It sounds open minded.
“Just live and let live.”
Even better when you stick a familiar pronoun at the end.
“Live and let live, Bro.”
Beautiful.
How I wish it wasn’t just another worthless platitude.
But alas, it is.
Here are 3 reasons why.
1) People gonna disagree.
No matter how accommodating you are
…somebody will eventually get under your skin.
Ever taken a road trip with someone who farts in the car?
Live and let live breaks down before you’ve driven 10 miles.
2) People gonna be stupid.
Your 92 year old grandmother tells you
she received a call from a ‘nice young man’
who is going to invest her life savings for her.
She needs you to help her address the envelope
so she can send the money order to an overseas PO Box.
Are you open minded enough to help her?
“It’s your money, Grandma! Do what you want with it!”
The live and let live philosophy means
…parents let children play in traffic.
Very progressive and broad-minded.
Also utterly stupid.
3) People are all connected.
The road that runs past your house…
…is the same road that runs past my house.
(Provided you live on the North American continent…
…follow along as best you can.)
The roads are all connected.
When you text and drive…
…you’re doing it on MY road!
The street that goes past my house.
The street my kids cross to get to school!
So knock it off!
You don’t live alone on the planet.
We’re together in this thing called ‘society’.
How you live affects me.
And vise versa.
I won’t shirk my responsibility to you.
And at the risk of offending you…
…I’ll squawk when you shirk responsibility to me.
Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight.
Psalm 119:77
4 Responses
John – Are you saying that if a child LOVES playing in the street – that the child’s parent should say NO? Who are you to stand in the way of love? Seriously – just because the child’s parent understands that playing in the street can be dangerous (perhaps fatal) – a truly LOVING parent has NO good reason to establish such rules. After all – what if the child REALLY wants to play in the street?
On a completely different note – I wonder if God established rules for His children as a means of protecting them? I guess if He really LOVED His children – He would just let them do whatever they want – even if it kills them.
On another completely different note – was there a picture one of your recent posts of a guy wearing a rainbow tie while playing in the street with his friends? Good thing there weren’t any hateful people to tell him that the lifestyle he’s decided to indulge in (playing in the street) can be harmful. I’ll concede that maybe he was born that way (wanting to play in the street) – which is another reason a LOVING parent would never try to pull him to safety.
Can all this logic and wisdom be compiled in a book to use for teaching children and youth? And adults whose parents didn’t teach them? And can this teaching begin in churches with the accompanying Bible verses to validate that as Christians we are hurting our witness to the unbelieving world and grieving Jesus when we don’t practice these things?
Christianmomthoughts.com is an EXCELLENT resource for teaching children! 🙂
And there is the Peaches again promoting another website on John’s page.