On Fri, 2011-10-07 at 09:17 +1100, Geoffrey Heard wrote:
> At 3:30 PM -0300 6/10/11, G. Beurlen wrote:
> >On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Geoffrey Heard wrote:
> >>  At 10:54 AM +0200 6/10/11, Farid Benfeghoul wrote:
> >>
> >>  I appreciate the Macintosh but . . .
> >>
> >>  "Wonderful human"? Are we talking about the guy who denied paternity of his
> >>  .....
> >>
> >>  Cheers, geoff
> >>
> >>  Geoffrey Heard
> >
> >Hi Geoffrey,
> >
> >at least in part, I have to agree with you...
> >
> >But you know, it's human to forget the poor qualities of people who
> >have recently passed away...
> 
> Actually, I would say it is more human to attribute human qualities 
> to the rich, famous, and powerful. Good King Wenceslas forsooth -- PR 
> spin, the dead were many and even the flkp side of the poor man 
> gathering wood is that the king made him poor! I would suspect the 
> notion of bring nice about the dead comes from the fear of spirits 
> coming back for vengeance in early spirit worship, translated later 
> into the notion of them sitting up there in heaven with the ear of 
> the god person.
> 
> But meu deus, I'm just a cynical animal!  :)

An antagonist (obviously seeking to trap me) asked me if "Stevo" was in
Heaven or Hell (I told him that, since I didn't know the man, I don't
have a clue). A wise man once said that you don't get to the top of your
profession without stepping on some toes along the way. The real
question is, once you realize what you've done, what do you do about it?

The best parts of good people are the parts that don't get trumpeted
across the media and the Internet. Either they are kept under wraps by
the perpetrators, or they are squelched by the jealous. In either case,
we don't get to know about the best parts of good people. Rather, due to
the sensationalistic nature of our media and our own prurient interests,
the worst gets displayed for all to see.

In John 8:3-11 we are presented with just such a situation when the
scribes and pharisees try to trap Jesus between the Jewish law and the
Roman. Now, most of us know that Jesus rebuked them with "The one among
you who is without sin may throw the first stone," but how did He get
there? He wrote in the dust with His finger. Mercifully, we are spared
the details of what He wrote, but I think, with some deductive
reasoning, we can discern the general character of it.

A thorough investigation of that passage and those passages to which it
refers could rip those men to shreds without much effort at all. Jesus,
though, simply turned them on themselves, I think by writing down the
sins of each of those men---for all to see. In so doing, He brought them
down, even in their own eyes, to the point where they were visibly lower
than the one they dragged there as their intended victim. In Matthew 7
He tells us to clean up our own lives before seeking to put the guilt of
others on open display. That can be a hard path to follow, but I think
it is a wise one.