If someone wrongs you within the NMHS Alumni of the Seventies.

I really love this high school alumni group that I am in.  It is growing and I believe that many of us are actually closer now than when we were in high school.  As the group goes forward, there will be times when one of us will do things that will hurt someone else in the group.  The question then becomes; how do we handle those times.  

I have no authority and this is strictly my opinion.  I think that the best course of action is the one of love.  So, how does love handle such things.  The first thing is to contact that person on a one to one basis.  It could be that what is going on is a simple misunderstanding or something that is unintentional.  If we go to that person first instead of running to someone else or blasting them on Facebook or some other service, then we can restore the friendship instead of making things worse.

If  things cannot be worked out on a one to one basis then get one or two others to join in the process.  A true friend who loves both people can be a big help in working things out.  

If the situation still not worked out, then this would be the spot to let the whole group know.  About 100 - 1000 posts on a wall can be an eye opener, especially if that person is told that until this is resolved then as far as we are concerned, they graduated from that other high school.  ;-)

I feel like we have a great group and I do not want to lose any friends.  I think that as long as we lived loved and love each other, then things will be good.

A different picture of love

All of us have heard something about what love is.  Those of us who attend some meeting of the church or gone to a wedding has probably heard something from 1 Corinthians 13 (called the love chapter).  How ever also in the Bible are these verses:

 Rom 13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Rom 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor hasfulfilled the law.

Gal 5:14 For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jam 2:8 But if you fulfill the royal law as expressed in this scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.

If these verses are true and I believe that they are, then love will act like this:


If a person loves their family then if possible, they will take one day of the week and use it for rest and family time.

A person will appreciate their parents for what they have gone through and not go around blaming them for  the misfortunes that have been inherited.

If one loves the people around them they will not murder them by thought, word, or action.  They will also not have an affair (by thought, word or action) with a person's spouse if you love both of them.
One will not spread lies about someone they love.One will not even want the possessions of people that they love.

Just a thought.

"When you are affected by what others think and say about you then they own you"

I am 54 years old and most of my life I have lived by the statement that your reputation is the most important thing about you.  So everything I did was done to impress people and look perfect.  ( There was also another thing going on in my life in that I felt that the only way I could be loved is if I was number 1 in everything that I did, but that is another issue that although happened at the same time was also different and is separate issue that I can talk about at another time.)  

When reputation was king, I was very aware about the ways others would view my actions.  This caused me to not to reach out and be the friend that I needed to be to some because of how that would have been viewed.  I was a lot more concerned with my self righteousness than love for others.  As I have shared about my hurts growing up, several people have told me that they felt the same way also.  I cannot help but think that maybe if I was not so consumed with myself, then I could have reached out and others would not have gotten hurt.  

Another characteristic was the way I reacted to false comments that were made about me.  I learned early in life that fighting would not change anything, but I would still  cut myself off from anyone that I felt that did me wrong.  As I look back, I realize that this was the main reason that I never came to any of the reunions until the 30th.  The main reason that I came then was a promise that I had made to Carol Pace Robertson after the 20th reunion.  (She was working in a school with my wife and had called the house to talk to her about school, but I answered the phone.  She laid into me for over an hour about not coming to the 20th.  Actually that was probably the longest that she had talked to me our whole lives.  The conversation ended with a promise from me that if possible, I would attend the 30th.)  I came fulfilling that promise. 

Also some others things happened to me between the 20th and 30th reunions, as people within churches began to try to orally assassinate me.  I was forced to leave a couple of churches and bounced around until I became involved within relationships and what some call Christianity 101.  

It was about that time that I came across a quote that went something like this, "When you are affected by what others think and say about you then they own you". There is another cliché that I have quoted often that says that we need to lived loved and that will allow us to love others.

For me, I knew that I needed to let Jesus love me and to realize that there was nothing that I could do to make Him love me more and there was nothing that I could do that would make Him love me less.  As I have accepted this teaching, I have naturally started loving others more.  

You can see this in the pictures that Dean has taken of me at the reunions.  There was a time when I would not have allowed a picture to be taken of me and another woman because that would lead to people saying that we must be having an affair (I know this because that was the culture that I grew up in).  Now that doesn't bother me like it use to because we are just friends and I and everyone else there knows that nothing could be further from the truth.  (Now I will say something if I feel something is going too far, but still I am not bothered like I used to be.)

It is when I am not affected by what someone else thinks or says that enables me to see their hurts and to reach out and to help them heal their hurts.  I am not there yet, but I am still on this journey.

Another parent tries to kill their child and then says God told them to do it.

It has happened again. A man tried to kill his son and then told people that God told him to do it.  I am glad that in this case the man failed, but the boy will probably still be scarred for life.  There have been a number of these types of things happening  these past few years.

I believe that when this happens, then one of 3 things is happening.  The first possibility could be that the person has mental problems and needs help.  The 2nd possibility is that the person is just a cold blooded killer and needs to have a fair trial followed by the appropriate punishment.  The 3rd possibility is that the person was led by some Spiritual Force to do such things.

The 3rd possibility leads us to another question.  What Spiritual Force could be doing this?  Could God really be doing this?

 I believe that there are demonic spiritual beings that masquerade as messengers of God that will try to influence us to do evil things.  If this is true, then how do we know if it is of God or from these demons.  For me the answer to this gets complicated to explain, but here goes.

As someone who grew as a Baptist and was a Deacon and small group teacher in the congregation, I know of a lot of Bible verses that command us not do such things.  The problem that I have with just quoting a number of these verses is that there are also 2 exceptions.  The first exception, is Abraham and the second is Jephthah.  A lot of us are familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac.  Pastors and teachers love to teach that story because it fits nicely with our views of God.  Very few people know the story of Jephthah, because it is a hard story that challenges our view of God.

This story is found in the book of Judges chapters 10 & 11.  Jephthah is the illegitimate son of a man named Gilead and a prostitute.  Gilead was a married man and when his other sons grew up they drove Jephthah out of the house and Jephthah became a leader of a group of lawless men.

When the Ammonites were attacking the hometown, the leaders of Jephthah's hometown came and asked him to lead their army.  Jephthah agreed to do this and then asked God for help and promised God to sacrifice the first thing that come out of his house when he got home.  God gave him the victory and when Jephthah got home his only daughter who was a virgin was the first to come out to meet him.  This floored Jephthah, but he told his daughter his vow and she agreed to it but first wanted to spend a couple of months out with her friends.  She did this and come back as a virgin to be sacrificed.

So how can we know whether or not the same thing is happening today?  I believe that there are 2 differences between these Biblical exceptions and to what is going on today.  The first thing that in both exceptions, everyone walked away praising God and that is not happening here.


The 2nd thing has to do with relationship.  This is not much different from the relationships that we have here.  Most of us have gotten messages that want us to click on a certain link & those messages claim to be from our friends, but our relationship with those friends tells us that they would not send that link to us.  The same is true with someone who has a relationship with God and is living within the mindful presence of God.  We know that this is not coming from Him.

Personally, the only one of these possible reasons that I think might excuse the person is if they have  physical or mental problems and need treatment for these conditions.