Food for soul! 8

Luke 6:36-38

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

Food for thought

What Jesus is teaching us is what we normally refer to as tit for tat tactic. If you tit, expect a tat. It is about cause and effect. He is saying in other words, whatsoever happens to us, good or evil, is what we have done to others. In other words, there's nobody to blame but ourselves for our fate.

This is not just a spiritual principle, it is a psychological one too. People tend to treat us in proportion to the way we treat them.

 If you are rude to people, people will be rude to you; if you shout at people, people will always shout at you. If you're kind to people, people will be kind to you. If you're good to people, most people will be good to you, because goodness begets goodness. Evil begets evil. Evil cannot eliminate evil; darkness cannot fight darkness. Evil + evil = more evil.

Be merciful; do not judge; do not condemn, forgive, and give. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. The amount of mercy you use is the amount of mercy you get; you will be judged according to the manner you have judged; you will be condemned in accordance to the manner of your judgement (if you're judgemental, others will be judgemental to you), if you deny anyone forgiveness, you'll not be forgiven too. Roy Masters, in his book How Your Mind Can Keep You Well, says that we ought to be grateful when someone offends us. They are doing us a favor, he suggests, because when we forgive those who have offended us, it erases some of the self-destructive effects of offenses we may have caused others; the person who cannot forgive eventually become physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually ill. Do you have some people you don't want to forgive?  Please, do forgive them and you will feel better:

The last one, give and you will get, is like a summary and repetition of all the others. It means that what we get back is what we have given away in the first place. Who gives much gets back much. If we give much goodness we get much goodness back. Who plants sparingly harvests sparingly. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

It means that what we are and have is not due to others' fault, it is not due to God; it is due to us. The smart get smarter and the stupid get stupidier. Have you ever noticed that the poor tend to get poorer and the rich tend to get richer? It is because of what Jesus said that those who have will get more, and those who have not, even the little they have will be taken away. It is the same principle according to which "the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

As Henry H. Buckley said, “Keep your thoughts right—for as you think, so you are. Thoughts are things, therefore, think only the things that will make the world better and you unashamed.” St. Paul's advice: "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things." (Phil. 4:8).