Re: drug use by our homeless family members or friends?, lets adoptthem

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Brother Nate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Eric Johnson wrote:
>> Do people pillage their community for cigarettes?

>They take far more from the system by the consequences of
>their bad habit than their "sin taxes" repay,

Can you post some sources for this, Nathan?  From what I know, you are wrong.
My understanding is that the taxes are actually far in excess of the costs of
using tobacco.

>> Do they for alcohol? No. Not really. After drinking they do, but hey, the
>> sin taxes are paid so the communities are compensated for  drinkers'
>> dastardly deeds.

>Again, the taxes paid on alcohol don't even come close to
>covering the damage its abuse inflicts on human society.

Again, I'd like to know your source for this.  My understanding is that the
taxes, just like with tobacco, are far in excess of the damage done.

>There are ways in which I fall short of the Christian
>ideal, but at least I try.

Nathan, do you even UNDERSTAND the Christian ideal?  Assuming you don't, I'll
tell you:

    When the Pharasees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they
    gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question
    to test him.  "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the
    greatest?"

    He said to him, "`You shall love the Lord your God with all your
    heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is
    the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: `You
    shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  On these two commandments
    hang all the law and the prophets."

    Matthew 22:34-40 [NRSV]

And part of love is trust.  You cannot love if you do not trust.  And part of
trust is letting your neighbor make his or her own decisions about what he or
she puts into his or her body.

Believe it or not, I try to follow this ideal.  I do not believe in the
Christian God, I believe that God equates to All That Is.  So I try to love
everything that exists.

-Pete Zakel
 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind, or not to have a mind as being very
 wasteful.  How true that is."
                                    -Dan Quayle