A decade ago, after I finished up a set, I got into a chat with some friends, and somehow the conversation focussed on societies derelicts and then one middle-aged woman said, 'People never change!'

Yet a strange phenomena I have found, some people actually not only change but seem to advance and advance in goodness; until it is almost uncomfortable to be in their company. When one asks them what their secret is, inevitably it turns out that they credit these changes to God.
I have only known a handful of people like this.
But what is it that can make such a dynamic and progressive change to the nature of a person ?

Sincerely,
HH

ps. I consider this my last official post to Theology Web, and thank you to the patient Moderators and friends who have put up with my crazy thoughts and equally puzzling pictures. Special thanks to John Reece for the many useful words and also a big thank you to those who disagreed with and those who hated and insulted me. I love you for your blows, and kisses and hugs.

Originally posted by headheart

inevitably it turns out that they credit these changes to God.
I have only known a handful of people like this.
But what is it that can make such a dynamic and progressive change to the nature of a person ?

I'm sure that some people who dont give the credit to God experience this change as well. Psycologically there are several things that can contribute to such reactions, a near death or traumatic experience, falling into and even out of a loving relationship, commission of a horrible act on another with reflections leading to a need of personal pennance of goodness to all people, having experienced a great act of kindness or mercy that they didn't deserve and were expecting rejection for their actions and behavior, an awakening of a personal worth in all or some living beings that can even come through an adolescent maturing emotionally to a higher level of external awareness, ect.....
All of these events can drastically affect the will of the mind and cause a person to change into a more loving person than they were at an earlier time. Of course people of faith can relate to most or not all of these things generating from their interactive relationship with God. No wonder we get so defensive when these things from within our internal relationship to God get reduced to the meanderings of a deluded mind by those who wont accept these metaphysical occurances as part of a natural reality. I believe something has made me a more loving compassionate person and someone else tells me it's a mere fairy tale. Yet now I love people as I never have been able to before and people who seemingly think they are trying to wake me from my delusion will also pull the value added portion of my humanity with it as I do for the change of will came with it and the consciousness within me has no reason to think it will remain once the instigator of it ir gone.
One could appeal that I should maintain my behavior because it would be the right thing to do and I would still have a value added humanity. Yet if my actions are in response to a loving personal relationship, even if only a delusion, I can assure you that to bring a person into a personal loss of that magnitude the bottom falls out.
Of the people listed above for non-faith related reasons, these people as well respond negitively when their motivation to operate above their personal wills is taken from their perception of reality. Any attempt in either case that makes a person less loving , compassion, or empathetic is belittling them and offensive in my opinion.

A Buddhist would argue that people are nothing but change. There is, to the buddhist, no static self- it is always changing, always shifting. The "you" who is reading this is not the same "you" of five minutes before. "You" changes from moment to moment.

Or so I've heard.

That sounds like Nietzsche's reasoning for not fearing death, since you've already died a number of times as you went from each part of life to the next