Dan Brooks's Blog, page 8

Slow Down And Be Present

Meditation has a multitude of forms. I have my favorites and practice them daily, well nightly. I practice it at night because I'm a busy stay at home Dad. Remember the movie Mr. Mom? Yeah, story of my life.
There is a favorite saying of mine "You should meditate for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should meditate for an hour."
The reality is that unless you're a monk or yogi finding that time is hard, it feels next to impossible. But if we make it a priority we can find the time. I found the time by meditating before I sleep. I usually meditate for 40 minutes. There is a song I listen to that is 20 minutes long. So I listen twice then go to sleep. Many times I fall to sleep before the song ends the second time.
The point is not to do what works for me but to find a way that works for you. Everyone's lives are different and there is no one size fits all pattern to follow.
The reason I bring up meditation is because, along with daily prayer, it has allowed me to feel more inner peace and tranquility. Both practices have enhanced my calm and ability to be present and in the moment rather than being preoccupied with the future and the past.
The Dalai Lama was asked what surprised him most about humanity and he said "Man. Because he sacrificed his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. Then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die and then dies never having really lived."
In the rat race that is modern life we too often fall into the trap of being so anxious about the future and so attached to the past that we never really live in the moment. I realized I was living my life on auto pilot never really living because I was always telling myself that I would be happy when I got the next job or next promotion or a better car or a bigger apartment. And yet when those things happened I never truly enjoyed them because I was focused on the next goal and the goal after that. That mindset prevents us from enjoying the present.
If we can't find happiness in the present, if happiness is always somewhere else, it will never be where we are.
Peace is not a life without obstacles, it is found within and allows us to be at peace in the midst of chaos.
My wife has lupus, an autoimmune disease, that causes many complications, pain and makes her susceptible to many colds and infections.
She soldiers through her pain and sickness until she can't work or function. Her body forces her to rest and that's usually the only way she will. The biggest problem is that that choice to push through often makes her crash worse than it would have been if she would just listen to her body and rest when she should.
I admire her strength but her stubbornness is agrivating at times.
I see many people who only rest when their body completely shuts down. I think learning to be at peace in the moment can help us live life better. It can help us enjoy the moment so much that we stop living in the past or in the future. We must listen to our bodies and eat when needed or rest when needed rather than push through. How can we enjoy life when we sacrifice our physical and mental health?
We have a bad habit of extremism. We eat too much food and too much unhealthy food. We don't excercise enough or we excercise too much. We drink too much soda or energy drinks but not enough water.
Not everyone does too much of the bad and not enough good but I see overindulgences frequently and daily.
We talk too much but listen too seldom. We hate too often and love too seldom. We have added years to life but not life to years.
But through meditation and prayer we can add life to our years. With both practices we can nourish and strengthen our sense of joy, peace and compassion as well as patience.
You can meditate and pray while in a bath, you can pray for a minute or two while on lunch and breaks. We can't find the time unless we make the time. We can burn the candle at both ends or we can moderate our lives and burn longer and much brighter.
The quality of our lives, of our memories and the quality of our relationships will be determined by the quality of how we lived our lives and how present we were in the moments we remember from our lives. We don't remember years, months or days. We remember moments. And if we are present in those moments the quality of those moments will be spectacular.
Modern life is fast but we would do better to slow down and enjoy the ride rather than hurry through our one shot in this mortal life.

False Gods

In the Biblical tradition false Gods meant any other God but the Biblical God.  And that is also the definition, Biblically, of false Christs or false messiahs.  Any messiah other than Christ is false.  Which is a point lost on those who insist Mormons worship a "different" Jesus.  False messiahs are something we are warned to gaurd against but there wasn't another Jesus who preached the Sermon on the Mount, or another Jesus who suffered the Atonement, or another Jesus who taught us to love our enemies so I don't understand that accusation.  But we have been warned about the danger of false Gods. 

We ought to be wary of false Gods even now.  But some think that as long as we reserve worship to God or to Christ then we have nothing to fear.  But I think that's wrong.  Worshiping material possessions, worshiping certain men or women such as celebrities or politicians can also fall under the banner of a false God. 

Mammon is a false God. It refers to worship of material wealth, richness and money rather than a foreign deity.  But worshiping money or putting work and richness above time with your spouse, family, friends and children is to worship Mammon. I find it sad and destructive to value money more than people.

Imagine a man who is a workaholic, his son asks him to play catch one day and the Father can't because he has to go into the office on yet another Saturday he says "I'd love to son if I could find the time I have to work."  The son says "It's ok, we'll play later."  And keeps this attitude as his Father continually chooses work over time with his son. And the son ultimately wants to be like his Father and learns about life and work from his Father.

Decades later when the boy is grown and has a family of his own, his Father calls and asks to visit his son and the son says "I'd love to Dad if I could find the time." And then as he puts down the phone, the Father realizes his son is just like him. And it saddens the Father greatly, it grieves him to have taught his son the wrong lessons about life.

But where your treasure is your heart will be also as Jesus once said.  If we love money that is where our heart will be but if we love people our reward will be much greater and our legacy will be much richer in the lives of those we have touched.

How many of us will regret missing time at work to attend our child's birthday? How many of us, on our death bed, will regret not driving a nicer car or having a larger home? Will we not instead regret not spending more time with our families and friends?  Not letting others know without any doubt how much we love them will haunt us to the grave whereas wishing to have made more money will likely not be on our list of regrets when it's out time to die. And I find it tragic if anyone regrets not working more, not sacrificing more time with family to spend at work on their death bed.

Objects were created to be used and people were created to be loved. What I find so wrong about American culture is that objects are loved and people are being used. We have the meaning of life wrong when we make that mistake.

So I think too many people worship Mammon more than God.  They love money and possessions more than people. And in so doing make a mockery of God.

Be careful what you value because that's where your heart will be.

To truly honor or worship God one must value and love His children, all of them, even one's enemies.  And since we have destroyed the Earth and wildlife in the name of making more money it makes me wish that people cared as much about the Earth as they do about who they think created it because then we would have our own garden of Eden or our own Garden of Babylon.
What if we as a country, as a people, as a species pursued compassion, love and bearing one another's burdens and being our brothers keeper with the same vigor with which we pursue wealth, power and fame? What a work we could have.

God created all people and the Earth and we would do better to honor Him by Honoring, treasuring and loving His creations.

God gave us this Earth and we destroyed it. God has displayed infinite patience with every wrong turn we have made collectively and individually. God values us above all his other creations and some of us refuse to even believe He exists.  He sees us kill one another, rape one another, He sees us torture, water board, burn and maim one another.  An He loves us still.

All of those behaviors are not indicative of truly worshiping God.  We too often treasure material wealth, or our well toned and muscled bodies, our hair and our complexion above all else so I see little room for God in lives like that.

Having nice things is not evil but the things you own end up owning you. And while being lazy if a form of selfishness being a workaholic is also a selfish life.  There are many snares we must be aware of in this life.  Just be careful of what it is you value since soon enough your heart will rest there as well.

What Pro Life Means To Me

It's not my position that those who are against abortion are wrong. It is however my position that those who hold all life to be sacred should extend that care, compassion and sacred reverence for life to all God's children rather than just *some* of God's children.
I have a hard time believing that most who claim to be pro life really hold all life to be sacred when those very same politicians, pundits and celebrity clergy and social media trolls are the first to rally us to war, who gut school lunch programs, who ignore and despise the homeless and who are the first to argue for the death penalty. 
But especially those who ignore orphans and the unwanted children that these people were the first to demand those children be born. It strikes me as both denying the sacredness of all life and as exceptionally hypocritical.
I don't see how one can be Christian let alone pro life when I see one Jesus fish sticker next to a "I love dead terrorists" sticker on a car.
How can people who claim life is sacred put on expensive clothes, get in luxury SUVs and drive past orphanages, prisons, ignoring the homeless and sometimes despising them on their way to a church to learn how to be more like Jesus?
The irony is mind bending.
Why is it that Jesus taught us to leave our offerings to God and make amends with those who have angered us before making an offering to God? The higher law is to make amends and temper our anger and the minimum is not to kill.
Jesus taught us to not only love our neighbors as ourselves He taught us to love our enemies. Yet that is the one teaching that is so often ignored or annotated to provide exceptions for behavior Jesus taught us to avoid.
My point here is that if one wants to be pro life then be pro life and stop making exceptions for some lives being more sacred than others.
It reminds me of a very poignant quote from the book Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
This attitude of some lives being sacred while the lives of those I served with in the Army were expendable. The lives of orphans, homeless people and the mentally ill don't seem to matter as much as those who are in a "better" or "more equal" class of people.
I just don't see most of those I know or have heard from who claim to be "pro life" regarding all the lives of God's children as being sacred when what I'm seeing tells me that only *some* lives matter while others don't.
My point is not that the pro life movement has gone too far, it's that it hasn't gone far enough or at least not far enough in the right direction given its precept of life being sacred.
To me pro life means that all life is sacred not just some lives. It means taking care of the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled and it means feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison. Because if we truly had a proper reverence for the sacredness of life we would have less of the above groups. We would be closer to Zion than we are now.

Are You Really Pro Life?

Many Americans consider abortion wrong because human life is precious and even birth control is morally wrong because it allows for the joys of sex without the responsibility of parenthood.
Birth control defies the edict from The Lord to be fruitful and multiply. And this logic has led some to say couples who can't have children should not have sex because sex is only for procreation.
My point is that so many church members and others outside of our church are so driven by the pro life ideology that human life is sacred and worth waging a war over and for some to kill over.
But for the overwhelming majority of people human life is a sacred gift of God and to prevent a life by birth control or by abortion is to defile a sacred life.
But the ultimate irony is that the very same "pro lifers" who talk about human life being sacred also are the first to rally our nation to war, whatever the reasoning behind the war.
These same people worship a homeless man on Sunday and then turn a blind eye to or spit on homeless people every other day of the week.
These same people try to gut food stamp benefits to starving families while giving millions in tax breaks to the uber rich.
These same people get dressed up in luxury clothes on Sunday, get in their luxury SUV's and drive past prisons, missions, under funded schools and hospitals on their way to a church where a pastor, reverend, Bishop or Cardinal tell those people how they can be more like Jesus.
Which is awesome let me tell you.
You can't ignore orphans, the disabled, the mentally ill, starving children who rely on food stamps and school lunch programs for whatever they're lucky enough to eat, or the homeless vets, or anyone who has  been outcast by society  and ignore the suffering of beloved children of God and claim to be pro life.
You can't egg on war, murder and killings of God's beloved children and qualify as truly pro life.
You can't be opposed to health care for all as in most other countries or in congress and the senate or most any other high office also gets free health care and still be pro life.
To be pro life is to hold all lives as sacred from birth to death. And to show compassion and understanding to all those lives whoever they are. Because life is sacred and we are all children of the same God. Even those we don't like or those we hate.




You can't be pro death penalty and claim to consider human life sacred.
People that claim to be pro life are the most inconsiderate, incompassionate and blood thirsty people I have ever met. 
They are pro guns, pro death penalty anti food stamps and school lunch programs because I think the idea is that human life is sacred until that fetus becomes an infant and then they are on their own and if they're male they're sent to war as they say praise The Lord and pass the ammo without catching the irony of it all.
And once they're out of the military they get nothing for the mental or physical illness they contracted as a result of they're service so as a vet I'd say these people are pro war as opposed to pro military.
Being opposed to abortion isn't such a horrible thing. I just find it ironic the most pro lifers see malnourished children and just walk past them. This shows me that once a child is born somehow all that sacred nature of human life disappears. Just like it does to a death row inmate.
If you couldn't care less about a person once they leave the military after they've fought in the never ending wars you are not pro military.
And likewise if you only care about human life until it leaves the womb then despise them because they're a different race, from a different country, from a different faith, from a different political party you are most certainly not pro life. You are merely pro birth. 

Homesick For Heaven

Sometimes I feel homesick for a place in not always sure exists. It is a longing for a place where my heart is full and my soul is understood.
Having had a near death experience and experienced the other side I can say that is the place I feel homesick for.
But that void, that homesickness is something I am always sure I am not the only person who feels that. Everyone hurts when they are intentionally or unintentionally misunderstood. Maybe because to be understood is as much about compassion and consideration as it is intellectually understanding.
So failure to understand to me shows a lack of consideration and compassion. We may not be able to relate but surely we can understand. And more importantly we can be understanding of others. Maybe something else that needs to take place first is to understand oneself.
I moved around a lot as a kid. I've lived in California, Hawaii, Georgia, Wisconsin, Deleware, Illinois, North Dakota and Utah. And some of those places I've  lived in more than once. I never went to any one school for more than two years and starting in the 7th grade I went to a different school every year until my high school graduation.
In having been one of four white kids in an all black school to very diverse communities and schools I learned how to be respectful even of those disrespectful to me and I learned to be understanding to the point of being able to feel as though I could relate to others experiences which I had no personal experience with.
It's like with music. If you listen closely enough it feels as though you can relate to many thing outside of your own experiences because the subject matter has been made to be personal or that it was delivered in such a potently personal way.
And I learned how to be that relate able as well.
Those abilities I learned have literally saved my life in situations that escalated to violence. Life threatening violence. And have endeared me to many along the way. I've lived in rough neighborhoods all across the country and these abilities have kept me safe.
I lived in Waianae on Oahu, Hawai'i. One of the roughest areas I've ever lived in. But I visited daily while I was in the Army and often in uniform while there or on the bus on the way there. And I had close calls to violence but always exercised respect and understanding and de-escalated some hairy situations.
I served with a guy who did not have these skills as well as having too much ego, bravado and arrogance. He went to a road house in Waianae once. He wound up in a fight and hospitalized for a week because of those traits.
Our superiors ordered us to never go to Waianae unless we had a function in the Army rec center there.
I was told many times not to go because of how many soldiers had been accosted in one way or another. But I never had the issues other soldiers did.
For me learning these skills were a matter of survival. But everyone is capable of learning them I feel.
But it wasn't until after my near death experience in Hawai'i that my first taste of having a full heart and feeling that I was truly understood that I had a sense of lasting peace. And once I understood myself fully, I felt that since of peace more and more.
And if we truly understand ourselves then we can feel at peace even in the most chaotic situations.
I believe we all long for that sense of peace and there are many faiths, many philosophies that try to guide us to that place of being fully understood and appreciated and loved.
I believe we long for a place we can provide for each other and for ourselves. I believe we can accomplish this in this life and not simply something reserved for the next life. An on Earth as it is in Heaven sort of idea.

The Devils' Bible

The Codex Gigas or "Big Book" is said to have been written in one night by a monk as penance for his sins. But scientists believe that it took 20 years or more. It weighs 165 lbs and in 8.7 inches thick and 36 inches tall and 20 inches wide. It is the largest midevil book in existence.
Experts believe it was made by one scribe as the writing is uniform. It is almost entirely written in Latin but has Hebrew and Greek as well. There are no mistakes in the entire work. And it is a most odd collection of works like the old and new testaments with Greek philosophers as well.
But it is called the Devils Bible for a reason. 
The legend is that a monk who had sinned greatly and was to be put to death but promised he would write a book that would bring honor and prestige to his order.
As midnight approached the monk knew he could not finish by morning and in a desperate attempt to save his life he prayed to Lucifer for help. And in exchange for his soul Satan finished the book and as a token of the monks appreciation he put a large full page picture of Satan in the book.
The reason for the books longevity is both the legend of its origin and its focus on Lucifer.
But it is a product of its time and culture, christianity at the time was more about thwarting Satan than searching out God. This focus is what lead to killing "witches" long before Salem. It lead to all manner of depravity to combat depravity.
Many people make their focus more on Satan than on God. It's not that we shouldn't be on guard against the Devil, we should be on guard against the darkness within us as that where problems most often start.
God is the source of light, knowledge, peace and wisdom. And seeing those divine qualities in others and loving them as Christ loves us is the core of the Gospels message. 
But Lucifer makes for an awesome villain. He is the perfect counter point to God. And many church leaders in and out of the LDS Church have used the fear of Satan to scare their flock straight. Which I feel is unhealthy.
Jesus did speak of Hell more than heaven but He did not fear monger His flock. He warned them and compared and contrasted Heaven and Hell for the edification of all who learned His teachings.
Jesus taught much more about what we should do than what we shouldn't do. But just barely because He compared and contrasted the good and the bad to make His point. And He focused on being good in order to make doing good easier and more natural.
If one focuses on the negative you allow negativity into your life and mind but if you focus on the good then you allow the good into your life and your mind.
What you look for you see. And if we look for the negative in others we will fail to see the good.
There are good people and there are bad people but the flaw is in thinking all people are one or the other. We don't need to make excuses for evil works by evil people. But we don't need to be hyper sensitive to sin. And in so doing seeing sin where is does not exist. And missing the good in people who have both good and bad in them as most of us do.
We have enough evil in this world we do not need to invent more than there is. What we need is a Savior not a boogeyman.

Jesus Gave Us A Higher Law

I can't simply quote a specific scripture to describe what I mean by the higher law. What I can do is compare scriptures to show you what I mean.
Exodus 20:13 says "Thou shalt not kill." So that is Mosaic law but Jesus gives us the higher law here: "Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:

22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

Matthew 5:21-25

So not killing fulfills the law but making amends and quelling our anger is living the higher law. Which is why Jesus taught us to love not only those who are good to us but to love our enemies as well.

Exodus 20:14 says "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Being faithful upholds the Mosaic law but again Jesus gives us the higher law here:

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matthew 5:27-28

What set Jesus apart from Jewish teachers and Rabbis before and after Him is that while everyone else nit picked the law to prescribe the perfect mode of living up to the law in every possible situation. 

And those admonishments were always about doing the least. At the least take no more than was taken from you. Where as Jesus said if someone takes your shirt give them your cloak also.

Jesus taught us to do the most rather than the least. He admonished us to be the best rather than merely being good enough not to go to Hell.

Lamech he was a wicked character and arguably the most wicked but certainly the most vengeful man in scripture because of how severe his vengeance was.

24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. Genesis 4:24

It's important to understand that 77 was a symbol for infinity so to say he shall be avenged 77 times is to say he will inflict eternal punishment for limited sin.

Even if it were legal to be avenged for infinity Jesus again gives us the higher law: 21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?

22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22

Jesus teaches Peter and ultimately us that there should not be any exceptions or limits to our forgiveness and teaches also that if we do judge we will be judged by the same standard with which we judged.

Jesus did not contradict Mosaic law, He gave us a higher law. He gave us principles to guide our lives by so that we wouldn't need legalistic code books to tell us what the right thing to do or say in any given situation is. 

We can live by the commandments and maybe get into Heaven or we can live the higher law and build up the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus tells us to forgive 77 times, to me He is saying why be the average or  why be the worst character in scripture when you could be the best?

Jesus taught us the higher law because He believes that each of us can live up to that higher law. We would not have been taught a law if we were not capable of following it. We can be the best version of ourselves and to be that frees us ultimately.

The foundation on which all the prophets and laws are founded on is a love of God and all His children. Jesus taught us to be better than average, He taught us to be great. But Jesus went beyond the doing, He stressed the being.

Endure Till The End

The Hebrew definition of perfect means to be made whole. And Jesus often said "You're faith has made you whole" after He healed someone. To me what He means is that their faith had made them perfect. The idea is that to be whole or complete is to be made perfect in the Hebrew of antiquity.
So we can be whole or perfect even with blemishes. To be sinless is not possible for most if not all people Christ excluded. But think of it this way; we were sinless in the preexistence but chose to live an Earthly life to progress. 
So we could have remained sinless for all eternity but we chose to experience the darkness so the light would have meaning, we chose to experience filth to give cleanliness meaning and joy. We chose to experience tragedy to give meaning to our triumphs. We chose to be oppressed so we would know what it means to be free.
There are experiences in this life that can only be had in this life. Everything we've been through, alone and together, shape us into being the people we were meant to be, the people we were created to be and it all hinges on our choices. We can chose to let that responsibility slide or we can chose to live up to that. Our path hinges on our choices and it was Christ who lived and died for that agency to choose.
He was not just perfect, He was blemishless. But our role in this life is not to be blemish free, it's to be made whole again. It's to be perfected in that sense.
Humanity is like one big jigsaw puzzle with each of us being one of billions of pieces that when brought together form the image of the God in whose likeness we were created. But likeness not only in appearance but in personality. We all have a purpose, some great and some small, but all are more than nessecary-we are each essential.
Our goal in coming here is to be made whole as was Christ and to progress in ways only possible in an Earthly life, and in that sense to be like Christ.
To think like Christ, to see others as He sees us, to love one another as He loves us and to love our enemies as Ge loves them and to see them as children of God helps us progress into being Christlike. 
There is no end for us, existence is eternal so we will endure and progress eternally if we learn from our mistakes, our sins, and even learn from the mistakes of others.
Our path, our road is eternal. To endure we need only endure the endless revolutions from here to eternity.

Beautiful In God's Eyes

I'd like to share a Jewish parable about beauty; Once Rabbi Elazar son of R. Shimon was coming from Migdal Gedor, from the house of his teacher. He rode along the riverside on his donkey, and was feeling happy and elated because he had studied much Torah.There chanced to meet him an exceedingly ugly man, who greeted him, "Peace be upon you, my master!" R. Elazar did  not return his salutation but instead said to him, "How ugly this person is! Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?""I do not know," said the man. "But go to the craftsman who made me, and say to him: How ugly is the vessel which you have made!"Realizing that he had done wrong, R. Elazar dismounted from his donkey, prostrated himself before the man, and said to him, "You are right. Forgive me!" But the man replied, "I will not forgive you until you go to the craftsman who made me and say to him, 'How ugly is the vessel which you have made.'"How often do we make assumptions about the content of character of others based on their dress and appearance? We make judgements based on someone's teeth or hair line but how does that tell us what that person has been through?It's a bit cliche but to truly know what a person is truly made of one would need to walk a mile in their shoes to see what they've done, what they've been through and what they've had to overcome.What if we could trade shoes? Then we could get a glimpse of each others mind, feel each others pain, feel each others joys. And know with a perfect knowledge only Chrust has, what the others life has been like.Because if we got to know one another that well, and even know ourselves that way, then we would see how beautiful we really are. By seeing that we would see each other as God sees us. He sees us as beautiful, made in His likeness, He sees our struggles and triumphs. And he sees us fail and Ge loves us still. He sacrificed His only begotten son to redeem us because each of us are priceless to Him. Each of us is worthy of His eternally enduring love.So how is it we see so little worth in His children or in ourselves? Shouldn't a love of God entail a love of all His children too?If we are undervalued by others we should remember who we are, children of God, and we should try to see ourselves as being as beautiful as God sees us.

Jesus' Closest Friends Were Sinners

"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23
All God ever had to work with according to scripture were sinners of one degree or another Noah was a drunk yet God called Him.
So is it all that surprising that Jesus' closest friends were whores, adulteresses, lepers no one else would go near and even the zealots?
Simon was a zealot and so was Judas whereas Matthew was a tax collector and therefore was as reviled as any prostitute, Roman or leper but even more so. Tax collectors were hated even more than Samaritans were. But here is a touching parable Jesus teaches about a tax collector and a Pharisee:

9 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. Luke 18:9-14

The sinner who went to the Temple of all places was humbled and repented therefore Jesus was good with him being there. And the Pharisee who used piety as a status symbol was regarded as the true sinner.

It's not enough to sin to be bad one must be unrepentant and a superiority complex doesn't help either.

We are all sinners but if we repent and try again we are doing all we can, all that can be asked of us.

Jesus saved the life of an adulteress and He did not condemn her and though He could have cast the first stone He did not.

Jesus said He did not come for the righteous but to call sinners to repentance. But all He met in His life were sinners of one sort or another. And they turned out to be some of His best friends. 

But it was not the power of Hesus that changed or healed them. It was their own faith. Many times when Jesus healed someone He said "You're faith has made you whole."

So while we may struggle in life we can through repentance become whole again. Jesus never look into a crowd or around His disciples and saw sinners of every kind. He saw children of God struggling as we all do. But He loved them regardless. And we should all see others in the same way.