Favorite Quotes Friday – 4/11/2014

I have failed at times to live by the truth that follows. I guess it’s human nature to be judgmental of others. It gives us a false sense of superiority, a boost to the ego. But I do believe in a higher power and life beyond the grave.

Life is short. What goes around definitely comes around… sooner or later. Buddhists and others call it karma, I call it common sense.

The man quoted below was a German Lutheran Pastor, an author and dissident anti-Nazi. An outstanding academic theologian he earned two doctorate degrees before he was 25. Later he studied in the United States. His writings on Christianity’s role in the secular world became widely influential and his book, from which the quote came, is considered a classic.

He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and executed by hanging two years later while imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp just 23 days before the Germans surrendered. He was only 39 years old.

By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship ~~

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Confessions

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. ~~ Mahatma Gandhi

I received some criticism a few days ago. It was written in the form of a comment to my post last Thursday Half-Way to Thirty.  It came from an anonymous writer. It was criticism not of my blog, but of me. Very personal criticism.

It was suggested that I would spend better use of my time, rather than writing a blog, by looking for employment. They wrote because I was unemployed and down-and-out — more than anyone would want to be — that I was portraying “a false image, one of sophistication and classiness [sic].  Little do your readers know you’re an unemployed loser who is too lazy to get a job.”

Well you might imagine how I felt. I didn’t know who this person was. I had suspicions that it was a former friend. I know, you gotta laugh. With friends like that, who needs enemies, right? But read on. So I took a deep breath and wrote a reply: