ALL YOU CAN DO IS TRY. Try to help people understnad that they can do more, be more, can expand their thinking to understnad that there are no good religions, no bad religions, only religions. there are no good humans, bad humans, only humans, all of whom possess all human traits, in varying degrees and combinations.
I keep hoping to one day meet a person who professes to be a christian, and who at the same time recognizes that there are other religions which have any value at all. I notice that there is a strange union of christian, capitalist, and conservative in america; people who want no progress, want nothing to change, want to dwell only in their narrow beliefs, excluding from possibility all others.
The young son of a good friend of mine set up a lemonade stand in an affluent neighborhood, and was doing quite well. Wealthy ladies kept stopping and purchaisng his offering at one dollar a glass. He was making quite a bit of money, until his father, my good friend, put a stop to it, telling the kid that he didn't want him to become greedy, to become too capitalistic.
I could see the benefit of both points of view; the child's, and the father's. Good honest free enterprise, counter balanced by the sensible reason of limited greed, limited success, rather than merely groping and striving endlessly for more.
Both capitalism and socialism have value, dear reader, but neither is perfect, and has much to learn from the other. The same is true of all religious thought; all of it is imperfect, none of it is worthless.
We live in a culture of blinders, of narrowly focused idealogues determined to stake out their turf and defend it at all cost, without giving so much as a thought to their own personal evolution.
the world progresses, however, because, as goethe said "the world advances only because of those who oppose it", and fortunately for us all, there are those among us who oppose the world.
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