lindyhopper

Ok, lets not geek out too much with the Star Treck references. CM, That may have seemed like I was being slight but I was making a point that you actually made crystal clear by calling my plee stupid. Of course, it would be stupid for you to kill your kid for such a small thing. Yet, "God had to do what he had to do" (meaning commiting genocide at times) sounds perfectly ok with you? Becuase he brought (past tense?) them back? Chapter and verse, please. Please explain.

I would ask what is it that makes you- you? Is it the spirit? Were you not you before you recieved spirit? Is the soul the spirit? What exactly does that make your soul? Does your soul have anything to do with your brain? Being somewhat interested in science, it seems to me that most things that make you- you have everything to do with your DNA and your brain. Which is mind boggling in and of itself. It is just tissue with a bunch of electrical charges flying around and chemicals passing through and some how it all comes out making sense to you and I in the real world. Thinking, loving, obsessing, raging, healing, hurting, laughing, crying all can be triggered by chemicals and electrical impulses. The same way one goes through withdraw after coming off a drug- one goes through withdraw after losing love. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. So what is it that goes back to God in the way of spirit? Is it a real thing (being) or is it just a connector? Or is it a figure of speech communicating the connection? If you die and what makes you- you is your body and soul, then when you get a new body it would seem part of you was missing. If it is just your soul that makes up you then that would defy all science knows about the brain. And is it really you then when you get a new body? I mean can anyone here really think that your soul is completely seperate from your body and there is no necessary connection between the two? So when you get your new perfect body can it still really be you (the YOU that YOU are) by mearly transplanting your soul? So how would this new you start? As a newborn? Would that still really be YOU or would it be more like reincarnation? Since we are looking at definitions- "incarnate" comes from Latin basically meaning "in the flesh" or " invested with bodily and especially human nature and form b : made manifest or comprehensible " So if you get a new body isn't that what is happening...reincarnation? That leads us down a whole other road.

Actually, I don't think you do. No offence, but I actually can accept that. That isn't really what we are talking about. The situation you described above could describe a father - yes. It could also describe a dictator. Personally, (and I know I'm trying to project my crazy beliefs in love and acceptance to your god) I would never write the death sentence for one of my children for not believing in me. I know, that's crazy. So since I have these wild ideas about love and acceptance, I tend look at your god (even though I lean towards him not existing) as a dictator who rewards those that do as their told and hang on his every word.

Please for the love of God (Doh!), CM, don't kill your kid for the grades!

I have asked a similar question on here before. I am of the thought that there are quite a few qualifiers and conditions before the God of the Bible will even "spit in your direction." I feel the father son analogy falls way short. There is the arguement that God always loves you but does not always approve of your actions and that there are consequences to actions. I don't see it that way in the real world. I see people get desearved consequences and people that get undesearved consequences and people that don't get desearved consequences and everything in between; and all of this happening regardless of your affiliation with your personal god. I also don't see a god with unconditional love blatantly stepping in on behalf of one son or daughter and not for another. In the Bible you see God or his messengers speaking with both the MOG, the faithful believer and the unbeliever, but not all of them, just a handful. I think one of my examples on the thread I started a while ago was Paul. I haven't murdered anyone, yet (commas are important :) ) I don't get a voice, a vision, not even a light that isn't so blinding. I would say I could do quite a bit of good had I that kind of intervention. I would even accept snow on some gas pumps. Anyways I'm going off, I shouldn't. I think the better way to look at it is not as a god having unconditional love, but that God is love and conversely that love is God. Not that there is an ephemeral being floating everywhere at once, knowing everything that has ever and will ever happen, allowing both the good and the bad to happen to both the good and the bad...all the while loving everyone absolutely. Love is something worth dieing for, worth livng for, worth serving, worth working for, worth praising. There is that saying some like to use..."everyone has a god whether they know it or not." Perhaps it is not that God is love, but that your god is LOVE!

Come now, you're asking an agnostic to give you some Bible verses. You also added some nice caveats, I might add. Ok, off the top of my head....in the Bible, it wasn't long after creation before there was a distinction between the "Sons of God" and those other people "sons of men" or "evil doers" or what ever. They were certainly not "my OTHER children....the ones that never listen to me." Then as Sir G alluded, there was only the children of Isreal, they were the only "sons of God." Everyone else were considered the expendable crew members (see Noah, famines, other floods, and natural disasters or "acts of God" in the OT). Since you wanted a verse, off the top of my head this is what a rusty Bible thumper can come up with:(bold added by yours truly, obviously) 2 Cor. 6 14Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. 18And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Sounds pretty conditional to me and in the NT. That is just off the top of my rusty bucket of a head. It isn't somthing I would consider saying to my "good" children about my "bad" children. Of course, I'm just an imperfect human father.

That seems contradictory. Perhaps you could give some examples of the manifestation of unconditional acceptance by the God of the Bible to those whose lives he didn't approve of.

Well, that was fun to read through. Good to see you SirG. After reading you on this thread it seems more like Samurai Sir Guessi. Hope all is going well with your artistic endevours. I can say I don't get offended by the title of this thread. Note to readers: When something is written in a prose like fashion and doesn't seem to make sense....it is usually written that way to perhaps inspire thought. When I read "boundless heart" I immediately thought of love. Sometimes my wife and I look at our kids with a huge smile and eyes full of tears. My wife says to me, "Where do you put it all?" I look at her and say, "I don't know, it's just there." It seems endless..."boundless" and greater than you, uncontainable. When we were newly married and pregnant with the first one, my wife would ask me, "How am I going to be able to love another person this much?" Not that she couldn't imagine it, but the love we had for each other was (is) so great it was hard to put your brain around it. Well the first kid came and of course the love was there. With the next one it was the same. The love just keeps coming. Sometimes you feel it so much that it really does seem too much to handle...like you will explode...like it is much more than you can contain...infinite in fact. I understand the need to use language that goes beyond the easily understood. I believe this is still a human attribute, though, which is why I have stated before that I have faith and hope in humanity. I know the great things that come from a boundless heart. As a believer would say, "I know it to be so, I have 'seen it', I can feel it. It is in me" One may call it God or god or Bob, but perhaps it is all the same. Struggling over symantics. Choking and fighting over words. To figure out a way to describe something so big. Or seemingly so big. What are we really talking about when we say heart. The figurative sense and is figurative in reality a way of describing that part of your brain, your personality? It is the brain. The boundless brain. It seems endless- the things we humans can accomplish. The boundlessness spans time and is an evolution. Standing at the top of the world trade center on August 11, 2001, I looked out and said, "WOW! Man made this." I imagined the men that built it sitting back after it was complete and saying, "Holy sh!t we built this" and the feeling of a collective greatness, something bigger than themselves, coming over them the same way it had over me after building something amazing with others. Then I thought, "Man it would suck to fall from here." One month to the day later people did and a sadness and hurt came over me and seemed greater than I could contain. It felt almost like a collective pain in the air for weeks after that. There was also a collective purpose in the following days. It was almost a tangible feeling. These days I feel a sense of personal potential. I know I am cabable of many great things. Not in a cocky sort of way but in the sense that I know that I know that I have the potential for greatness. But not just potential, the feeling of actually possessing it but not able to "tap" it yet, but it is there. So in a way it is as though I feel like I have something greater than myself embedded within me. So, you see where I am going with this... I think I sort of understand the sense of God or a god, but I don't call it that. Nor do I think it to be a bad or evil thing to believe that this power or potential comes from little ol' me. The power to love, the power to connect, create, and the boundless potential that comes with that. Mine is a rum and coke....hold the rum.

LG, I'm sorry to hear about your mom as well and think the help you give these folks in tough times is a noble thing. Although, how do you go about it? I would think that if I spoke to relatives that know my take on religion and God, they would not appreciate it if I started "speaking their language" in their time of need. How do you go about it without sounding disingenuous? Templelady, I disagree. I can love someone without ever letting them know and without ever acting on that love. When I act on that love or manifest that love, the act is not love- I communicate that love. Love is the motivation, the concept, behind the hug, the comforting words, the kindness, the gentleness, the care, etc. And is it really just unconditional acceptance? Acceptance of what? Into what? Unless you are a universalist, I would say that according to the Bible God's love is not at all unconditional acceptance.

I don't mean to critique your feelings or your beliefs TL, I'm just going to tell what I get from what you wrote. It seems to me what you value whether it is from God or anyone else is unconditional love or as I call it- love. "God is love" Well which is it? Is love a concept? Is it a chemical reaction? Is it a persona? If so, what other abstract concepts have personas? It might be good to know. Personally, the love I have for and from my family is way more unconditional than what I have read about or experienced with the God of the Bible. I feel sad when people say that they don't have that on a human level. It exists.

Doojable, You are exactly right and wrong. You are making that assumption and it only becomes circular because of it. Without the assumption, there is no circular thinking circulating. I will answer your question anyway, even though you pretty much already did ;) This wasn't a wake up one morning and hit my head on the toilet sort of realization. It took time. In the ministry your beliefs were to be in "your heart", the seat of your personal life, planted by the waters and shall not be moved, unquestionable. This is not how real life works. At least it is not how it should work- holding your brain hostage to one idea. We were quickly brought from one assumption- "the integrity of the word", to in order to get to the deep stuff you have to go from the milk to meat. Before we knew it there was a lot hanging on a couple of ideas that needed to be believed, solid as a rock, but if you didn't, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. The whole wise man foolish man idea seemed off once I realised that the rock I was building my house on was the "king of hearts." "And the house came tumbling down..." , but I still had all the cards though. Being cards, there wasn't much to cry over. I flipped them right side up to see their face and realised- hey these things are still good for playing Ducky, Slap Jack, Oh Hell, Bullsh!t, and of course Go Fish. For me, I started questioning things that were bothering me a little and that led to other questions which led to the big ones. Perhaps I am an easy going guy and perhaps I was never as "sold out" as I thought I was, but it became clear to me that these seemingly big quesitons didn't have real answers and that didn't really affect me as a person- who I am - how I act. Sorry if I don't know that expression, but I can't help but think of Pavlov's dogs. I guess it isn't an unringing but rather realising that perhaps that ringing in my ears was possibly from too many years of "teachers" screaming at me from a podium. Perhaps it was that I realised that the clarity of what I thought was the ringing of the bell of God was really just something called a dial tone. ...Or perhaps once I got to a certian point I realised there was no way to believe in a god without faith and that I had no need of faith. Now sometimes people hear that and think I am being condiscending, like I am better because I don't NEED faith, and you have some sort of deficiency because you do. I'm not. People are different. I don't understand everyone or everything. Perhaps the biggest thing to get used to was not thinking I knew a lot of things absolutely. Getting comfortable with the idea that I could be wrong on any number of things is a little different from building a house on a rock and being planted by the waters of truth. Then again perhaps it wasn't all that hard. I had grown used to thinking I could be wrong after many years of having to confirm thoughts with leadership and after arriving at a place after asking questions without absolute answers. Sorry for being long winded, but you guys asked. I guess in short... I examined that belief in God and realised I didn't believe it and perhaps I never really did.

I must apologize, I have not read all of the thread, maybe 4 pages. So if I repeat a point already brought up, I'm sorry. I think the way I got to where I am now (well, the begining of that journey) was to stop for a moment and not assume there was a god. That did not suddenly turn my life upside down, nor did the rules of logic force me to disgard every other idea I ever held. Instead, I held on the the many good sound concepts that I knew and asked myself "is this still good without Godand why?" Turns out that most things that are good with a god are good without one. There is still sound reason without a god. It leads to many sound conclusions on why to be a good person and why to not kill your neighbor for no reason at all or why not to with good reason. For me this process wasn't a painful one. Leaving the ministry was painful for me, but to stop assuming was not. In fact the process has been rather enjoyable and peaceful and fun and enlightening. There are certain things that each of us value and many of them are probably the same or similar to eachother. Hold on to those things. I will not cheat on my wife becuase I love her and I value her love and I value the relationship we have. I do not want to destroy that or comprimise that so the thought of cheating isn't even entertained. It isn't an option. It isn't a thought. And not because the "Bible tells me so." I value life, both my own and that of others. I take that and act accordingly. These things that I value and base the my actions upon are not really all that situational. They may shift a little here and there, possibly the same way a believer at times has thoughts and actions that aren't quite right on with their beliefs. These values are both something outside myself and wholey in my self and for myself. It serves me to serve others. It helps me to help others. When I act in this way it satisfies the need I have to hold on to the things that I value. It also satisfies the needs of others. I like what Todd was saying earlier about this being our workshop, our studio. It is a process we go through- finding out what we value and how to secure that value in our life. Sometimes that may be letting go and smashing what was before and realising that vessel was clay and that clay was dirt and that dirt seemed like nothing... but now you see it to be everything. Is it God's love you value or is it the concept of love that you value? Is there a difference and does it matter? Does the God aspect of it matter? Or is that god a means to an ends? I saw a number of people saying things like "if I am wrong I have wasted nothing, but if an unbeliever is wrong they will have an eternity to"......I don't know, say "my bad". My moto is: If one unverifiable concept may be true, an infinite number of other unverifiable concepts could also be true. So I would ask, an unbeliever of what? You had better be a believer of everything...just in case. You don't want the "Christians will eternally be poked with cattle prods by the ghosts of very angery cows while being laughed at by small lizard fairies" option to be true. Just a thought. and why does this emoticon say "spy" and not "pot head?"

Yeah, as a designer and artist Way Decor always bothered me. I mowed lawns for a while and as an artist I got into making mower lines interesting...doing stupid sh!t only someone in an airplane could appriciate. Well, I brought that idea to our fellowship livingroom. I made it so the vaccume lines alternated light and dark and not with the normal zig-zag pattern that vaccuming usually produces. I picked up the vaccume at the end of every push and each push of the vaccume went from one side of the room to the other. So when I was done we had a monochomatic striped carpet. Much the same way you alter the way you cut your grass, I altered the pattern of our carpet fibers. I know, I'm looney. Most people dug it and thought it was a cool thing but I mostly did it out of boredome and some sort of creative outlet. The last fellowship house I lived in (the same one I vaccumed this way) was as sterile as a hospital. In fact, I had non- way friends that said this to me. The FC that I lived with was a man of course and he made sure all the colors of the house were manly- mostly blues and some greens. I was a hotel room...well, motel maybe. This was not so in my room. Friends told me it looked like something out of a design magazine. It was warm and modern and rich with different wood colors, abstract painting I had done, and yes, it was "decent and in order." My bathroom was not bad either. Which brings up another story I think I have sposted before. One class we held at our house, the LC puts some faithfull slave in charge of the set up of the house. Well, of course we cleaned the place spotless before they came to clean and set up and everything looked perfect the way it always did (shutter). Well, this lady pulls me out of the kitchen and brings me to my bathroom (the guest bathroom) to show me a hair on the floor that she apparently wanted me to pick up. So I did. I was a little annoyed but I did. Then she told me we needed to replace the towels so they would all match. I began to explain to her that the towels "matched" matched the colors in the shower curtain and how everything in the bathroom was coordinated together and that the towels actually looked really good that way. Well, she reiterated that she was put in charge of the set up of the entire house, including my bathroom, by the Rev. Huckelberry Finn and it was her job to make sure that the house was the best for the household and she wanted matching towels. Yes, dear. All blue towels it is. This may seem stupid, but it annoyed the hell out of me, as you can tell. Scarred me for life. B)

Congratulations guys. That is very cool. Another greazy match made in...well, lets not get into that. Glad you guys are now legal. :P

When I was young, a wee little wayfer, we moved quite a bit. Each new town or new school we arrived at I was usually greeted by other kids that thought they needed to take me for a test drive to see if I was up to their high standards. You know, scrapping...fisticuffs...the backyard brawl...or any street or alley off school grounds would do. I had an older borther, still do, and I had learned with his help how to defend myself against much larger people. Well, what usually happened was they were obviously not afraid of my scrawniness and I was not afraid of their prepubescence, so it was ON! Each of us thought we could take the other. I for one KNEW it. I had to. There would be no point in going forward with this rite of passage if I didn't. In the end, though, neither of us really knew untill one of our a$$es was kicked, or at least hurting. If memory serves me correctly, there was not a time in which what I knew to be true (I would be the a$$ kicker) was not physically realised. At that point everyone knew the truth. I was cool enough to hang out with them, if not cool enough for them to hang out with me. Fast forward. I am an artist/designer/ /////. There are a lot of things that I know I can do. I know my abilities. Even with things I have never done before, I know I can do many of them. I am in a new town with little experience and a portfolio that is in shambles, but I have a few things in there. I met a lady at a party that needed a banister. I had never done a banister before, but I knew I could do it. Eventually the guy that was going to do the banister didn't come through. The gal knew I was a furnituremaker (one of the "/'s") and thought surely I could do a banister. Well, she was right. She had faith in me for some reason having only seen a picture of one peice that I had on my digital camera at the party. At first she wanted me to be sure I thought I could do it which after looking things over I was sure and I did it. After seeing my kick a$$ banister that I did for her she considered my offer to help in the design of her kitchen. I have done construction before, built and installed cabinets before, been trained as an industrial designer (we don't usually do kitchens), and I had been more or less a design consultant for my inlaw when he remodeled his kitchen. I know I can do this. I know it will be a really cool kitchen/ family room. I know it because I know me. Of late though, this lady needed some reassurance. She began to look at the reality that is my lack of experience. Today I reassured her. She has her doubts, but has faith in me. I am greatful for that. The reality is that there is a small chance that I won't do a good job. OK, no there isn't, but maybe a fraction of a fraction of a percent chance. I know I can do this because this is who I am. The reality is they won't really know it untill they are standing there picking their jaws up off the floor when we are done..... or when they are cursing me as I flee in my not so sporty car. You get the point. There have been times when I pointed out to the left field fence on the softball field and moments later danced around the diamond as the outfielders were jumping the fence to retrieve my homer like the dogs that they are. There have also been times when I've pointed out there to left field in complete confidence only to feel the cool breeze made from the ball and my bat passing in the warm summer afternoon. Some things we know and some things we know and other things we don't but we think we do and other things we don't and know we don't and some of those times we are right and some of those times we are wrong. "And you can fool some of them some of the time but you can only fool half them all of the time." You know thats wrong, but its right. Its not Bob but the Dead Milkmen. You wouldn't blame the lady for not choosing my lack of experience over someone more qualified. Don't blame me for thinking that perhaps the things you think you know, and can't even give me a single picture off of your digital camera, are utterly false. Would it not be more reasonable for this gal to spend quite a bit of money on someone who designs kitchens for a living? Sure it would. Would it be unreasonable for her friends to come to her and say, "What are you crazy?" Of course not. Should I stop typing now? Certainly.

That is 11 million in total assets. That does not mean 11M in deposits. The average shareholder has about $9500 in the credit union-again that is not deposits. What I found interesting was that there appear to be about 4 people working for the Credit Union each with a total pay and benefit compensation of an average of 18K for FY'05. That is for full time employment. That is more than 25K less than the average Credit Union employee. Talk about abundantly sharing! :blink:

OK let us review what you just did. -You posted some sarcasm about Joe Smith smoking something. -I turned it back at you- sarcastically still Then -You turn my sarcasm into a literal statment by way of your question: "so you are really saying those who have continued to hold onto 'majority' of doctrine learnt in twi are idiots and on drugs?" BTW, you said idiots, not me. You also added "learnt", but I won't hold it against you. Nice try. I am not defending any idea of a "Hell planet" but I would suspect the only music playing will be country. You know the songs where they are crying about all the things they've lost and women who've left them? That sort of thing. Bandana? Hell yes, you can wear your bandana. Actually, it is part of the dress code. In fact, anyone you see wearing a bandana today is actually seed of the serpent. They are working for the other side. And yes the LDS are actually that whacked. About as whacked as you, you whacky little dingo.

Kevlar is correct! Kevlar- thick but swingingly so. B) Now's it's your turn. No wait, wrong forum, wrong thread. Now if only I could think of a song with "a$$" in it for Allan. Actually, Allan, I shouldn't. You gave me a good laugh. You make light of her beliefs while, to me, your beliefs seems just as drug indused if not more so seeing as you defend your dillusion with much more blind vigor. :huh: "In the after life, you will be headed for the serious strife. Now you make the scene all day, but tomorrow there'll be HELL to pay."

The D and the A and the M and the N and the A and the T and the I-O-N, lose your face, lose your name, then you get fitted for a suit of FLAME!

I still string my dining room chairs. :D As far as doctrine, no. As far as other more practical life things, some. Although, I think most of them are probably things that I would have learned either through having decent parents (which is hard to tell if I would have had those without twi, but I suspect they would be) or through life experience combined with a good moral core (which I think would still be there regardless of twi). Having grown up in the ministry I can't say that I have had any long term experiences with religious groups. I have had many short term experiences. I have also had tons of personal experiences with other christians, which when talking religion with them gave a totally different and, looking back, a more positive impression than the many twi personal relations I have had. So, yes, they were different and better. The difference that I think many here have illuded to, if not outright said, is the degree of control. While I think to some degree this is a quality of any religion and many things in life, I think it is more of a negative thing in religion many times and definitely a negative and, to a much worse degree, a hurtful quality in twi. Is this what confuses you? The difference or the reaction to twi involvement that many here have, given that, NO, it wasn't ALL bad. I still operate or "do things" I learned in highschool. There were a number of bad things that happened to me in highschool that stay with me to this day. But, those experiences didn't out wiegh the good things that happened. They weren't so bad that they caused me to focus on those negative events. Nor do I still have family and friends stuck in highschool. Today, we can all sit back and laugh and compare highschool horror stories. My wife on the other hand, hates highschool. She had much worse thigns happen at that time and while she learned many things during that part of her life from numerous teachers, she does not think of highschool without thinking about the bad things. You know what I'm saying? Now imagine if the things that happened to her happened over many more years, happened much more frequently, to more people, and her highschool didn't acknowledge that it was or had happened there. Add to that, if the people complaining were accused of being strange (read possessed) and just trying to close the one true school in the world, then you might have a website like this one for her specific highschool. Look around, there aren't any ex-Church of Christ sites around. There are ex-Jahovah's Witnesses sites and ex-mormon sites (no offence to our mormon posters). The company that TWI is in is not your everyday church or religion. It is "something different." Sorry for the long post and if I was reading into your post too much. Although, your name IS confused and this was your first post, so, I can't imagine this hurting at all. peace

When it comes to any law it is not there just to say, "hey don't do this." Like, "Hey you're too stupid to figure out that you shouldn't murder someone, so listen here." It is to look at actions and behaviors and decide that certain ones can not go unpunished without hurting the community or society. Yes, there is a percentage of people that don't have normal limits and control over there actions and character. There could be tons of different reasons for someone to have such a personality. Them being extremely stupid, or evil, or unloving could be one of those but not necessarily the only one and not necessarily the root problem. It is like warning labels. You can always find a warning that just seems like insanity. "Do not injest" on an anti-freeze bottle. "Do not stick up your bum and lite." They make you laugh and wonder who the idiot was that did that. It only takes one idiot for a warning label and it takes a few more idiots for a law. When a law is both a social law and a religious law things tend to get out of hand. Don't smile on Sunday. Don't eat tuna caserole on Friday. There seems to be an inbetween area here in Galatians 3. Somewhere in between not going around killing people not using the law as a source book for all things Godly. It says that the law isn't unGodly but that we are no longer under the schoolmaster and shouldn't try to use the law as a righteiousness gauge. So where is the line? Is is so cut and dry? Why? Why not?

That would have been a couple of years ago. It may have gotten better, but it isn't like the place was in shambles. It just wasn't the pristine turd it was while the ministry had it. Although, for a place that is that big and that is shooting to be as big as he wants it to be I would think that he would want it at that level. As I said though, he has a lot of work to do (I don't know how many people work there) and I can imagine them doing tours for old wayfers.

Thanks guys and gal. You basically put what I was thinking into better words. By focus, I meant what yall have said. Are you focused on living according to the law or according to faith or the spirit. Living by the spirit seems to be what the NT repeats over and over again, yet Werwille and others have felt that to be too spiritual, as in "spiritualism." So he even made up a formula on how to walk by the spirit. What a list that was..."It may be necessary to remove unbelievers from the room" lol. Although, I see where they are coming from. The "all or nothing" concept doesn't seem to fit. The first two commandments are what the rest hang on. Those are still things that we are told to do in the NT. "Thou shalt not kill." That is obviously covered by the first two but it is apart of the Law. So if we do those are we not to do the rest? How can you say all or nothing when these common sense commandments are there. You aren't going to forsake those, so then are you required to do the rest, and if not which ones and why? Living by the spirit is a mojor point but is that assuming that we are not going to break the law in the process? I don't mean break the law in a "fear of the consequences" sort of way, but in a "concerned about doing the will of God" sort of way. If so are we supposed to already be to a level that we live by a higher standard and don't even have to think about the specifics of the law because we should be in a place where we don't even consider them? With an "old man" how can you not? Bringing it back to debt, are you just to judge each situation on it's own by the spirit or would it be silly to think that living by the spirit would contradict what the law says about debt? OR Is it that we are to live by the spirit and not be concerned with the specifics of the law, only loving God and your neighbor, and use those two to guide your personal decision making whether it fits according to the rest of the Law or not?

Yeah, it is a sports retreat/ complex or something now. I stopped by one time on our way to Chicago to show my wife some of my wacky past. I stopped a guy in one of those green cushmans's (I guess they sold everything with it) and acted as though I didn't know what the place was. He told me about the sports gig and how the women's olympic soccer team was scheduled to come and practice there. He also gave me a breif history witch included the bible college, convent, and natural spring thing. I have to say, it did look a little run down. He doesn't have all those families to slave away on the grounds. It even still had the parking spot reserved for the corps coordinator. I got my picture in from of that. Other than that one guy the place looked like a ghost town. I can see why he wouldn'twant to give tours. He has his hands full. If you google map it as a satelite image you can see the baseball fields and other sports fields. I think someone did tha there not long ago.