Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on June 16, 2009 11:59 AM Christian love is not just saying that it is ok that some people live this kind of life or that, but it involves this kind of respect that you have to give somebody something if they are in need.

I am, of course, familiar with examples of Christian love so I am not saying that it does not exist. I just think that it is rare, selective and very often limited to lip service during a sermon in church. That is why I suggested, as a realistic Christian minimum which, unlike Christian love, should be enforced, the principle "Live and let live." BTW, your story of that (Polish?) pijawka sounds so familiar, Liliana... As for "thy neighbor," the only love I need from them is that they leave me alone.

I know it is hard with real neighbors sometimes, because if you gave them something from time to time and were nice to them, they might totally invade your life. I usually keep a distance from them, more distance than from other people. If they needed something, of course I would help them, but I am not really into keeping close relations with the neighbors, meaning visiting them and inviting them. I do not know if it is good or bad, but I could not do otherwise.

Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on June 16, 2009 11:59 AM  I was helping somebody with some translations, ... the person was working on was a very serious legal document ... I told her, I could not help her any more because the text was too complicated for her, her office charged me for some things, small favours, ...jobs...The office had turned into my enemy within a second.

By accepting the small jobs in return for the friendly act of helping another translator a whole series of one hand washing the other has begun. 

I once helped a newbie who had begged for help and support. This person wanted to translate out of her mother tongue. Her English was insufficient. She thought not. I suggested cleaning up her very long CV, but instead of looking at my suggestions, she flew into a rage, and complained long and bitterly to our 'colleaguez' on another site, where I post under a pseudonym. She wrote me privately, and without knowing who was behind the pseudonym, she vilified me in ways that made me as if the wicked witch of the west. I am sure that had I accepted anything in exchange for the initial help, all hell would have broken loose.  

I still help, but I am very careful now.

Nanna

These were not even any real favors that I counted on: there was no verbal contract of any sort; they simply referred two clients to me, $100 fee in total (one of them did not show up), and made some copies of papers that I did not have time to copy at home. I spent at least 4 - 8 hrs translating things over the cellular phone which had only a limited time of contract minutes, and I ended up paying $0.40 per minute for the time limit I exceeded. I paid about $120 extra for my phone that month.  But whatever, this is what happens.

Originally written by Maxi Schwarz-Bastami on June 15, 2009 7:34 PM  ...on this changed topic ...

I wouldn`t call it changed topic. Especially as Jacek has answered both Nanna`s question about love and the thread quest for bridging divide.

Originally written by Jacek K. on June 15, 2009 6:20 AM I would settle for the following minimum: You don't need to "love" the Other. Just live and let live.

Only this is not minimum.

Bridging through a halo: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6457680.ece# (via Harper's Weekly Review) 

[President] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being mocked ... for a videoclip in which he boasts of how world leaders watched him for almost half an hour without blinking as he spoke in a halo of light to the United Nations.

The speech in question was in September 2005 when the Iranian President used his first address to the UN General Assembly in New York to indulge in a bit of his favourite sport, bashing America.

Afterwards, according to a videoclip that has gone viral in the e-mail inboxes of Tehran, he told a top cleric, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, that a "light" had enveloped him and that the crowd stared at him unblinkingly during the entire speech.

“A member of the (Iranian) delegation told me, ’I saw a light that surrounded you,”’ Mr Ahmadinejad said on the tape.

“I sensed it myself too ... I felt the atmosphere changed. All leaders in audience didn’t blink for 27, 28 minutes. I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying they didn’t blink. Everybody had been astonished ... they had opened their eyes and ears to see what is the message from the Islamic Republic.”

Yes, but according to at least one source (Hooman Majd), "this was offensive to the conservative religious leaders because an ordinary man cannot presume a special closeness to God or any of the Imams, nor can he imply the presence of the Mahdi. "

Wikipedia

Originally written by Nanna Mercer on June 16, 2009 7:54 PM "...an ordinary man cannot presume a special closeness to God ..."

What about all of us, mortals? No hope?

Originally written by John Bunch on June 22, 2009 7:17 AM in Post #178751 You guys, as westerners, in the year 2009, are free to interpret Jesus's statements, relativizing them. But I think that in the time and place that he spoke them, people did not take a "metaphorical" view of that. When he said that those not abiding in him would be "cast into the fire", people believed that not metaphorically, but literally, for about 1500 years. Read the history of the Catholic Church. They burned "witches" in America in 1650, based on such quotes. The Catholic Church burned people at the stake - literally "casting them into the fire", until about 1650. The Church, from 400 AD to about 1650 AD, took a very, very literal view of that. The entire Spanish Inquisition was, for instance, built around a very literal view of what Jesus said. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have repeatedly pointed this out.

http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/06/24/evolution_of_god/?source=newsletter

Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.

There's something to offend just about everyone in this book. Wright recounts in harrowing detail how the early Israelites, who'd been conquered and humiliated by the Babylonians, invoked Yahweh to wreak vengeance on their enemies. This is no God for the faint of heart! And he's no gentler on Christianity. Wright's Jesus is not the prophet of peace and love but a sometimes mean-spirited apocalyptic preacher obsessed with the approaching End Times. Islam's founder, Muhammad, comes across as much a warrior as a prophet, bent on annihilating his enemies when they cross him.

Despite all this religious mayhem, the book also shows a gentler side of the Abrahamic religions, especially when they manage to find common cause with their heathen neighbors and rival monotheists.

At first, "The Evolution of God" reads like another atheistic tract exposing the seamier side of religion. But then I came to Wright's account of the "moral imagination" and his surprising conclusion: He may not believe in God, but Wright thinks humanity is marching -- however wobbly -- toward moral truth.

[...]

Originally written by Jacek K. on June 25, 2009 6:17 AM Originally written by John Bunch on June 22, 2009 7:17 AM in Post #178751 You guys, as westerners, in the year 2009, are free to interpret Jesus's statements, relativizing them. But I think that in the time and place that he spoke them, people did not take a "metaphorical" view of that. When he said that those not abiding in him would be "cast into the fire", people believed that not metaphorically, but literally, for about 1500 years. Read the history of the Catholic Church. They burned "witches" in America in 1650, based on such quotes. The Catholic Church burned people at the stake - literally "casting them into the fire", until about 1650. The Church, from 400 AD to about 1650 AD, took a very, very literal view of that. The entire Spanish Inquisition was, for instance, built around a very literal view of what Jesus said. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have repeatedly pointed this out. http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2009/06/24/evolution_of_god/?source=newsletter Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.

I don't think this is true that things were less metaphorical many years ago, or rather many centuries ago: I think it was quite the opposite or at least the same. Most of older literature is written in parables: literature was more methaphorical in the past than it is now. I think this is the main problem that some people took everything literarlly.