I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….

BTW, a friend from Ross’ EC class would like to attend Inspiral. Could you mail me so I can pass on his details?

And that is the goal of nonviolence really (at least as a strategy, as opposed to a way of life) – that we all look after each other. In that sense, you are loving your neighbour as you would want her/him to love you. In every instance where nonviolence has changed things, it is as a direct result of a bunch of people getting together and committing themselves unselfishly to each other. If you’re watching my back, I no longer need to be watching my own, and am freed to watch yours.

But nonviolence doesn’t require others agreeing or assisting in order to act, and that’s also kind of the point of the voluntary thing – and here is where the balance lies – I’m prepared to do it out of love for you as an act of my will, but I don’t expect or require you to do the same. That’s love that gives freely and unconditionally of itself.

I guess too as Christians we should do it because Jesus did it.

Oh, and I’d want to say too that in shedding our entitlement to it, we’re not necessarily just getting rid of it and saying we don’t want it or refuse to have it. There are a bunch of things we’re not entitled to but we have anyway – that’s the grace of God at work.

Does that help any?

But how do you answer the question of someone whose human rights your fighting for (let’s say a Christian), who asks “You are fighting for my human rights but at the same time you believe that as a true follower of Jesus I should shed my entitlement to them?”

Maybe it’s just that in reading your post I’ve looked at it the issue with narrow vision and it’s not so much specifically about human rights, but more an attitude of “I will do anything consistent with Jesus (which I agree includes shedding your entitlement to human rights) to bring heaven on earth to people”?

But I’m still not sure why Christians should shed their entitlement to human rights to fight for others human rights when in the end I guess we’re hoping they’ll follow Jesus and do the same. Surely in the “love your neighbours as you love yourselves” you treat yourself with the same love you do your neighbours? Would it then not follow that if believe in loving your neighbour by fighting for their human rights, that you similarly love yourself and do the same? But then “greater love hath no man that he would lay his life down for another”, which confers that we value others’ lives greater than our own. I’m so confused now…

Hope that wasn’t too much of an incoherent ramble..though I suspect it was..

I’ll have to consult my rulebook to see if googling the answer still makes you eligible for points though…maybe we’ll have to halve them, because it made you geeky enough to look it up, but not geeky enough to know it off the top of your head.

(incidentally, I knew “to towel off” off the top of my head…shame on me.)

When do I get my points? And do I have any already or are these my first? This points thing gives my life a whole new perspective…

and you get soooo many points for that family ties quote. for double points, give me the original definitions alex gave for those particular words. not too sure what the points go towards, but trust me…they’re worth having.

“After I zoqwo, I like to ushnu.” Alex P. Keaton