Mike

Why would God take him out of sight on the Ascension day? God saw that as the best plan for us.

Like myself, I imagine we all go in and out of fellowship. When we are in we can do some good. When we are out things go badly.

The words that Twinky missed, I reposted with color to show what she missed. I was on her side and said so. If she had gotten what I said she wouldn't have needed to ask me, especially in such an accusatory manner. Here's a replay: Long before I took the class, while in High School, I theorized on something troubling me, that seemed to be stamped into human genetics. I first noticed it in the 6th grade, and my young RC mind couldn't fathom it at all. But by High School I think I knew the score. I believe the modern "Me Too" movement is onto roughly the same troubling thing. My summation of what I saw early in my High School scientific life was "The Football Captain always gets his choice of the cheerleaders." I didn't like it, being skinny and doomed to football failure, but I could see it was true. Fifty years later and the Me Too people point it out in nearly every power based human organization. I didn't bat an eyelash at King David's choice of the cheerleaders. It bothered me, as usual, but it didn't surprise me.

socks! I'm sorry I missed this.

On 2/10/2018 at 2:09 PM, Mike said: Has anyone thought through how stupid it would be if I dropped PFAL because of the posts here? The collaterals have worked fine for me all my life. How dumb for me to drop them and then ask for guidance as to what do I replace them with? Think it through. Pretend I repented of PFAL. What would you tell me next? What positives do you all have cooking? .Hi Rocky. My comments to your post in blue. I see the dilemma. Nobody who invests so much time and energy into developing a belief system is going to give it up willy nilly. That's why sociologists have recognized that it takes a significant emotional event for adult humans to change their values/beliefs. In Kuhn’s philosophy of science nobody who invests time and energy into developing a paradigm is going to give it up willy nilly, ESPECIALLY if that paradigm WORKS pretty good. It takes a significant laboratory-wrong prediction for scientists to change their paradigm. What you have, Mike, as you yourself described, is a system of belief based solely on intellectual pursuit and near academic rigor. Until you realize that's not the genuine basis for that system, you'll trudge along happily alone in that belief... perhaps. The “genuine basis” you refer to is a contestable item. You and others here over think that written PFAL was tainted by its handler. I do not. It’s completely sanitized IMO. I've noted that you have indicated your reason for participating at GSC is nostalgia-based and that you long for fellowship with likeminded believers. (If that is not a correct understanding of what you've posted, please clarify) .On returning here I was not sure of the reasons. At one point I listed several, and at the end I suddenly realized nostalgia should be on there. What I meant by that is anything grad and grad talk. Stories from grads long ago that I knew certain slices of. It wasn’t nostalgia for like minded believers. I gave up on a lot of that years ago. I was yearning enough for any grad talk that I’d tolerate non-likeminded grads. I was also searching Facebook and YouTube for PFAL grads, and finding some. Then a few weeks later, and learning more of the horror stories, and how recent some were, and all that got me thinking deeper on WHY was I here stirring up people who are already stirred up? THAT’s when I figured that nostalgia was pretty much the biggest reason and not bottom on the list. But you've also said that you KNOW (not "knew") plenty of pro-pflap believers. Is that really the case? Lest you think I'm trying to trap you, that's not the case. I'm just interested in you clarifying your situation. .Yes to the above. What I mean by “proPFAL” is NOT that they are totally proPFAL like me. In some degree they liked it before and they like it now. They may run a fellowship, and have some collaterals on the shelf, but hardly ever brought out. Maybe once in a while they will do a teaching that mirrors what they learned in a collateral. Next week they may do a teaching that contradicts a collateral. Another way they are proPFAL is that if I were to bring up something from PFAL they would not blanch. They do not entertain the Pure Evil model at all. They often agree with me that in fellowship: VPW did great for us. But out of fellowship: he screwed things up for us. We differ a little on what he did great, and what that quality it was, but it is generally positive. Unlike here.

I have not had time to read anything posted since last night, but I look forward to it. Meanwhile I heard an interesting radio show last night while driving. It was on football, one of my least favorite topics. But this discussion was on the Pure Evil model as it exists in modern society. I found a recording of the show and am extracting points and links. This discussion was on hating evil and the Pure Evil model that is emerging in modern culture. This confirmed a lot of the hunches I’ve been developing on how VPW is viewed here. Food for thought. This radio discussion started in football, then went into fairy tales for models of evil in olden times, then politics. I’m extracting links and names. So far: ThePatriots Aren't Evil. They're Just Losers. – Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-05/the-patriots-aren-t-evil-they-re-just-losers The good guy/bad guy myth - Catherine Nichols, Aeon Essays. — Jump The Fence http://www.jumpthefence.com/news-2/2018/1/31/the-good-guybad-guy-myth-catherine-nichols-aeon-essays

Rocky, just putting this here, easier to find. I gotta go dancing.

It wasn't a part of an argument for me to mention that. I just wondered how many posters here could actually think I'd have such a cartoon mentality as to post here 5000 times 10 years ago, to come back here still on fire with positive reports on how I spent my summer vacation for 10 years, only to drop my working, functioning, delightful core belief system from reading a hundred posts, and then adopting the Pure Evil model, to then shut down my computer and live with my new CreaseGod. At least Rocky got it, that that was never going to happen. Geeeesh!

Whoa! Cafe Noir here. No, you guesses wrong. I think about him when I'm here, but I prefer the ideas. I was talking about the absent Christ benefits on another thread. Ever think Christ being absent or not personally present would have benefits attached? Think on it a little, and get back to me if you can't think of any benefits. I like these ideas much more than talking of recent dreary history.

I had written: .Depends on where you look. Look in the collaterals, like I did mostly, and it's a different world. I think I can claim with some authority that my world is VERY different from most here. I've been free of TWI interference for a full 30 years now. I've had 20 years of good times in the collaterals and almost nothing else. I will tell you, YES, my world is pretty darn positive and free of the baloney people wrestle with here.

We could discuss the absent Christ, but in Doctrinal. I suppose there's a thread on it somewhere. How many strong arguments have you considered that support "absent" ? The only viable alternative to absent is "pretend parousia" in my mind. I see benefits in an absent Christ. When did he leave and have a cloud hide him from sight. One minute on that Ascension day he is sent. Next minute he is ab-sent, or hidden from sight. What's so hard with that? Another straining of gnats in my book. *** It's easy to separate the ideas in the books from the man. The plagiarism fans think those ideas are not his to begin with. I like the ideas. I like how they fit together. I don't get fooled into abusing women at all from the collaterals. From a few Corps leaders I COULD have picked up that attitude, but I resisted each time.

I thought I was more defending myself. When VPW was wrong he was wrong, and I don't mind saying so. I do mind defending him, though. I am totally skeptical of the Pure Evil model here. I like looking closely at the ideas in print in the collaterals. I don't think that much about him.

You could have looked at with a heart, like Rocky did. Second, you misunderstood my reason. It wasn't trying to advance my argument. It was heart. It's a difficult concept to Google well.

Here So_crates. Just for you. And despite your new-found empathy, you still don't bat an eyelid. This I handled several times. I do very much feel for people who were hurt. You simply don't seem .you aint loolin' right. to care at all about the women.the women I care about. The second and third hand stories I keep an arms length from. I am reading penworks book. who were abused by your hero Objection. It's the ideal I focus on , not the man. VPW but merely appear to accept that abuse as a "fact of life" .VERY reluctantly after a lifetime of observing it everywhere from my 6th Grade class to a hundred power names on the MeToo lists in some way. Does it not anger you? .Angers me now, angered me then, and MUCH more than you can guess, and MUCH more than I care to detail in public. Would it anger you if your wife, your daughter, your granddaughter, your niece or female cousin, or colleague, or other females of your close acquaintance, were treated like this? .YES. By a supposed church minister? How would you feel if these females had been abused by the local RC "father," perhaps the minister who was in charge of your local RC church? .Some were, more boys though. Would you think the RC minister had some sort of "right" to sexually abuse women in his congregation?.No. If you have to ask me that you have not paid ANY attention to my heart, Twinky. I think you are asking for show, for the courtroom thrill of nailing a bad guy on the witness chair. As an aside, you at last appear to be accepting TWI as being a "power based human organization" - well, it certainly wasn't a Godly organization. .Depends on where you look. Look in the collaterals, like I did mostly, and it's a different world.

Thanks, Rocky. I feel a good conversation being offered here. I need time to re-read and ponder responses. That time is not now and maybe not tonight. It's the weekend. I'm kind a looking for calming conversation that can wind down my posting to tiny trickles. I'm still trying to turn the faucet off.

Has anyone thought through how stupid it would be if I dropped PFAL because of the posts here? The collaterals have worked fine for me all my life. How dumb for me to drop them and then ask for guidance as to what do I replace them with? Think it through. Pretend I repented of PFAL. What would you tell me next? What positives do you all have cooking?

edited for unnecessary volatility, especially with red fonts.

None of these supposed preemptive "set ups" worked on me. Maybe I am too innocent. There's no way the wording of the David incident dulled any of my conscience. I could see that "fooling around" was dangerous, not a legal or moral right. I could then and still can see actual modern kingdoms ALL AROUND me where the kings have all the girls. This does not dull me either. I'm impressed how in imaginative people can be to see evil where it is not.

I always saw that "right" as being a practical right, and never a legal right. I've often seen the practical rule over the legal, and in modern times. Some sports caster may have a legal right to speak his opinion, but as soon as he steps on the toes of racism or homosexuality he's severely sanctioned. This serves as a precedent for other sports casters to fear losing their jobs and their PRACTICAL rights are curtailed. It has nothing to do with legal and moral; it's what's actually practiced regularly. I see the entire David incident as told in PFAL as instructive on how the human things back in Biblical cultures was much the same human things today.

Yes, I was trying to show her that her impressions and disapproval were incorrect. She had completely misread me, and couldn't see that I was on her side on this issue. Instead of erring a tiny on the side of forgiving my all too abbreviated grammar, she erred a HUGE amount on the side of reading as much evil into what I was saying as lawlerly possible. Listen with meekness !!! Listen with meekness to not-so-veiled accusations of all sorts? No thanks. That's not what meekness is about. Her questions and demands were set-ups for punch lines and I know exactly how to dodge such accusations. It's called BE INNOCENT. I live my life honestly and answer to no baloney like that.

The context and the implication of that line told me the answer to "How could that happen?" It's part of the story in that WHO'S going to stop him if he's king? The line didn't tell me it was morally right, in any way, that David should have his way. It told me it was one of THOSE situations where the guy with the great power gets his way, right or wrong, and often wrong. I was very familiar with that common story at age 23.

I had never heard the David and Bathsheba story until taking the class. When the movie came out we RC children were forbidden to see it, so I heard the two names only. I had never heard the name Uriah. I was a blank slate and innocent on hearing this line in the class. I totally understood what was being taught from the context and from observing life. The teaching never morphed in my mind in any of the crazy ways described here. Maybe I'm too innocent.

As I said, I fear it is stamped into our genetics, both sexes. It's not civil, but it procreates in times severe austerity: famine, war, petulance, weather. That's why so many men want to be king.

My take on the word "technically" is different. When guys talk in a barber shop and some uses the word :technically" it's often used in a demeaning sense. Example: A technicality of the law, as spoken by barber shop patrons (not lawyers) is often not in line with common sense or with moral law. When I first heard this David line in PFAL it was obvious that David was WRONG morally, and that is stated as well. That he would get any woman in the kingdom is just THE WAY IT IS in human organizations. This having his way isn't moral, isn't the way good folks do things, but it IS UNFORTUNATELY the way it often gets done in the dog eat dog real world. I had come to all these conclusion myself prior to hearing the class. I knew the Captain of the Football team didn't just select his favorite girl to take her to the malt shop. Some of them used their looks and bravado to get the date, and then often used alcohol. In college most guys used that plus pot and other drugs to weaken girls. If date rape drugs had been in vented when I was in college half my friends would have tried them. I was appalled by it. I grew up with three baby sisters, and I was their protector. That's how I was raised. I was taught before puberty to protect them; after puberty I knew why. WW you may have had better friends in High School, but I knew a lot of ruthless ones. All the Harvey Wienstein tactics we heard about recently I've known to be used by Jr High and High School and college boys. The PFAL line just reflects the misfortunes of human life. What significance I took from it is that Biblical people of long agoi go through pretty much the same junk we have to go through. It broke down some of the distance I felt between me and Biblical times and people. To think that that line could be used to twist an innocent mind into sexual perversity is perverse in itself, and in a worse way.