Twinky

It's much more deeply seated than that, Grace. Sis has some psychological problems, and I am the unwitting focus for these. It is absolutely nothing to do with me. She has some sort of anger management issues (I believe) and I am a "safe" focus for these, where she dare not express them to the person(s) concerned. I have sought counselling/reconciliation with the aid of a totally independent minister associate, my Mum's minister, whom I hardly know (my sister would know her much better) - it was a disaster and the minister was shocked at the violence of sis's litany of issues. I believe it is a spiritual issue. I (and others) pray for her, and for the other people caught up in this. It causes much deep hurt within family and friends. But there is nothing to be done until she herself recognises that she has a problem that needs to be addressed in some way. She is a nice caring (but controlling) person to everyone else and if anyone met her outside of any context that involves me, they would probably like her. Meet her in any context that has a connection to me, and they would get the cold shoulder (at best). To bring this back to the context of this thread, she is loved, treated well and kindly, but every effort is turned back. It is rebuffed, and worse, seen as some effort to manipulate her or control her life in some way. It is hard to love someone like that, but I do and nonetheless would do whatever I could to help her and would never do anything to harm her. Did not the Lord seek us out when we were totally unlovable, rejecting, and vile? Does he not welcome us back with open arms and complete forgiveness? Does he not hanker after reconciliation? As soon as we are ready, we are embraced in his love. And that is my deep desire, with my sister - and for all others that are lost in their worlds of hatred, misery, violence, addiction, or whatever their problem is.

rrobs, you're welcome to go and speak to my sister. Exemplary Christian that she is, she lets me know that I am a vile and unforgivable person because, it seems, I called her a name when we were both little kids, thereby totally ruining her entire life. I'm talking 50 years or more ago.

I posted this on another recent thread: (Oops, the bit at the end about Bolshevik's comment shouldn't be in the quote but I don't seem to be able to edit it out. I know I put the quote marks in the right place!)

I don't know if you in the US will be able to follow this link but it's a really interesting series of 15 min talks by Neil MacGregor, ex curator of the British Museum, now working in some top museum in Germany. Excellent credentials. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia, from which longer article I learn, to my surprise, that he is a devout Christian. He has run several most interesting series on examining the backgrounds to many artefacts and currently he is looking at Living with the Gods. It's of general interest, not even remotely considering the Bible, but is considering the routines of religions (that's plural), what they might have meant then and now, and similarities and differences. He bases his talk around some artefact that may or may not have (to us) religious significance. The artefact might be a garment, a coin, a shard... I mention this because it might give some insight into how some different religious practices came into existence. How those practices play out in other cultures, religions, time periods. One recently was about sacrifice, starting with Incas, moving through various stages, taking in Christianity, and moving forward. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09c1mhy If that doesn't work, you could try bbc.com (rather than bbc.co.uk).

Might it be okay to think of "government" as "orderliness"? Rather than any specific form of rule, domination, etc. God had seen (Genesis) that the world had become chaotic, and imposed orderliness upon it. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace - orderliness. Christians are supposed to be peaceful, respectful, orderly, both in the church and in their relationships with other people. We are not "peaceable" if we are being anarchic, butting up against people, arguing and fighting. That, however, does to mean that we should not stand up for what we believe in: Mordecai [book of Esther], whose act of civil disobedience was not words but simply refusing to bow when the pompous bully Haman passed by. But Mordecai did not fight against the regime of the time - in fact, quite the opposite - his submission to that regime brought about hte liberation of his people.

Who cares who'd write it? Who the h311 would read it?

TLC, God as Father I have a concept of. And that's parochial. God as Patriarch is also too parochial. In fact, it's a figure of speech that is designed to help us understand and develop a relationship with God. It's only a figure of speech. God as HUGE and the creator of the far sides of the universe, the beginner of time, and the ender of Time, and entirely present throughout - that's a very big concept. When you get more of the HUGEness of God, then you understand more of why the person of Jesus came, to personify God. To "limit" God, if you like, so that God is small enough for us to begin to understand. Now, God as the father of LIGHTS - that's much bigger. Lights not being just light, and the sun and moon, and the stars, but the galaxies that are so far away that space telescopes can only just see them. The father of these lights, for example - this astonishing infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space telescope was taken Sept 2016.

Big brother is watching you!

I still don't feel that I have a proper concept of Jesus. At least - of Jesus now. I don't doubt the physical Jesus of two millennia ago. It occurs to me that I don't have a big enough concept of "God," either. My view is far too parochial. God is the God of the universe, not of solely of Planet Earth, or even (merely) of our solar system. Who, then, or what, is God? An energy stream? Plasma? The bond that holds atoms and molecules together? And yet, some - entity - that possesses what we (in our minute and dust-like brains) might call thought processes - some discrete entity that occurs literally everywhere, always. Sometimes I read a Bible and substitute every reference to "God" with "Love." It makes for an interestingly different read.

For the above Bible study group, I use BibleHub to help me prepare. There are many different versions of the Bible that can be viewed, and many different commentaries. Some of the commentaries are helpful, others are clearly written by someone with an agenda, and others are so old and written in such a dense style that they are almost unreadable. But hey - there's freedom to look at these! Which, even if densely written in an old-fashioned style, are still more readable and sensible than the kiddie-style contradictory stuff in the collaterals.

I like to examine what I think, and ponder why I think it. I try to put Way doctrine out of my mind - after all, I had some Christian upbringing before I got involved with that - but TWI came along at a time when I was wanting to know more, a decade or so after having been bored silly in my teens with "church." I go to a little Bible study group and we are slowly working through the gospel of John. The study guidebook is by Tom Wright. It asks some pretty weird questions, and mostly we sort of ignore it. It does get us talking, however, with differing views of where we are and how we got there. Jim (in his 70s), a lovely man, "doesn't even know if he's a Christian any more." This is after years of "outreach" and he currently is very involved with many church activities and volunteers at the local homeless centre, run by a local Christian charity. His wife, Anne, (with an E) is currently a lay Reader, which is a sort of church official a little bit lower than an ordained minister - she's undergone a lot of study to achieve this status. So she takes Christianity very seriously and is into Christian meditation, stillness, and Benedictine study (whatever that might comprise). Derek, 70s, is a born-into-the-church Anglican Christian and profoundly Trinitarian. Alex, (30s?) is a Russian from an Orthodox background. Lorna (30s) had been raised as a Catholic. Emma, early 20s, is very quiet and looks a bit bewildered at times. Rebecca, 50s, a nurse, comes out with interesting ideas. Ann (no E), late 30s, is a lesbian (and, in our now-defunct Sunday evening service, occasionally put the prayers together and they were always awesome, tender, and thoughtful). I'm not really sure what the background is, of the 3 or 4 others in the group. And then there's me: profoundly non-Trinitarian. Ex-cultie. So you can see there's scope for a lot of new ideas. Every session, someone different leads, based on the Wright book, and researches the bits that appeal to them. But everyone else chips in with their ideas. I find it interesting that Jim (doesn't even know if he's a Christian any more) is himself of interest and why he thinks that is kindly explored; whereas when I disclosed I'm non-Trini, that provoked some more aggressive discussion. Or perhaps that's my hyper-sensitivity? No, the rest definitely think I'm strange. What does this add to this thread? I dunno. But I do enjoy the open discussion in this group, feel free to change or develop my views, and definitely don't feel I have to pander to any "party line." I simply don't care what they think of me. They have no power to condemn or guilt me into saying or doing anything.

Aye aye, Chockfull.

There is some interesting material in this thread that doesn't relate at all to the topic title, all the stuff about administrations etc. Would be great if that could be split off so that that interesting trail of thought(s) doesn't get lost. There's a lot of other material on the thread title outside of the "admins" stuff that bears consideration on its own merits. Mods???

Great song to start the day with.

Skyrider, at least give a semi-respectable reference - not The Sun, a comic book if ever there was! A newspaper for people who haven't learned to read yet. So therefore they don't know the difference between BUBONIC plague and PNEUMONIC plague, which this rag appears to use interchangeably. That being said, what they describe appears to be a pretty bizarre ritual. If true. Imagine... doing a sort of conga round the Fountain of Living Waters, passing a corpse around. Actually, it's a wonder that at the time, the corpse wasn't embalmed and put on display, like Lenin's, and then it could be brought out at every anniversary event. Reckon anyone would notice that it really wasn't alive?

I thought Claudettee had left years ago. Obviously not. I'm glad these people had a good time at the concert. However, I'm not tempted to check out the next one. I remember I thought some of the concerts were good, too, in my Waydaze... well, inspirational, in a cultish way. I'd have a different opinion nowadays.

T-Bone, do start a thread: "The Word of God is the Will of God??" You could kickstart it with an extract from your above post. The very expression gives me the creeps these days.

Very eloquent post, T-Bone.

Hmmmm... food for thought. TWI as a dystopian society. Yep. Having just watched and re-read The Handmaid's Tale [Margaret Atwood], set in a dystopian semi-future semi-now period, I can relate to that view. Scary in its insidiousness, the push from normal society and boundaries to a very weird society, with manufactured crises as excuses for pushing ever more. Not that TWI is the only cult that does that; they all do, by their nature. At least most of us escaped alive.

"BellaDonna" - heh heh, funny, DWBH.

Hmm. Going from Van Wert to New Knoxville is about an hour. They delivered the first load at 1.30pm. Presumably unloaded the van and took some of the heavier stuff to locations such as sitting rooms, bedrooms, etc. Had a break for a meal, no doubt, then set off and loaded some more stuff. An hour to travel to VW, then load up and drive back (another hour), to arrive at 10.30pm. Allowing for travel time, that leaves 7 hrs to unload, eat/rest, and repack in VW. I have shifted a lot of stuff in my time: my own and other people's stuff. A 3-bed house-load, van packed with stuff, can be unloaded by only two people in an hour; a little longer to load up. Less time, of course, with more people - which the implication is, in the excerpt. So: how much stuff had they got? What happened to "travel light"? (Or maybe, "travel light" came about because of the huge amount of junk they'd accumulated that they didn't need? ) Or maybe, even more -ishly ... ... were the men were busy keeping out of the way of the fellowship? Heck, perhaps even then they realised how boring "fellowship" had become. (I'd better go and play with my cats before I have any more naughty ideas, LOL)

Yeah, I wondered that too, T-Bone. I wondered if it were a contribution towards the expenses of some of the overseas students from Africa. When I was in rez, I seem to recall that a couple of them (from poor parts of Africa) got "scholarships" - ie, they didn't have to contribute the amount required from in-rez Corps every semester. Just a waiver of fees - don't know if their airfares, etc, were also paid or contributed to. And I do know that some money had been sent to help in Zaire. How much and how often I have no idea. But in any event, we're talking late 90s/early 00s - not right at the start of the ministry.

People here might be interested in the following, from the local church newsletter this week: The October SPCK [Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge] Book of the Month: "Reformation Myths" by Rodney Stark. 31 October 2017 marks 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church. Reformation Myths: Five centuries of misconceptions and (some) misfortunes is an entertaining and enlightening exposé of over-inflated claims about the Reformation and what it has done for us. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reformation-Myths-Centuries-Misconceptions-Misfortunes/dp/0281078270/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1508543962&sr=1-1&keywords=reformation+myths I haven't read it yet but it might be a good read.

@T-Bone - "sticks" are "twigs" that are no longer connected to the root. They are twigs where the leadership has left HQ. No life in a stick. No nourishment from the root. Just dry. So, where a whole bunch of people had left because they followed their region leader when he left/was kicked out, then those twigs became sticks. If those R&R people had been running "twigs" or fellowships, those fellowships would automatically be designated "sticks" when their leader was M&A'd. Perhaps this is an expression from after your time. LCM used it a lot and was always jibing at "sticks."

You rub two "sticks" together.