An explanation for religion

[video=youtube;K16fG1sDagU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16fG1sDagU[/video]

Just needs to be posted IMO.

 

Nice touch!

 

Hang in there, NYY. Better times are coming.

 

I see OV has found the pulpit.

 

It doesnt always work that way. Ive been lucky.

My daddy and step dad are good friends.

 

Sorry to hear about the divorce NYY.

Keep your head up brother, and you will end up in a better place.

 

The best thing I ever did was to get divorced, but good luck NYY

 

Absolutely. Hate has no place in a congregation. As I've said, it's why I recently became a member of a new congregation.

 

Hate to hear all of this. My old church's pastor refused to officiate a wedding if either the bride or groom had been divorced. It's ignorant. Believe me. There are churches out there that are about love. They don't condone everything either, but everything is still handled with love. I truly hope you don't give up and you and your family finds that loving church out there for you.

 

We just got a new member that I've known all my life. Awesome guy. He was run out of a Church of God (he was a deacon) by another self-righteous overbearing deacon. First he attacked him because once/month the church had an all you can eat breakfast (biscuits & gravy, sausage, bacon, scrambled eggs, country ham) as a building fund fundraiser. There was no set price. Only a donation of what you thought was right was asked. The self-righteous one though that was wrong and ridiculed a fine fine man over it. He got nastier when the good guy was nominated as a trustee. The holier than thou guy objected- publicly attacking him saying that any man that can't control their kids wasn't worthy (he has a daughter that's 45ish that is a raging alcoholic and possibly drug addict where she became hooked on that stuff as an adult with her 1st husband.) He has a son that you couldn't ask for a better guy. What the pious one forgets is that his "perfect" kids are druggies themselves. They are very very smart and have most everyone fooled. The oldest had everyone thinking he was the best thing ever. Carried his Bible at school, great athlete, straight As, etc. He now has a couple DUIs and has been implicated in some criminal stuff. Yet, this guy thinks the other man is unfit for a church office. Folks like that do more damage to the name of Christ than a nonbeliever saying he doesn't exist. It's sickening.

 

Kinda like the Fundamentalist Christian Right that opposes abortion in any situation because all life is sacred, but in their next breath say that public assistance (foodstamps, welfare, etc) should be done away with because if you don't work you and your family should starve?


Yeah, that pisses me off, too.

 

An eternal truth.

As solid as it comes. I've heard preachers say from the pulpit that you are in danger of hellfire if you vote for candidate x. Absolutely ridiculous.

One source of the hate in my old church was political. It started in 2008 in earnest and kept getting worse until it climaxed with the following event: I was in Sunday School the Sunday after the Sandy Hook shootings. Naturally it came up. The unbelievable horror of the situation and the need for prayer for all wasn't the main concern of the conversation. The main topic was that the evil gubmint was gonna use this as an excuse to come get our guns. I am not lying. I have never been more shocked and disgusted from anything I've heard in church or anywhere else, I don't think. I'm the black sheep in the class anyway, because I often point out Christians' hypocrisy (including my own), and that makes them uncomfortable. I don't really care about that. I'm used to it and kinda enjoy that role. As soon as I realized that I really was hearing what I thought I was hearing in the House of God no less, I turned to my wife and loudly said that I will never step foot in the door of this church as a member again, and that when the first thought conjured up in a Christian's mind after the slaughter of 20+ innocent kids was to use that to attack the govt was quite possibly the most disgusting and repulsive thing I have ever heard. I got up and walked out. I have been true to my word. I've not been back. I'm all worked up again just thinking about it.

 

Amen. Please turn to Hymn #187 "Just As I Am" for our hymn of invitation.

Worship can take many forms- none of which contain hate.

 

I prefer hymn 222, if 222 is not in your book, turn to page 111 twice and follow along as we sing!

 

187 is the actual hymn # of Just As I Am in the hymnals at the church I grew up in. No joke. We sang it so much I still remember the # after 20 years.

 

A version of the broadman #206 is Dwelling in Beaulah Land.

That is my fav

 

This might be a question that OV and some others can answer for me.

How do we have freewill? If god is perfect, all knowing, and all powerful, how did he create something that isn't perfect? That is to say that, if god created a person and that person doesn't make it to heaven, wouldn't god have known that he was creating something that would never be "saved"? And from that, One would have to say that we don't have freewill, or that there is more to it.

 

That's ridiculous jay. No one has ever said to cut of all social programs. It's the enabling of the lazy and those who choose to work the system that annoys us.

 

Lots more to it IMO. More than i ever want to get into on a message board mainly because it is too much typing. Would much rather discuss over a beer of you are ever down in Knoxville.

 

I believe that we have freewill as well. I also don't believe in evil, only the abstinence of good. You'll have to let me know. I live in Knoxville full time now.