I visited a friend recently he suffers from mental illness,one aspect of his illness is panic attacks, but he suffers other symptoms. His sister who is deceased also suffered from severe mental illness,she would phone him up very distressed,but he had very little sympathy for his sister.He was impatient with her,thinking ,why doesn't she pull herself together?.Now he looks at things differently, now he understands how she must have felt. I worked with a mental health team for twenty years,so I have a degree of understanding as regards this condition,first of all it is an illness, mainly treated with medication.Now lets come back to my friends attitude to his sisters illness,and lets broaden it out,first of all Jesus said judge not, ( Matthew 7v 1-2). I remember watching a program on TV as to the victims of a serial killer,most of them were prostitutes,and people at the time were making moral judgements on them,it was as if they deserved what they got, the police were not much better. This was a time when one got very little help from the state,many of these women had children,but no resources to feed them, or even clothed them, some had escaped abusive relationships,others had husbands who had left them, so they turned to prostitution in order for their families to survive.Yes prostitution is wrong, does that give us a right to pass judgement on them?,our dear Saviour said this to very religious people who wanted a lady stoned to death,because she had committed adultery,'Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,and they all left.( John 8 v 1- 11 )
' Judge not, but tell them about
Jesus who came to save sinners.
Remember you have not walked
in their footsteps.'
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