Reply #37: Here's a suggestion: [View All]

[neebob]

Instead of - or, if you prefer, while - refocusing your personal religion, try doing a rethink on that thing where you take folks at their word. Because that'll bring you more trouble than you could ever imagine. Nush (?) has provided you an opportunity to practice at a relatively safe distance, with someone who isn't focusing his efforts on screwing you personally and wrecking your individual life.

Me, I had the opposite experience where the personal screwage and individual life wrecking comes first. It wasn't about religion, but my particular religious upbringing played into it. And I was all, "Damn! I didn't know people like this exist." Then I looked at Bush and went, "Hey, there's another one."

Stop assuming that others are playing by the same set of rules as you are, because the world's full of people who don't have the advantages of wealth and connections, who will lie their asses off and go to unbelievable lengths to take away whatever you've managed to accumulate - no matter how small - and not even give it a second thought, much less feel sorry about it. There are even some who would do it purely to hurt you, or even just to amuse themselves. Either way, you're left to clean up the mess and learn the lesson.

It's also pretty silly, in my learned opinion, to credit someone you've never met, who doesn't give a rat's ass about you and wouldn't give you the time of day unless you had your checkbook out and were prepared to write him a check for a couple grand, with saving you. I sure as hell don't credit the person who, um, shall we say, provided me an opportunity to improve my critical thinking skills, with anything but being a scumbag.