Taylor has a good point. Being angry at someone doesn't make them stop what they're doing. I mean, whenever my mom used to yell at me for not doing the dishes, it made me want to not do the dishes, even more aggressively.
Because you can't change somebody by yelling at them. It doesn't work like that. Like Taylor said, shade and sly comments and hatred does not make somebody less of what they are, regardless of how much you hate it.
And I've been thinking about it a lot. Why do people get so mad about other people's actions? I think a better way to phrase my question is, when did it become okay to condemn people for their sins?
Never once, in any religious text I have ever read, did God say it was okay to judge others. In fact, I can think of several instances from the Bible where the judgment of others was rebuked.
One of my favorite scripture stories is in John, chapter eight. A woman was found to be an adulteress and was taken to Jesus to ask what they should do with her. According to their law at the time, she should have been stoned to death.
Then Jesus, in a complete power move, says, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Like, try to argue with that. All the people that had accused her before went away, one by one.
The people who hated her did not make her less of an adulteress. They could've thrown all the stones they wanted, and that wouldn't have changed. Their detestation of her was empty and pointless, and I think it showed more about their character than about the woman's.
I just don't understand. Even if someone does something wrong, or something you believe to be wrong, who gave you the right to be violent or rude or even to think badly of them? What is there to gain from putting other people down?
Last I checked, we all sin. We all make mistakes, and if you claim to be perfect, you are wrong. Let they who are without sin cast the first stone.
Last I checked, one of the two greatest commandments is to love thy neighbor. And last I checked, a neighbor, as described in the Bible, is anyone who is not you. That includes people you may consider enemies or people who are “too far gone" to deserve love.
I'm not saying you have to love the sin. Nobody asked you to do that. Nobody said you have to be best friends with people who live a different lifestyle than you. But there's no logical reason to condemn people for those sins, either. People do deserve love.
Because love does change people. Love inspires in a way that hate can never hope to achieve. In my own life, I've seen people change for the better because somebody showed them kindness, because somebody befriended and loved them.
We no longer live in a world where stoning people to death is acceptable. If we did, we all would have been stoned for something. Because we are all imperfect. Seek to be kind instead of negative, and you'll change the world.
