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CREATION AND THE NARROW WAY

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, Evolution/Creation, FAITH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS — Leave a comment
December 27, 2017

Have you been intimidated into thinking that if you were to confess to believing that God created, you would be the odd one out, and the object of universal scorn and derision?

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A Gallup poll conducted In May of 2012 found that in the United States forty-six percent of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God’s guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process. More broadly, some 78% of Americans today believe that God had a hand in the development of humans in some way, just slightly less than the percentage who felt this way 30 years ago http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origins.aspx

I’M PROUD TO BE A WACKO

In the UK, my country of origin, it’s a commonly held view that too many Americans are “religious”, and that the US is the home of the Christian Fundamentalist wacko. It’s therefore not surprising to Brits that so many Americans are, in their view, “ignorant of the facts”, as represented in the Gallup poll. I’ll put it a different way: the United States as a whole has not abandoned its faith in the Biblical God while much of Europe has.

Despite all the determined efforts of evolutionists, atheists, the media and many in the education establishment to indoctrinate everyone into the ways of naturalism, many Americans have a lot more savvy and independence of thought when it comes to faith, and aren’t so easily swayed or brainwashed by those determined to get rid of the Christian God. On top of this, freedom-of-speech laws allow creationists and intelligent design ministries to thrive in the US, whereas in Western Europe there’s far more legal and political opposition to such ministries.

The common and caustic charge that creationists are ignorant and stupid is just a smoke screen-an obfuscation (my new favorite word) designed to hide the facts. While they’re fewer in number (because there’s resistance to their hiring and because they don’t get massive government funding and secular media backing as the priests of Darwin do) creationists are in many cases at least as well educated, credentialed and informed as evolutionists. It’s a matter of world-view, not one of who’s most intelligent.

Neither does a majority of scientists in a position of influence prove right: it only helps to dictate who will have the upper hand in public exposure and debate. Ultimately one with God is a majority. The earth belongs to God and not to his deniers, who are, after all, only tenants.

There’s a culture war going on: a spiritual battle for individual hearts and minds. It seems sometimes like the “nays” have it when it comes to God and creation, and that’s intimidating to many people. But those of us who’ve chosen to follow the clear evidence in nature, in scripture, and in empirical science (rather than philosophy without evidence posing as science) see it God’s way. We recognize that Jesus Christ said:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13,14 ESV).

 

 

 

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THE POST-TRUTH POST

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, Politics — Leave a comment
May 26, 2018

Two kinds of people are interested in the type of culture we live in today-those who are concerned about it, and hope and pray to reverse the negative trends, and those who are promoting the negative trends…

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Of course, the promoters, the drivers of our social and political world, don’t see their view as being negative. They’re heading, they think, towards a utopia in which all shackles of morality and propriety are totally removed; in which the old order of things is done away; in which the Judaeo-Christian world-view is abolished and forgotten.

I was listening to an interview with a member of Ravi Zacharias’ team, who was talking about our “post-truth” culture. We’ve moved, he said, from “post-modernism” into “post-truth”. Post-truth culture is one in which, as in post-modernism, truth is perceived to be subjective only (my truth is my truth, your truth is yours), but also one in which the facts don’t matter any more. What matters now is feelings and preferences.

This definition and observation didn’t tell me anything new. I’ve realized for many years that a large number of people-perhaps a majority- aren’t interested in genuine debate or inquiry in order to arrive at facts or truths. Instead, they’ve made up their minds already, based upon what they want to be true, even if it’s blatantly obvious that it isn’t. They only seek to bolster their views with any line of reasoning, faulty or not, which serves to intimidate and bash the “ignorant” and “bigoted” rabble.

In defense of my own ignorance and bigotry, I can say that I once held to many politically-correct tenets which I now see as being faulty or destructive. No-one can accuse me correctly of being uninformed and closed-minded, because I’ve seen both sides of the moral, political, philosophical and social divide.

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I use the word “divide” in its singular sense intentionally here, because if you haven’t noticed, our culture, ostensibly rich and self-proclaimed to be “diverse”, is actually shaping up to be two-sided and polarized. On the one side we have those holding to the traditional view of society and culture which is largely Christian in its morality; one-man one-woman marriages; a uniform view of right and wrong; an un-wavering patriotism; age-old work ethics, and a conservative understanding of immigration and societal growth in which those coming in do so legally, and with the intention of blending into what is already here.

On the other side of the cultural divide we have those pushing, particularly since the start of President Obama’s reign, with all their might to demolish all the above standards, and to replace them with anything else which suits their no-holds barred morality. The Judaeo-Christian view of things is the one obstacle in their road to Utopia.

The election of Donald Trump represented the worst thing which could have happened to the progressive agenda. Trump is no choir boy by any standards, but he did and does hold to the principles of a predominantly Christian culture, as outlined above, and he does take serious note that there are many millions who still see society in its traditional sense. Consequently, the effort to remove him has been driven by angry desperation, and a desperation which claims to be tolerant but which in fact refuses to listen, and which unashamedly negates any reference to objective, verifiable facts. Even the laws and constitution of the land are seen to be enemies in our post-truth age. And so my post returns to its starting point.

The throwing-off of Truth is nothing new. It’s been done over and over again, since the very beginning of man. Someone gets tired of living by the rules-particularly God’s rules-and here comes the abandonment of rational thought, and the embracing of anything which opposes it. It’s a prideful attitude which is destined for failure. The underlying belief is that either there is no God, no Person with any expectations of us, or that even if there is, he/she/it is irrelevant and not worth considering anyway. It’s rather like your left hand intently disliking the rest of your body and so deciding its going to go off and live independently of the rest of you.

We can no more live in a universe without God than we can live in a world without air. And unfortunately for those rebelling against the way of things, against the nature of the real universe governed by its creator, there is nowhere else to go. The One who ultimately controls all things, who gives and sustains life, does indeed have certain expectations. He also has no intention of giving away His universe.

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A LETTER FROM AMERICA

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, Politics, The Meaning of Life, Uncategorized — Leave a comment
May 20, 2018

I’ve become more and more aware in recent years of what my one-time friends, my family (who I still love), and my countrymen think of what has happened to me since I left the UK and settled in the United States, and also what has happened to the U.S. So to those who might occasionally dare to stray into the weird world of Nick Fisher, here is a report, and an apologetic of what indeed has happened to me and to my home, America.

 

One old friend of mine once opined that I had been “snapped”. It was a derogatory term for what happens when a person inexplicably changes radically and suddenly, usually the result of being “brainwashed” by a cult. He had put into one word what many were saying about me, nervously and in hushed tones of sympathy and fear. Nick would never be the same again…

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I could go into a lengthy treatise on my view of the world, which so terrified and now disgusts all those people who would always look at me sideways if ever I were to bump into them on the street. But a few encompassing notes will suffice.

First, I am without regret. My problem was not that I was “snapped” into a false way of thinking in which my mind had become commandeered by some cult leader or group or church: it was that I previously had no coherent view of the world anyway. Like all those I’ve left behind then and now, all I saw of the world was what I saw immediately around me, what my friends said (which was often faulty) and what people on the TV told me. I was convinced that all the “experts” were right. So that if actor or comedian X, or news reader X had said that Mr Trump was preaching hatred and racism, I would have believed it. If Professor X said that it was now clear that man and the “other primates” had evolved from a lemur-like creature, I would have believed it. And if Reverend X had said that Jesus was just a man and that all religions could learn from each other I would have believed it.

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I had no courage of conviction; no clear understanding of mankind relating to actual visual verifiable evidence, and no solid set of answers to the big questions of life.

I am not enslaved to any cult or organization: I am not a member of any such entity. I haven’t even officially joined a church. I follow no-one except Jesus Christ. I have no obligations, no “religious” laws or set of rules to follow, and I have no-one to answer to…except my wife and my God. Apart from my work duties and my duty to country and the law of the land, I am free. In fact, I’m far more free than I ever was before I “snapped”. I have no dependence or reliance on chemicals or alcohol or anything else to make me happy or to numb me to reality. I have freedom of political thought without peer pressure or influence, and I have freedom of mind and conscience.

I’m free of the fear of what may or may not happen in the world. Instead I know how the world began and how it will end. I know where it came from and why, and I know where it is going.

I am free of the enslavement of evolutionism, for which I saw no evidence whatsoever-and neither have you. I am free of the chains of political correctness, which now tells millions how to think, how to eat, how to be, how to talk and how to believe. It re-writes history, science, nature, all the endeavors and knowledge of man, and plain simple logic such as gender identity. I am free of the ways of godless man…so much as I apply myself to be. That is, I don’t have to feel inferior to others who have money, influence, power, or good looks. I don’t have to hop from one romantic relationship to another any more, because I’ve learned how to be committed to someone instead of just using them.

I have freedom of spirit, convinced that when my body dies I will not. The ridiculous, unproven notion that I evolved from chemicals which in turn evolved from nothing has been, by my own choice and conscious inquiry, purged from my thought processes, and instead I’ve been free to look at the other, the far more satisfying and logical explanation for life, and for the evidence thereof. And knowing that there is indeed an incredible creator who has reached out to me by his Son, Jesus Christ, I am at peace with my God, and with the assurance that I am an eternal being, in the hands of one who holds the universe together. What could be better than that? Could another thousand nights of pub-going and stony-stupored gatherings be better? I know from experience that they are not. And so to America.

America has its problems, for sure: it’s a mass of humanity, just as Britain is. Yes we have some gun violence, but take those guns away and there will be plenty of knife violence in its place, just as there is in the UK. So would you rather die by bullet or by blade? There is very little gun violence where I live, partly because the criminal types have a healthy respect for the fact that if they break into a house, even with a gun, they may get shot first.

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I once hated the idea that the populace should own guns: in a perfect world they should not. But if you haven’t noticed, it isn’t a perfect world. Take away guns from law-abiding people and the criminals will keep theirs and have free reign over the innocent. The police will only show up to clean up the mess afterwards. It’s too late here to outlaw guns. And anyway, the ultimate necessity for an armed populace is to deter tyranny. Is government God? No, and neither should it be. Which brings me nicely to the subject of politics…

In the UK I was very socialistic in my views, as were my friends and most people I knew. People should all earn the same amount, I thought, and the government should handsomely support those not working. I’ve come to see things a little differently, and it’s not because I’m wealthy-I’m not.

If you work hard, you should enjoy the fruits of your labor. Those who are inventive, who have drive, ideas, passion for work and production, and those who provide work for others by their own industry should be allowed to do well and to prosper. There’s nothing wrong with that, and certainly nothing ungodly. Those who cannot work for whatever reason should be helped, yes. But those who have no intention of working (and yes, there are plenty of those) don’t deserve to be helped by the government. And after all, where does government get its money? It comes from people who work hard and pay taxes.

Finally, to Mr Trump. You, dear UK reader, have been fed a gigantic lie, as have many in the US. Most news outlets fabricate much of what you’ve heard about Trump. He is not racist in the slightest. He is not ignorant, as you’ve been told. How can a man who builds a business worth billions be ignorant? How can a wealthy successful businessman have no sense or understanding of the economy or of how the world works? How can a man who beat all the odds and the polls and the media win a presidential election by being stupid? But you have been told that’s the case.

You are lied to artfully by the media and certain politicians, as people in this country are. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that his politics make him greedy: there are billionaires in this country pushing for socialism. How do big money and socialism match? They match because those with wealth and power want to exert their wealth and power over you. That’s socialism for you: under socialism and communism some who would be telling us all how to live and think would be far more equal than the rest of us. They would, as they do now, have their armed guards and their weapons while the rest of us would land ourselves in court for even trying to defend ourselves.

I voted for socialists when I lived in the UK, and I can tell you that Trump cares far more for the average man than most Democrats do. He is the first national leader I have experienced in life that I respect and admire. At last, a great man has a little control for a little while. As far as immigration goes, he has no intention of limiting it, except for the illegal kind. But the media people want you to believe that he hates all colored people. This is nothing but a lie.

Think, dear Brits. Don’t be boxed in by that enormous blanket of so-called “expert” analysis and political correctness which very nearly smothered the United States under Obama, and which still threatens to do so under all those who  have been suitably numbed to freedom of thought.

Ask questions. Love freedom. Search for God.

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THE BIBLE PROPHECY EXPERT IN THE MIRROR

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, BIBLE PROPHECY, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST — Leave a comment
May 17, 2018

I’ve studied Bible prophecy for 37 years, and in that time I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with those claiming to be “prophecy experts”…

REMAINS OF THE SECOND JEWISH TEMPLE, WITH ISLAMIC DOME OF THE ROCK BEHIND IT

One by one, the most influential people, the biggest names in Bible prophecy, have proved themselves to me and to many others to be painfully wrong and mistaken. They get entrenched in some kind of prophetic political correctness and refuse to budge from it for fear of denying their faith and of going against the grain of current interpretation. Even the big-wigs, those with international names and a list of formal qualifications a mile long, say and write things which can be shown to be wrong by anyone with discernment, an open mind and an open Bible.

Perhaps it’s understandable, though frustrating, that the most common words and phrases emitted by such people for decades include the following: the stage is being set; it looks like; probably; just about to happen; fulfillment; on the horizon.

Of course, interpreting Bible prophecy can be a tricky pass-time, but it doesn’t have to be. The mistake so many make is in attempting to force their faulty ideas into present-day events and future ones.

Whenever I write on Bible prophecy I get fewer views than I do on any other subject. I see the reason for that to be the fact that people are so numbed to it all by all the many false predictions made in over-confidence, the ridiculous non-Biblical event and date-setting, and sometimes the hands grasping for money which “we badly need to continue this vital ministry”. Ha! I can write here and reach people all around the world, without spending or asking for a penny…why can’t the experts?

Why does it matter? It matters because there are huge numbers of people in the West who see that the world must indeed be headed towards what has been foretold in the Bible, or at least towards some sort of date with destiny, but who are either badly misinformed or uninformed, and fail to ” search the scriptures”. There are millions of others who have no knowledge at all of what is down the road for planet earth, and need to be warned with correct information.

So don’t get me wrong-I’m not mocking the idea of the Second Coming. In fact I’m convinced in my own mind that it certainly is coming…soon. But what does “soon” mean in this context? Does it mean next year, next decade, or in another thousand years or so?

And what gives me the right to find fault with the experts? Who am I and where did I learn my theology and get my ordination? The answer to that is simple: God has not commissioned those self-proclaimed experts to pass on the message while forbidding the rest of us from figuring it all out for ourselves. As Vernon McGee said, God put the cookies on the bottom shelf so that everyone could reach them. The experts are no more “right” than we can be if we simply look into Scripture and look at our world.

As in the dark days when the Bible could only be read in Latin and interpreted by the “experts” in the Church, so now we have such people and their admirers in the Christian media claiming to be the proper proponents of truth while the rest of us…. the ignorant masses… need to pay attention to them and believe every word they say. That’s not God’s truth. We have every right, as believers, to test what we hear and to hunt down the truth for ourselves. In fact we’re obligated to do so. I’ve done plenty of it over the years, and I’ve concluded that there are no experts that I fully trust now. Test everything, I say. Either they’re in it for the money or the prestige, or because they don’t want to have to go out and get a proper job. Or perhaps they’re just plain wrong.

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JERUSALEM: LIKE IT OR NOT

Filed under: Uncategorized — Leave a comment
May 15, 2018

Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem ends a long string of broken promises made by US presidents. It didn’t cause the political and international upheaval predicted by some, but it certainly helped fuel a lot more hot discussion on the subject, all around the world.

THE WESTERN WALL

I heard one radio caller today pour blame on the “Christian Right” for the move, as though the move itself is intrinsically wrong, and the “Christian Right” is an evil section of society. He said that the Christian Right pushed for it in order to precipitate the Second Coming.

That isn’t true: he’s misinformed by someone, a common malady today. The Second Coming is not at all dependent on any US presence in Jerusalem. And why should there be “blame” anyway? Israelis had Jerusalem as their capital beginning three thousand years ago. Jerusalem was not mentioned once in the Koran, but is mentioned 800 times in the Bible. The Romans under Titus pushed the Jews out of their city and their land, killing over a million Jews and destroying the city in 70 AD, renaming the land “Palestina” as a last insult to the Jew. Since then, Jews have wandered the earth under constant threat and hatred. The hatred continues to this day.

In fact, the hatred is growing. The hatred is growing in Europe particularly, where the presence of millions of Muslims, who claim that the city belongs to them, is helping to turn opinion vehemently against Israel, a tiny nation wanting only to survive. Please note that I am not saying that all Israelis are worthy and all Muslims are bad: I am not.

Here’s a rather enlightening quote from the Hadith, a collection of phrases attributed to Mohammed. It was written many centuries before the nation of Israel was re-born in 1948:

The day of resurrection will not arrive until the Muslims make war against the Jews and kill them, and until a Jew hiding behind a rock and  tree, and the rock and tree will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’ (Sahih Bukhari 004.52.176)

The Koran does not contradict the Hadith:

Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends (Surah 5:51).

So the claim that Israelis have caused all the hatred by their actions in recent decades is false: the animosity was there long ago. This claim is the song of the promoters of political-correctness, whose ultimate aim is world government. There, in that promised land of theirs, will be the most wonderful liberal utopia in which there will be no Christians, no morality, no boundaries or hindrance whatsoever to human proclivities, and of course, no Jews.

The dreamers don’t seem to be aware that Muslims, having certain moral standards of their own, will not stand for the liberal agenda any longer than they have to. But no matter, because Muslims for now serve their goal of dismantling and diluting Christian influence in the West, where a few bastions like the US, Poland and Hungary attempt to preserve at least a loose form of Christian culture and belief.

The city of Jerusalem, with or without Donald Trump or an American embassy, has a very specific event on its horizon:

 

I will gather all nations to Jerusalem to fight against it…Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives…(Zechariah 14: 2-4).

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem, the earth and sky will tremble. But the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel (Joel 3:14-16).

In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning my inheritance, my people Israel, for they scattered my people among the nations and divided up my land (Joel 3:1-2).

Notice the words “my land” in that last verse. The city and the land belong to God, and he can lease it to whoever He wants. Notice also the words “my people”.

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HUMILITY

Filed under: DEVOTION, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST — Leave a comment
May 7, 2018

Some valuable words, common not so long ago, have almost passed out of use completely in the Western world. As a boy I was taught that “humility” and “modesty” were important words to know and indispensable principles to live by. Deference and mutual submission were common social values and attributes, whether in the sacred or secular worlds.

Now modesty and humility are not considered desirable or positive traits. In fact we’re encouraged to be quite the opposite by pop-culture, advertisers, movie directors, media celebrities and politicians. Our heroes are attractive, confident, aggressive and arrogant. They want to flaunt what they have. They’re successful, and they don’t stand for any nonsense. They’re beautiful and sexy, and we’ve been led to think that if we’re not at least trying to be the same way, we’re of little value. The mood of our time is self-exaltation in any way possible.

The Oxford Dictionary defines “humble” as follows:

1 having a modest or low opinion of your own importance

2 of low rank

3 not large or important

The word “modesty” is a synonym for “humility”.

I’ve been disappointed to find that if Christian ministers do ever mention humility-because it rarely happens-they’ll skirt around its real definition. Its original, traditional meaning is very unpopular, even in many churches. I’ve heard a few declare that humility isn’t about putting yourself down, and it’s not allowing people to walk over you, and it’s got nothing to do with weakness. Instead, they say, humility is a “quiet strength” and an inner confidence. They may admit that Jesus was meek and mild, but he was so in an assertive way, with a deep, powerful voice, a sexy hairstyle, and a big muscular chest. Nobody messed with tough, manly, strong Jesus!

Neither am I saying that Jesus was effeminate: he was not. Is there not a middle-ground between the two extremes?

I agree that all believers need to have an inner confidence which comes from faith in the will, power, faithfulness, Truth and goodness of God: if God is for us, who can be against us? This confidence, however, is not the same thing as humility, though the two can and should go hand in hand.

Paul encouraged the Philippians to imitate the humility of Christ (Philippians 2: 1-11). What did that look like to Paul?

He wanted them to be like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose (verse 2). That means a genuine love for each other: treating one another as equals. He wanted them to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit” (v 3a), but to consider others better than themselves (3b). He wanted them to be concerned about the interests of others, and not just about themselves (v 4).

Paul then went further, by giving Christ as the perfect example of humility:

“Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross” (verses 6-8).

So we see that Jesus, though he was God in the flesh and had the right to parade around and vaunt himself,  instead “made himself nothing,” and lived his life as a servant to others. He didn’t go around boasting about who he was, and he didn’t look for public acclaim, and he wasn’t interested in being sexy or “cool”. In fact, Isaiah said that “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men…” (Isaiah 53: 2-3).

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to look your best, as long as you aren’t trying to elevate yourself above others. But the present day obsession with appearance and image, even in some Christian circles, is not godliness. It’s up to each one of us as believers to imitate Christ, not what we see on TV.

Of course humility doesn’t just relate to what we look like, but far more importantly it’s about obedience and submission to our Father, and recognition of our spiritual condition. You see, if we go around thinking “I’m better than that person over there”, we are calling the sacrifice of Christ unnecessary, because “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23) and “there is no-one righteous, no not even one” (Romans 3:10). Without Christ we are all lost and separated from God, no matter what our income, our occupation, or our appearance.

Didn’t Christ say that the first will be last and the last first (Matthew 19: 30)? Why then would we want to be considered “first” in this world? Didn’t he say that “he who exalts himself will be humbled” (Luke 14:1)? Why then would we want to exalt ourselves?

I find that when I realize I’m thinking too much of myself, or thinking too little of someone else, it helps to pray something like this:

“Lord, I am no better than anyone else, in fact I’m as guilty as anyone else, and I’ve failed you in so many ways.  I’m probably the most sinful man I know – please have mercy on me, and forgive me for what I was thinking, and please bless that other person”.

It’s not wrong to recognize sin in the world and gently and lovingly point it out. However, admitting my own spiritual condition to myself and to God brings me down to the level of others in my mind and in my actions, and brings others up. I realize that Christ loves them as much as he loves me.  Now it’s easier for me to love them.

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