's watching?

"Honor one another above yourselves." As my boy Jeffries says, "Worse comes to worst, my peoples come first."

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." A nice reminder. When I'm all fun and games and my homies are bummed and freaking out, it's easy to simply say, "Whats the big deal? I don't understand why you're upset. That's not a big deal. Get over it." But what I really should do is to empathize, try to understand how she feels. To mourn while she mourns is to respect her and her emotions. To tell her it's not a big deal is to imply that my emotions are more stable than hers, that I'd be able to handle her situation fine. That would be a blatant lie.

The section on God's Wrath is where it gets interesting. The secular interpretation/analogy to this is basically a guilt trip. Consider the situation where one of my enemies is bullying me. I could retaliate with vengeance, or I could act patiently and kindly. If I were to act kindly, my antagonizer would be confused. "Why isn't he angry that I'm doing this? If I were him I'd be pissed! Hmm... maybe I'm not justified in my enmity. I'll back off a little bit."

This is where motives play a huge part. I have two primary reasons to treat my antagonizer kindly: to guilt trip her into treating me kindly, or for the sake of the kindness itself. Not only is the best choice obvious, the poor choice has two potentially gnarly consequences. Say I acted nicely in order to put her on a guilt trip. If she didn't come around and still disrespected me, I would probably blow up in her face. "You fucking suck! I am being so fucking nice to you, you dense prick!" Also, if I used the kindness as a means to an end (guilt tripping her into being nice to me), my kindness would come off insincerely and my enemy would see through the facade. She then would be able to justify her hostility by thinking to herself, "Dude fuck him, he's just trying to put me through a guilt trip."

Obama, wow. It still hasn't sunk in for me.