Now, I am not saying we should pimp out our relatives and friends. I am not saying that we should ignore obvious age or personality differences here. I am saying that we have lost some moral fabric especially when it comes to these situations. Our standards have decreased on who we spend time around. We don't want to challenge each other anymore. We simply do not care what anyone does it seems, that is unless it directly effects us.
That thinking is so wrong. We are called to love. We are called to seek the truth! We are not called to sit wringing our fingers and hope that it does not come to personally affect us. Those we spend our time with, say a lot about us! The people we surround ourselves with reflect us and as a result we should be spending time with quality people. You should certainly hold your friends to the same standard you hold strangers. We should expect our friends to be excellent, to be moral, and to be good. Our friends should be absolutely superb.
If people are not morally upright, we don't have to treat them like dirt. Treating people poorly would be immoral of us. We must not be the problem ourselves. We should expect more out of ourselves as well. However, there is a way to show respect and courtesy for people without constantly surrounding ourselves with them. There are ways to challenge people while being nice to them and there are ways to lead by example. We should seek out these ways to lead by example. We should challenge others to be better in a courteous manner. Most importantly though, we should surround ourselves with good virtuous people as often as possible. Good behavior is contagious and we should let that behavior rub off on us. Our loved ones should be able to trust those that we bring into our lives. We should be able to trust those that we bring into our lives.
I sometimes hear things like "oh he/she seemed like a pretty good person. You can never really know about someone."
That line is a bunch of crap. You absolutely can know about some people. Sure unexpected stuff sometimes happens with some people and that can cause you to change how you see that person. However, you absolutely know about most people. If you are constantly challenging people and constantly seeking moral behavior, than you should know about people. You should know how truly moral those around you are. You should know how good people are. You should know if those around you are good enough.
So tying this back into dating our loved ones.....
You need to have standards with your friends. We should expect them to be good moral people. If they are a good moral person and the cream of the crop, then it makes sense for them to be able to date our loved ones. If we are hanging out with the best people, does it not make sense for us to embrace them being with those we care about?
Again, assuming there isn't some weird age gap, some relationship flaw or obvious personality difference, we should be embracing this. Don't we want the best people for our loved ones? Don't we want the best people as our friends?
If we do not want that, we should change our priorities on one end of the spectrum.
So again!
1) Be a great person
2) Surround yourself with great people
3) Have high standards for our friends, sons, daughters, and everyone we spend time with
4) Don't have different standards for different people
5) Treat your spouse like you want your daughter's or sister's spouse to treat them
6) Make sure you model that ideal behavior (be a great dad, spouse, and friend)
7) Just be consistent
Everyone deserves to be a happy loving family and we need to try to contribute to that.
-Noland
