There are lots of different opinions on lots of different things. I think Fords are much better than any other brand of car or truck, but some of my good friends are stuck on Chevys! We are still good friends in spite of their mental ptoblems. When I was in High School one of my best friends thought holsteins were a much better breed of dairy cow than Guernseys, and we would argue and debate for hours on end almost every day as we rode home from school on the bus.

I will regularly read on Facebook a debate between a large group of people that will get started by someone’s entry about something. They can be between Trump haters and Trump lovers, or about the war in the Middle East, whether Israel is justified in invading the Gaza strip or not, or some aspect of the economy.

Tonight I was reading the responses to a Facebook entry advertising a new opening of a Home School Co-op. The discussion started out bad and got much worse from there. People were obviously very emotional about their opinions, and were incredibly rude and vicious in their arguments against those with differing opinions. There was name calling, very bad language used, insults, and as a whole very little intelligent diolog between intelligent people.

When I was in High School, College, and newly married discussions about differing points of view were part of the social life that we experienced. The discussions were often enlightening, enjoyable, and like a game of pinocle or checkers. Now when you are in a group of people you don’t dare bring up certain topics or it could easily turn into a big verbal fight with lots of anger, abusive speech, hurt feelings, and friends no longer friends.

Every morning I pray my daily commitments to the Lord, several of the commitments in the prayer are, “today I will love any person, You Lord bring into my life, no matter how hard they might be to love, today I will forgive any person of any offense they commit against me because You have forgiven me of every sin that I have committed against You, today I will not get angry at anybody, not even a little bit irritated, no matter what they do, today I will speak to people with grace, honoring them by the way I treat them. Dear Lord, please give me the strength to keep thse commitments snd forguve me when I blow it.”