The Letter – Page 11 – Jesse Steele

Good Judgement: A Direction toward Reconciliation

It’s often goes without notice, with any conflict, that people who refuse to forgive usually have good reasons. The offending party may be, in fact, hazardous. A friend once sat at mother’s kitchen table and explained that there is a difference between trust and forgiveness. When hurt, it’s easy to become drunk on anger. But, then we often attempt to sedate our anger-drunkenness through abused wife complexes and encourage the beating to continue. A mother can do this as a way to survive, even rebuking her children who try to stand up to the abusive father. Too often, this disaster is viewed as “forgiveness”. Letting a murderer walk, no matter how “sorry” he is, isn’t merely about our own feelings towards him. It’s about our need to protect other innocent people from future harm. Our own pain can easily lead to narcissism and we no longer consider needs of others. We easily think that, in order to “forgive”, other innocent people must be put at risk. · · · →

In The Letter

The Poetic Magic of Policy

Jesse SteeleFebruary 2, 2011Leave a comment

Interpreting Researched Information –

Several years ago I had been reading about the British march the morning after Paul Revere’s midnight ride. While British soldiers were in retreat, American militia continued shooting. This caught the British by surprise and offended their view of “war conduct”, specifically not to fire on soldiers in retreat. In reflecting with my father, he said, “Americans didn’t much care for British ‘conduct’ in war.” I never thought much about it, nor have I had a reason to. But a thought hit me randomly just recently: It wasn’t that Americans had a different set of values about firing on an army in retreat; they didn’t see the British as being in “retreat”, but “relocating”. Ultimately, we didn’t chase the British back to England, only from our own shores. The Americans had the same values. The difference was their “view” or “vision”.

This seemed an interesting idea as it occurred to me, but I was far more interested in a later realization as I continued to ponder: The British were thinking in terms of that isolated campaign, the Americans wanted them out of the country because they knew the British wanted to launch such campaigns in the future.

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In The Letter

Beautiful Homosexuals

Jesse SteeleFebruary 20, 2010Leave a comment

The following article was written in 2010. While I never write for only one person, rather, for the benefit of all who may read, it may help to know the background.

This post has recently become more popular in Asia, which does not identify with the same question of homosexuality that is running through America. That’s not to say that Homosexuality is irrelevant in the Far East, but the impact it has from and on society takes a radically different shape. There are many things that America and Asia do not understand about each other, especially when they try to understand through literature. They both look at a question that impacts each culture differently and then superimpose their own motives onto the motives of the other. Of particular interest was the 1977 luncheon between Witness Lee and Walter Martin, which began great friendship when they met in person, but soon gave way to hostilities when their respective ministries resumed attempts to resolve conflict in writing and by reading each other’s literature instead of having further fellowship in-person. · · · →