Nonjudgmental thinking

Dear editor:

I want to assure Mr. McDill that I truly do know John 14:6, but I am also aware of Paul’s letter to the Romans (Romans 11:1-26) where he affirms that all Jews with partial blindness of God’s plan of salvation through Jesus “will be saved.” So my comment about other sects of Christian thought and other denominations of Christianity and other faiths is in keeping with the New Testament teachings. Add also that Jesus in one of the Gospels says, “If they are not against me, they are for me.”

You see, conservative Christians often think in a mindset of closure. Jesus was one of the most liberal of all religious reformers. A study of the Gospels demonstrates this vividly. One example may suffice, his meeting the woman at the well. A Jewish man was not supposed to speak to a woman in public, let alone a woman considered unclean, a woman who had had several husbands and was living with a man but not married. Then, it was the noon hour, the hour of greatest temptation for a man. He offered her living water. She finally accepted and ran giving testimony. Jesus did not condemn her, he simply told her to sin no more.

Another time he told Jewish men to cast the first stone if they wanted the adulteress slain. Jesus’ way is the right way, but the ultraright thinker seems more concerned about punishment than forgiveness.

You see, Mr. McDill, I cut my teeth on Sunday school, church and Bible school because my loving maternal grandparents who raised me were God-loving, but nonjudgmental. I can quote a lot of the Bible, but it is our actions that mean more to our neighbors. “By their fruits you will know them.”

Have a good day, and do what a true Republican president (George H.W. Bush) once asked us all to do, a good deed for someone without getting recognized for it. By the way, that is old Jewish philosophy. I had a Jewish rich uncle who practiced it as long as he lived. John W. “Doc” Crawford

Hot Springs