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From: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Assumed evil in non-christians and assumed good in christians
Message-ID: <1707@reed.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 16:22:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1707
Posted: Sat Jul 20 16:22:21 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Jul-85 08:35:34 EDT
References: <20@ssc-vax.UUCP> <247@ihnet.UUCP> <1275@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Distribution: net
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 50
Summary: 

In article <1275@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:

>If Christians *are* more moral than non-Christians, it is *exactly*
>because of the power of the Holy Spirit.
>If Christians are *not* more moral than non-Christians, it is
>*exactly* because they are grieving the Holy Spirit by resisting Him.

    I haven't posted to this newsgroup for quite a while but a recent
experience prompted me to say something about this topic. 
    I've recently become acquainted with several professional musicians.
None of them are Christians as far as I know (in other words - I know
some of them fairly well and know that they aren't Christians, others I
don't know as well and as far as I know they aren't Christians.) Yet I
can honestly say that I've never had a group of Christians treat me more
warmly or be more accepting of me than this group. And I've been in
contact with several Christian groups. These people have given me
tickets to concerts, taken me out with them after concerts, given me
hugs and kisses, talked with me about my life/opinions/problems and
about theirs and given me advice. 
     Now as far as moral goes - I haven't been following this subject
very much, so I guess I don't really know what you mean by morals. Is
their treatment of me "moral" or just "nice". If it's nice and has
nothing to do with moral, then what exactly is moral. And do Christians
only need to be "moral" and not necessarily "nice"? Or perhaps a better
question is are Christians more moral than non-Christians but not
necessarily nicer? Frankly - you couldn't get a nicer group than this
one, although I'm sure that there are more "moral" groups if you mean
moral in the sense of sex, drinking, etc. 
     I guess the questions that I have are, what is meant here by
morality, (forgive me if that has already come up in this discussion),
what's the difference between morality and the way these people have
treated me (if there is any), which is more important, morality or
accepting people openly (or is it the same thing), and does being more
moral make you a better person? 
     On a slightly different topic, these same musicians are, for a
large part, very unhappy. They're doing what they want to do and they
are making a fair amount of money in the process, yet many of them are
not very happy people. This was kind of surprising since a fairly common
statement nowadays is "Having a job that makes you happy is what really
counts." Yet, although these people are very happy with their jobs, a
lot of them don't seem to be happy people. I've been thinking about this
lately and haven't gotten my thoughts about it quite enough together yet
to write them down, but I was wondering if anyone out there had any
thoughts about it.

      cheers -

     elizabeth g. purtell

     (Lady Godiva)