The Goat Pen

..this town rips the bones from your back...


B. Springsteen

AlabamAlum wrote:

Excellent

Not to defend the gospels, but I think "fear" in the first passage is supposed to be understood as "respect"...

I have been told all my life that u should be fearful of god. His judgment, wrath, and the eternal punishment that I shall suffer as my flesh is burned off on the lake of fire for eternity. I have also been told that he is love and that he is merciful.

I think you could take your pick on its true intent.

I fear no one nor no situation. I can handle it.

Fuck you. Back off.

Now

Ditto.

Professor Tiger wrote:

innocentbystander wrote:Hey Tiger,

We got a woman in our parish that wants get married there. Sounds great right? Well, it appears that she was married before (marriage lasted 6 months) and she left her husband because "...she fell out of love." Those were her words. Okay, so now she wants to get married again, problem is with an excuse like "...falling out of love..." how can you possibly get by Luke 16:18?

One of the conveniences of non-denominationalism is every pastor/church gets to interpret the Bible (including Luke 16:18) as they see fit. So what is your church's/pastor's position on that situation?

He wont marry them.

He doesn't have to marry them. They can go to the JP and it will be legal. They can go to another Clergyman. They can get married by whomever they want. But this Pastor takes Luke 16:18 very seriously, very fundamentally.

AlabamAlum wrote:I have been told all my life that u should be fearful of god. His judgment, wrath, and the eternal punishment that I shall suffer as my flesh is burned off on the lake of fire for eternity. I have also been told that he is love and that he is merciful.

I think you could take your pick on its true intent.

Oh, I understand that most people today think of their fear of hell and torment and little devils with cloven hooves and pitchforks when they hear or read that they should fear god. But that wasn't the original meaning or intent. Of course, I don't know what the original hebrew or aramaic or greek word was used that was translated as "fear" (to mean "respect") in the 16th century, but that's just one more problem with trying to interpret the meaning of a text in translation...

Are you still being told you shall suffer as your flesh is burned off in a lake of fire? If so, I think I'd be telling those people to fuck off...

I already did.

Hedge,

Most of the time I ask for it. I love to discuss such things with believers. And even if such things were offered to me without my solicitation of such an exchange, It's not like I am offended that they believe that as a non- believer that their god will punish me anymore than I would take offense that people would warn me of an attach of a Sasquatch.

Well, my depiction of what i thought my response would be to such proclamations was mostly an afterthought. I was more amazed that anybody would still be saying stuff like that to you. I know we live in the south, and I suspect there are just as many fundie/loonies around here as in Alabama, but I can't remember the last time I got into a conversation with somebody and they told me I was going to hell. Now then, if you deliberately engage somebody in that and more or less ask them their opinion (which you no doubt already know), I can see it. But just an unsolicited "you're going to hell" (or the like), not so much. I think the thing that surprised me was that you said people have been telling you that type of stuff your whole life. I am somewhat curious and bemused at stuff like this on occasion, but that type of fire and brimstone directed at me consistently over years I think I would start finding annoying rather than amusing. But that's just me. I suspect you say some things that confound your interlocutors as well..

No, not unsolicited. But even if it weren't, I would be more amused than angered.

My penis area looks like Sasquatch if that counts. Its really bushy.

innocentbystander wrote:

Professor Tiger wrote:

innocentbystander wrote:Hey Tiger,

We got a woman in our parish that wants get married there. Sounds great right? Well, it appears that she was married before (marriage lasted 6 months) and she left her husband because "...she fell out of love." Those were her words. Okay, so now she wants to get married again, problem is with an excuse like "...falling out of love..." how can you possibly get by Luke 16:18?

One of the conveniences of non-denominationalism is every pastor/church gets to interpret the Bible (including Luke 16:18) as they see fit. So what is your church's/pastor's position on that situation?

He wont marry them.

He doesn't have to marry them. They can go to the JP and it will be legal. They can go to another Clergyman. They can get married by whomever they want. But this Pastor takes Luke 16:18 very seriously, very fundamentally.

So what's the problem?

Wake me up in a couple of years when she wants to marry another woman, and your pastor refuses to perform the ceremony, and he is charged with a hate crime. That'll happen sooner than most people think.

I would never want the government telling churches that they can't refuse to perform a marriage ceremony to anybody they don't want to perform it for. They don't want to perform a ceremony for a mixed race couple? That's their business. Same with gays, or divorcees, or whatever. Churches are doing a fine job of marginalizing themselves, I'd hate for government to reverse that trend...

A government that forces the Catholic Church to provide birth control/abortofacients, just to curry favor with feminists, can easily decide to force churches, synagogues and mosques to perform gay marriages just to curry favor with the gay rights lobby.

Actually, they would never force mosques to perform gay marriages. That would be intolerant.

They should definitely take away the Church's nonprofit status...

hedge wrote:They should definitely take away the Church's nonprofit status...

Agreed. And donations to a church should not be tax deductible.

I'm sure that'll happen. In the United States of America, religious groups should be punished if their beliefs differ from those of the United States government. After all, our nation was founded on the principle of religious submission to governmental theological edicts.