Respect : Simple Thoughts on a Not-So-Simple Subject

I find that there are two ways in which respect effects us,  and two slightly different meanings.  The first is fairly simple, and here I shall quote from Dictionary.com(1) :

     Respect :  [ri-SPEKT]
     'the condition of being esteemed or honored.'

That's pretty obvious. It's a big thing to be respected by someone, or to be told that someone respects you.  In fact,  for a lot of us,  that's almost a goal in life;  to be respected. Often times we wish we could be popular, or famous, cause then we'd either have a lot of money, or a lot of respect. Or both. We want to be respected for our talents, our actions, our minds and its thoughts. Pretty much everything.

Then there is a second meaning,  which is slightly different.  It's less of a 'status' meaning, and more of an 'application' meaning: (again, I quote Dictionary.com, though I'm going to paraphrase a little).

     Respect :
     'to consider someone to have certain rights or privileges; proper acceptance or courtesy; acknowledgment.'

In other words, to acknowledge that others have rights, and that they deserve courtesy. To respect someone is to recognize that they are individuals that, while certainly are not perfect, are worth the effort of trying to understand them, and trying to love them (2).

Unfortunately, as Human Beings, we have a disturbing propensity to only think about respect from a selfish viewpoint (3). Everything comes down to how it effects ME.  It's just how we  process information; it's natural.  But that doesn't mean it's right. We want people to respect us, and when they don't, it's like they are poking us in the eye. I mean,  I deserve to be respected.  People should take me seriously.  People should show interest in me or my life. People should love what I write, and thank me for writing it, and so on. (Yes,  I admit that I suffer from pride. Big shock on that one, I'm sure.)

It's alllll about me.  How often do we stop and think,  'hey,  I should really give this fellow my full attention.' or,  'I don't think I show this person enough respect." How often are you put into a social setting, and expect others to come and get to know you, instead of you going out of your comfort zone to get to know them?  I'm ashamed to say for myself that the answer to that question is usually 'Not much' or 'Not at all'.

As Christians,  what should our attitude towards respect be?


Don't try to gain respect. Trust God for your identity, for your purpose, for your fulfillment.(4)
Forsake respect as something to be gained, as something to be hoarded.


Instead, focus on giving others respect. Try to pay attention and listen when someone is talking to you.  Try to understand why people feel the way they do. Try to understand what others find disrespectful, even if you don't see it the same way. Find out why people act the way they act. Don't be the person poking other people in the eye. Ignore it when others poke you. It's more than likely they don't even realize that they are doing it.


Never do anything for the purpose of gaining respect. If you are going to write,  write because you want to.  If you are going to preach,  preach because you feel that God has given you something to say.  If you are going to give money away,  give it away because you want to bless others, and because it's not yours in the first place.  We have an excellent example of people who did things to earn respect. The Pharisees were allll about gaining respect.(5)

And then guess what happens? It's bizarre, but if you don't care about respect, but instead try to be upright, knowledgeable, trustworthy, wise, and mature for the sake of it, and to love God, you'll end up being respected. And you won't feel like you deserve it.  This fits within a pattern that we often see. (6)

I firmly believe that our lives should be focused on living out the Two Greatest Commandments:

Matthew 22:35-40 (MKJV)

"Then one of them, a lawyer, asked, tempting Him and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the Law? Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

A selfish wish for respect has no place within this text. Respect has no value as an end. Instead our end goal should be to love others, and to love God.  We can use respect to aim towards that goal, as we learn try to understand others and to be focused on God.

Disagree?  Think I speak heresy?  Comments?  Use the form below! I would love to hear your thoughts.

1) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Respect : See item 5.
2) http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Respect : See item 4.
3) Philippians 2:21: For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus
4) 2 Timothy 1:9
5) Matthew 6:5-6
6) Matthew 10:39

CLONING : An Alternative Solution for Outsourcing in a Recessive Economy

Article from Entrepreneur Forever, by Felco Armanias

After my article last issue about the healing, holistic, and productive effects of consuming Tofu, I thought I would turn my attention to some of the more ingenious business ideas that are cropping up all over the place in our current economy.

These are regular small business owners, who, faced with a difficult economy and low sales, have improvised to come out on top.

What follows is my interview with one of these business owners: Layne Huber, owner of a small graphic design company called HuberGraphics, based out of Calgary, Canada.

- - - - - -

Felco: Good morning, and thank you so much for being willing to allow me this interview.

Layne: Hey, no problem. I've read your work before, and I'm happy to help out the small business community in any way I can.

Felco: That's great, and believe me, we all appreciate your attitude. Now, why don't you tell us about this concept of Clone Outsourcing and about its inspiration?

Layne: Well, it was simple really. My company is a sole proprietorship, and while I had a fair amount of work, and the taxes weren't bad, it was still hard to stay on top of everything, and actually move forward as a company. You have to balance development with cash right?

Anyway, I was thinking about how to make it all jive, and that I couldn't really afford to outsource the work, when I saw this ad from the local high school advertising their new cloning program, and it just kinda hit me: Why not clone myself, and get the extra help I needed? Imagine how easy it would be to have a helpers who thought along the same lines as I did, but would be able to concentrate on different areas.

Felco: Wow, I'm impressed! It's takes a certain kind of person to come up with such a concept.

Layne: Thanks.

Felco: So, how many of them are you?

Layne: Five. No, wait . . . Six. Yeah, six of us.

Felco: That's quite a group. How do you differentiate between each of you?

Layne: I admit that that was one thing I hadn't really considered ahead of time. And it took some time to get used to. At first we tried using Superhero names, but that idea wasn't really viable, as everyone wanted to be Batman or Wolverine, and nobody would really settle for Superman or Robin. So instead we kind of just took arbritrary names according to what our focus was in the company.

So, to my right we have Sparky, who is our computer tech guy. . .

Sparky: Yo.

Layne: Monk, Short for Code Monkey, as he works on all our websites.

Monk: Hey.

Layne: English, our writer, and proof-reader.

English: How do you do.

Layne: Then Graphite, our artist, and finally Sahib.

Felco: Sahib? I thought that their names all refered to a certain area in your company.

Layne: Oh, Sahib is in charge of our customer service. Answers the phone mainly.

Felco: I see. But how do you tell each other apart?

Layne: Clothes mostly. We all try to wear something different, and then we have different variations in hair, as well as facial hair. Graphite here has more of a pencil shape soul patch. English is clean shaven, and Sahib has a mustache.

Felco: I see. But as far as I can see, there are only five clones. You said there was a sixth?

Layne: Oh yeah. Him. We don't like to talk about him. He hit it big in a Ponzi Scheme and ended up a millionaire. Left soon after. He was always a bit of a jerk really.

Felco: Ah. Well, I can easily think how this set up would be greatly advantageous. Are there any disadvantages to cloning yourself six times?

Layne: Well, as it turns out, it's a bit illegal and for two reasons:

Firstly, there is some debate about the moral implications of cloning itself. And while it's outlawed in Canada, I personally don't think it's really a problem, as I'm cloning myself. Maybe if it was a cow or sheep or something. Though I wouldn't feel bad about the sheep really. I hate sheep.

And secondly because, as clones, they don't have birth certificates. Only these little tags here that say: "Property of Higgleton High" but for some reason the government won't take them as ID. That means that I'm the only one who has a Social Insurance Number, and thus can legally work. So what we have to do instead, is do it all under the pretense that it's only the one of us that's doing the work.

Therefore we only have one private email address, and have to try to keep track of each others vocabulary and whatnot. If Sahib is going to be using the word "Insepid" a lot, than he has to write it down in a Google Document, which we then all read every week and sync our vocabularies. It also makes relationships difficult, as we can't be more than one person, and thus have to tell each other as much as possible about each day as we can, so we know how to react to circumstances, or conversations we end up in. Usually though, if we make a mistake and repeat something that one of us said the day before, we can just blame a bad memory. Works great.

Felco: Now, what about the possible consequences of making clones of yourself. It seems like in everything I've ever heard or seen, the clones always end up evil and twisted. Does this worry you at all? Are you afraid that one of them might kill you in your sleep and take your place?

Layne: Ha ha! No no, of course not. These fellows are like my brothers. They wouldn't hurt a fly, and they definitely wouldn't hurt me. We're like a hockey team almost, just we run a small business. And of course they don't eat kittens. You can't believe everything you hear.

Felco: Glad to hear it. That puts my mind at ease. I just have one last question. If this cloning outsourcing plan is illegal, aren't you worried about going public with it? Won't you run into some serious backlash?

Layne: Well, originally, Layne wanted the plan to be that we . . .

Felco: Wait. I thought you said you were Layne.

Clone: . . .

Felco: . . .

Clone: You don't understand! He was keeping us under wraps! Do you have any idea how hard it is to feed six people one person's serving of dessert? We had to go public! He was holding us back from tremendous destinies! We had to . . .

Felco: I think this interview is over.

*** Disclaimer***

Despite the nature of this article, I, the author, do not agree with cloning Humans, and never have participated in any way.  I also do not condone the murder of someone else in order to achieve success. 

Vulcans and Klingons

There are essentially three different types of Christians. Vulcans, Humans, and Klingons. 

Now, even if you’ve never seen Star Trek, you probably have still heard of Klingons and Vulcans. These two different fictional alien races are each going represent an idea throughout the rest of this article. 

Klingons are a race that bases their decisions off of emotion. Anger, hatred, love, and honor all play a huge part for Klingons. Any decision they make is based off of how they feel. They are emotionalists, as it were. 

The Vulcans (admittedly my favorite of the two) are basically the opposite side of the scale. Logic is everything. From a young age, Vulcans work hard to control the emotions, to remove them as far as possible from their minds. Vulcans are logicians. Emotions are something to be discarded.

And finally, there are Humans. Humans are the nice middle space between Vulcans, and Klingons. They have both emotions, and logic. They are the middle of the pendulum swing.

Now all of us tend to be either more Vulcan, or more Klingon. Some of us rely on our emotions, and base our actions on how we feel, disregarding logic, because we feel that our emotions justify any action. Others of us lean more towards the Vulcan end of the spectrum. We depend on logic, and view emotions as simply inconvenient after-effects of our biological bodies and minds. We base our decisions on cold facts, as much as we are possibly able. 

I propose to you,that both are wrong. God, in His infinite wisdom, did not just design us with logical minds, but also with emotional hearts, and vice-versa.

God wants us to be logical, to think past just how we ’feel’ about something, to what He says about it, what the right thing to do is. He expects us to examine life and knowledge and to way what is true, and what is not. Proverbs is one long book of logic, and wisdom. 

God also expects us to live. He wants us to love each other, to love Him. He wants us to have joy, and to have peace in Him. He wants us to be sad with what He is sad with. Emotions are mental flags of the subconscious mind, if you will. They are actually communicating something to you, and simply ignoring them, while sometimes wise, is not smart in every situation.

When we feel fear, it is a natural thing, an organic emotion. We should not beat ourselves up for feeling, but rather accept what the emotion is trying to tell us, and figure that into our logic. We should never, EVER, make a decision based ON fear. But it is also foolish to ignore what the fear is trying to tell us.

Another example, would be a crush. When you have a crush on someone, there is an overwhelming amount of emotions. So much so, that it is easy for the emotions to bypass our logic centers, with the contained cautions and potential red flags. 

However, on the flip side, neither is it wise to ignore a lack of emotion when considering a marriage relationship. God made falling in love for a reason.

Our objective regarding Vulcanism, and Klingonism, should be to make an effort to move more and more towards a Human position. A state of existence in this world where we examine all the information, accepting everything that God has made us to be. The Bible states that He has made us in His image.

Am I saying that we should consider all emotions? Such as lust and ect? No, we shouldn't ever allow ungodly emotions to effect our decisions, though I suspect none of us shall ever achieve a perfect score on that front. However, also we shouldn't pretend that those emotions are not there.

If you feel anger towards a neighbor, instead of hiding it somewhere where the sun don't shine, you should take the emotion head on, and examine it logically, tracing it to its source, and then dealing with it. 

The purpose of being balanced between your Vulcan side and your Klingon side is not so that you become a more happy person, though I would suggest that that might very well be a nifty side effect, but rather so that you can do what's right. There IS truth, absolute truth, in our universe. There is a right thing to do, though sometimes we have lots of little nebulous decisions. We hamstring ourselves when remove emotions from our lives, or when we remove logic.

Anyway, that's my thoughts for this week.