World AIDS Day: ‘Neither do I condemn you’

The following excerpt is from a blog published in the Washington Post to commemorate World AIDS Day, 1 December, 2012:

Compassion for those who are HIV positive is crucial. Yet compassion by sufferers could also be vital. Recent research found that “holding a compassionate view of others” is one of four spiritual/religious attitudes that were “significantly related to long survival with AIDS.”

The other three were a sense of peace, faith in God and religious behavior. In the latter case the study noted a negative impact from being religiously “condemning and judgmental of others” or “of self”, while it found a positive correlation between frequency of prayer and longevity.

That could suggest the more healthy option is listening for the divine mind’s thoughts in quiet communion rather than paying heed to hellfire sermons about what He thinks – whether preached by internal or external voices.

The Bible vividly portrays the difference between the two on several occasions. For instance, there is the dramatic story of Jesus engaging with a pious crowd bent on stoning a woman caught committing adultery. He dispersed those who were pointing accusatory fingers by getting them to admit to themselves they were not qualified to pass judgment….(Read more)

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Categories: Health, Spirituality and Society

Author:Tony Lobl

I write and edit articles on spirituality from the perspective of the practice of Christian Science as an Associate Editor for the Christian Science periodicals. I studied at the University of Surrey earning a BSc Hons Degree in Modern Mathematics before the teachings of Christian Science transformed my life and re-shaped my career.

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One Comment on “World AIDS Day: ‘Neither do I condemn you’”

  1. December 4, 2012 at 6:48 am #

    Reblogged this on Jerry McIntire C.S. and commented:
    In this Washington Post blog by Tony Lobl, he talks about the all-around benefits of compassion, that stand-out trait of Jesus.

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