i have just spoken to a brother who is part of a group of single brothers and sisters who meet together once a week to discuss bible topics and he has been told by and elder that the organisation "banned" these private meetings years ago.
i told him i remember that article but he is adamant that the society would never do that (!
) now i am fairly sure i remember that article whether it was in a km or one of the mags i cant recall but i am sure i remember them saying we needed nothing more than the food that the slave class provided (another means to control us),does anyone have the details of that article because i have said i will find it and let him have it.
Only one of my sons got baptised in his early 20's. But he DA/DFed soon after.
He said one very disturbing and revealing moment for him was after our Watchtower study hearing an unbaptised friend of his receive "counsel' for supplying in his answer a scripture not supplied by the paragraph--yet completely applicable!
will you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
Agreed, Phizzy.
The horror of a sexual appetite that hurts and robs a child of simple innocence. That is a monstrous greed. There is no allowance for it in my world.
Maeve
will you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
I read the link for lame, Jgnat.
I get it on the yuck factor for eating animals we live with. The problem of the yuck factor has been a life-long reshuffle for me, too. Made even more problematic by the fact that I, as so many civilized people do, was raised on prepackage meats by a family with a high yuck-factor threshold: NO ORGAN MEAT. And only chicken, pork and beef allowed. Turkey on a holiday. Dad bought a dressed duck home once. Mom did cook it but not one of us (then 7)kids would take a bite.
Then I moved to the farm with my husband.
YUCK!....and sorrow.
The thoughts that come to you when you take any animal's life for food goes beyond yuck, I have to say.
But maybe that goes somewhere else.
will you share with me an interesting discussion on what morals we all may have in common?
my recent reading has resulted in a fundamental shift in my worldview.
it feels like my house of cards have reshuffled themselves yet again, and everything i see, hear and smell is put in a new context.
I identify with the points raised on observing certain proprieties.
to quote Emily Post:"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use(no matter who you love)."
I have no more reason to dwell on what the intimacies of the bedroom consist of between my gay friends than I do my heterosexual friends. That it has no appeal to me personally is beside the point.
But I do feel uncomfortable when a couple's intimate moments are set in front of me. They open their bedroom door, so to speak. Not sensitive awareness. Not proper. Whatever their orientation.
We are free to choose sensitive friends.
yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.
we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.
they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.
Along these lines of thought, Jgnat, Apog, Miss.fit and DJS,
Dr. Tyson in a conversation with Bill Moyers this past month spoke of the unfortunate necessity of appointing a "name" for phenomena before science knows exactly what a particular phenomenon consist of--Before they know what a thing actually IS. The naming of it presents into the minds of the less knowledgable layman a misleading expectation/description of what may actually constitute thing so named:Black Hole, dark matter were a few(if memory serves).
A problem in discussing GOD also has to do with the problem of naming a perception many of us have of a thing that draws us like gravitational force. How can we talk about that sense of the unseen and inexpressible THING(possibility? unknown-or-unknowable?) and how it relates to searching for, needing, and improving on what is good? To name it is to create prejudice in the minds of ---all of us--laymen all in the matter.
Personally, to ignore a pull that is as strong as gravity seems as wrong as those who in scripture and theology may have invented "GOD" definitions and attributes out of ignorance.
Maeve
and,speaking of gravity--Where does it come from? why does it work? Science says it is a mystery yet.
i have just spoken to a brother who is part of a group of single brothers and sisters who meet together once a week to discuss bible topics and he has been told by and elder that the organisation "banned" these private meetings years ago.
i told him i remember that article but he is adamant that the society would never do that (!
) now i am fairly sure i remember that article whether it was in a km or one of the mags i cant recall but i am sure i remember them saying we needed nothing more than the food that the slave class provided (another means to control us),does anyone have the details of that article because i have said i will find it and let him have it.
First thing I was asked when a CO had an interview with me about a burdensome matter I had researched for some years."Have you been meeting with others? Is that why you have this concern?"
It seemed a strange line of inquirey then. But I got to understand how nervous the Org. is/was about independent study. especially in groups.
imagine a world where being "gay" the norm & being "straight" would be the minority!
[short film].. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnojgdw0gpi.
(Sorry, double post :>)
imagine a world where being "gay" the norm & being "straight" would be the minority!
[short film].. .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnojgdw0gpi.
I'm heterosexual. A woman. I am more than a vagina. Or breasts.
There is more to the attraction between males and females than the orifices we have, Moomanchu.
The attractions between people have to be more than how they have sex.
When we are very young or very, very old, sex is not the powerful force it is in the times between. But attractions and affections are present whether we are young, too young for sex or old, too old to do much. But we still love who we love.
It is not about this hole or that. It is in our brains, our hearts, if you will.
tgif ........ here are some laughs for friday nite.
at home.
enjoy!.
I'm showing a string ofMrs. Brown to my husband tonight. What a hoot!
Thanks for the laughs, Clarity.
link to the course: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927.
intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rj3nxoyt7k.
it's my first time for a edx-course and i will try "early christianity: the letters of paul".
Putting Jesus in a Harvard class room with Paul is the same problem Jesus might have figured when he was sawing boards with his papa---as soon as your beliefs were subject to the approval of your "betters" you were skinned.
Saying that are attributed to Jesus the carpenter showed up in more places than the NT would lead you to believe. But THE CHURCH wouldn't tolerate them. The writings were burned whenever the church could find them. And the Church persecuted and killed those who valued the writings
That Paul was a resurrection-believing Pharisee pushed the NT's emphasis on Jesus being raised and the promise that salvation=resurrection. Resurrection=salvation as the center of the NT epistles is the tragedy of Christiaity-- a tragedy in our times.
The teachings that were banned in the early church were in the gospels that the churchfathers burned.
Theology is the whip in the hands of the "learned" once more. Priests and scribes--don't people wait to hear God speak through them?
On the other hand, having a teacher of goodness, love and forgiveness--well, this brave teaching is good and well conveyed by folk to simple folk. Without a priest.
To my thinking, a salvation that relies primarily on having the perfect "Credo" impeccably memorized has long allowed "Christians" to enslave, and kill, steal, etc. The salvation that was earthier, imo, is the one that doesn't looks to living with kindness NOW.
Paul got into the early church and --even if with good intentions--really subverted the beauty and the accessability of Jesus' teachings.
