living by the spirit benefits the individual and those around them.. .
AGuest: Oh, and BTW (and I know you weren't insinuating otherwise, but just for the record... my house is clean!
Sorry! I'm glad you know I wasn't insinuating any such thing! My ants usually show up when I've let the house go just a little bit -- it takes just a few tiny crumbs of toast left on the floor to lure them in. If you live on a giant ant hill, you've certainly got trouble, no matter how clean you keep your house.
living by the spirit benefits the individual and those around them.. .
AGuest: Which is what most people do ("Well, I heard "something… in me?'… but I (1) ignored it, (2) dismissed it, (3) thought it was myself, (4) thought it was demons, or (5) didn't really hear anything at all.") You know what I mean…
No, I really don't know what you mean.
I now hesitate when ending a life, even that of an ant (though I have to admit, for them I hesitate just over a nanosecond!).
I carry spiders out of the house, too, Shelby. I try to spare ants by removing every source of food and keeping the house as clean as I can -- it sometimes works and they go away on their own.
I do venerate all life, even "ugly" and "unpopular" life. That's about as close as I get to worshipping something.
And so, I am trying to learn to live my life as one of those of that very small group. And it ain't always easy. But I have no choice: I love the Most Holy One of Israel ... Living my life as a testament to my love… which I do by OBEYING the Spirit when he tells me to share what he gives me… is the least I can do.
Not an unworthy goal, AGuest. Peace to you, too.
'Keet
i was thinking about some stupid non-sensical answers i have heard over the years.
"we all know the blue whale is the biggest fish"
"we were on the ministry and met a coloured couple.
ALL JW meeting answers are stupid.
living by the spirit benefits the individual and those around them.. .
AGuest: "This is a man who is using people's naivete ABOUT God....."
No, this guy was no poser. And he wasn't insane. He was a fundamentalist Mormon (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints). All Mormons, fundamentalist or not, believe that God "revelates" to each believer individually. He truly believed he was doing God's will when he killed. There was no other motive for the crime. He and a small group of FLDS had "studied" the Bible and Book of Mormon for years. Their studies led them to the conclusion that the only way their brother could be saved was by getting rid of his "demonic" wife and child.
AGuest: "C'mon, dear Parakeet... surely you know that, well, for example, just like all black people can't sing/dance, not all who profess to be led by Holy Spirit would engage in such heinous conduct."
Certainly not all who profess to be led by the holy spirit commit crimes of this magnitude. But how are the rest of us supposed to differentiate people from every walk of life who claim they are guided by God? Killing children or saving spiders -- all this is supposed to come from God?
C'mon, Shelby. Surely you know that, given the range of behaviors supposedly resulting from the "holy spirit," there can be only two possibilities: (1) If God exists, he's one messed-up dude. (2) There is no God, and human beings who say they are guided by the holy spirit are suffering from a delusion.
Blessed be.
in life, i usually trust new people, at least on face value, until i discover otherwise.
yet, my normal belief system is now in doubt.
i've just replied to a thread started by 'goldensky' - an alleged spanish lady with lots of history as an extremely devout jw in spain.
lifelonghumanist: I've just replied to a thread started by 'goldensky' - an alleged Spanish lady with lots of history as an extremely devout JW in Spain. English, she claims, is her second language. Yet, her first post seem totally implausiable to me - her word choice, punctuation, style of expression just seem alien to me.
lifelong, maybe this excerpt from My Fair Lady will help put things into perspective for you:
Henry Higgins (mocking his competitor's attempts to determine Eliza's true identity):
"Her English is too good, he said, that clearly indicates that she is foreign.
Whereas other people are instructed in their native language, English people aren't.
And although she may have studied with an expert dialectitian and grammarian,
I ... can ... tell ... that ... she ... was ... born ........... HUNGARIAN!"
Sorry, goldensky, Spanish doesn't rhyme with Hungarian.
living by the spirit benefits the individual and those around them.. .
Here's an excerpt from 'Under the Banner of Heaven' by J. Krakauer about an interview with Dan Lafferty, a man who was certain God revealed to him that he murder his brother's wife and 2-year-old niece because they were minions of Satan who were leading his brother astray from God:
DL: It is prophesied that the 'Great and Dreadful Day' will be when Christ sends His angels out of His kingom to gather out of His kingdom all those who are not His and kill them; and that's in part what I was foreshadowing when I took the lives of Brenda and Erica.....
JK: .... What if killing Brenda and Erica Lafferty wasn't actually part of God's plan but was merely a crime of such staggering cruelty that it is beyond foregiveness: What if, in short, [you] got it wrong? What about the holy warriors who sacrified their lives for Allah by flying jumbo jets into the World Trade Center? Surely their faith and conviction were every bit as powerful as [yours]. [Do you] think the sincerity of their belief justified the act? And if not, how can [you] know that what [you] did isn't every bit as misguided ad what bin Laden's followers did on September 11, despite the obvious sincerity of [your] own faith?
DL: ... They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I'm not. I believe I'm a good person. I've looked back and asked myself, "what would I have done differently? Did I feel God's hand guiding me on the twnety-fourth of July 1984 [date of murders]?' And then I remember very clearly, 'Yes, I was guided by the hand of God.' So I know I did the right thing.
if god is outside of nature and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science, is atheism a form of blind faith?
after all, it cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason.. steven jay gould said;.
"science simply cannot by its legitimate methods adjudicate the issue of god's possible superintendence of nature.
Psychotic Parrot: Do christians even know what they believe?
There are as many Christian beliefs as there are Christians.
That's a lot.
It's sort of a pick-and-choose religion. Whatever one doesn't like or understand, discard it.
it's the twilight zone's fiftieth anniversary today.
what's your favorite episode?.
mrsjones: The butler, Ozzie Davis, was really the instigator of Roddy's death but Ozzie got in the end the same way.
So the butler DID do it and got it too. Good twist.
it's the twilight zone's fiftieth anniversary today.
what's your favorite episode?.
There was one with Roddy McDowell in which a painting kept changing to mirror the creepy events outside (the guy McDowell murdered rising from his grave and lurching back to the house to seek revenge). I think the butler got murdered too.
(truth be known, i am a bit of a softy, with a nice @$$shole exterior).
i think when we leave jehovah's witnesses, there is this time where we look back, and it is absolutely killer.
damn, what a waste.
I once saw a show on Discovery Health about an extremely obese man (the kind of obesity that firemen had to enlarge the doorway to get him through). His wife was about 4'10", 200 pounds, and had maybe 4 teeth. You get the picture.
My first response was disgust at the man and to dismiss the wife as "trailer trash."
The man was admitted into a special facility for the extremely obese. This facility was in another state, but the wife, though very poor, scraped together what she could and stayed at a nearby cheap motel. She described how she had cared for her husband over the years without a trace of self-pity and how fearful she was for his health.
Despite treatment, the husband died. His wife was devastated, but even through her tears, held onto her dignity and only talked about what a wonderful husband he was and how she would miss him.
By the end of the show, I was ashamed of myself for judging these people by their appearance. They truly loved each other. And she willingly, without judging or resenting, sacrificed a good portion of her life to care for him and be with him. I don't know if I would have been able to do as much in the same situation.
