Twinky

I am coming to the conclusion that rrobs may have Asperger's syndrome. Clearly intelligent, well able to function in a mechanical way (after all, he was a pilot) - but not able to comprehend the meaning behind the words. Asperger's people take things at face value; literally; black and white; that's it. Excellent at some tasks, logical, decisive. But lacking, as Rocky remarks, empathy and compassion. Asperger's people can learn a little of what goes on behind the words, but they don't comprehend it. There's more to life than that. Words encapsulate what goes on in the heart. "Love" as such isn't literal, isn't quantifiable or measurable, and isn't mechanical. Nor is "forgiveness." If these are any of those "mechanical" things, it's not love and it's not forgiveness. An alternative to rrobs having Asperger's is that he is simply a Waybot, the sort of person that spouts the scriptures but doesn't properly consider who he's talking to and what their needs might be, but simply talks right over them. These people are like records or tape machines. They aren't really interested in what the person they are talking to has actually said, don't pay attention to responses, and they don't "draw out" from whomever they are talking to what is really going on, what the problem really is. Sadly, Waybots don't even notice when responses cease. Rather, this seems to make them spout even more scripture of increasing irrelevance to the person they are addressing. I don't know whether Waybot-ness is learned behaviour or whether it patterns onto something in the Waybot's own personality. Whatever... they still miss the point that they are dealing with people and people's issues. And thus, (despite probably being well-meaning) they fail to be good ministers of the gospel. I prefer to think of rrobs as the former. The latter thought is too horrible to entertain.

T-Bone, what are you on???!!!

Thank you, Rocky. Looks like rrobs doesn't bother to read responses. He could easily have seen those posts. Not like this is a long thread; this is only page two.

I find it most interesting that rrobs posts something about being loving and getting on and loving the unlovable (paraphrase). I posted something very personal and directly on point; an initial post and a follow-up one. Other people have commented, and one kind poster has PM'd me. I know rrobs has had the opportunity to see it, because he has posted a couple of things after that. What has he said, or done? Just plain IGNORED IT and thus IGNORED ME. How very "loving" of him.

Hahahahahaha! PFAL was the biggest "clone class" going. A stolen class from someone who'd genuinely put it together. Oh, the irony!!

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.