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PeacefulRaven
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Name: Peaceful Raven
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus, my wife, my friends, the South, art, music, my fiddle, comic books, cats, fishing, playing with action figures
Expertise: Being a crackpot
Occupation: Crash Test Dummy
Industry: Alchemy
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
8/29/2005
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| HOLY CRAP!Okay, so maybe it wasn't so holy, but it sure was crap!
I just cleaned out about two and a half years worth of blogs on MySpace, blogs that long ago vanished here on Xanga. Most were spiritual in tone, from my years in the ministry, when I would post about God. Sermonettes, if you will.
MY GOD! I WAS ONE SELF-RIGHTEOUS SON OF A BITCH!
It isn't that I was condemnatory or judgmental, but the tone in those early essays made it sound like I was the only person who knew anything; the only person with any "life" in him. I was trying to teach grave, love, acceptance and freedom from religion, but the message was hidden in the tone, which was one of arrogance, blind self-righteousness, and that of an insufferable know-it-all. I made my statements of grace as absolutes, which is nothing less than the very legalism I was preaching against. Woe is me!
How could y'all stand to read those things, much less remain friends with me with that attitude I had? Y'all could give lessons on patience and love!
I am thanking God (again) for the events of February 1, 2006, when I almost died. Those events totally changed me. It would be arrogant of me to say that those events removed all that arrogance, but they certainly shattered it. The shards are no doubt still there, but now that I know it, I'll do my best ... rather, I'll ask Jesus to do HIS best ... to pick them out.
To me, there's no question as to where I learned to have that absolutist attitude. I was exposed to it from 1990 through 2007. It's terrible. Horrible. Total apostasy. It certainly isn't the attitude you see in Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, in Paul in his letters (when he isn't angry), in the writings of St. Francis, in the works of Mother Teresa, or in the books of Jay Bakker.
Teaching grace, or any spiritual matter, is like the proverbial horse and water ... you can lead the horse to the water, but you have to let HIM decide if he wants to drink. If he does, great. If he doesn't, you ... I ... have to accept that and go on. It is wrong to hold his head down and make him drink. It's is even more wrong to put a funnel in his mouth and pour the water down his throat, which is what I was doing, which is what I was taught to do. "But the horse will die if you don't!" you may think. That is the horse's perogative. Besides, who are we to say that the horse isn't getting water from somewhere else, somewhere better for him? Just because the horse isn't drinking MY water doesn't mean he isn't drinking water!
I'm really glad to be out of the ministry right now!
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| AN IRRELEVANT SERMON IN DIRE TIMESI didn't see the sermon ... I don't like watching Christian Reality TV these days. But I sure heard about it. Saturday, April 5, Creflo Dollar was on TBN preaching about ... yep, prosperity. Usually, that topic bores me, but when I heard the summary of Dollar's speech, I became rather put out.
Dollar walked up to the threshold of saying that if we weren't billionaires, we were going to Hell. He has done that before, but not quite like this. Stitching unrelated verses together with all the skill of ten-year-old apprentice tailor, he said that Jesus was rich, that if we want to be in His glory we have to be rich too, and if we were not rich, we were blaspheming. You would think that a PhD in psychology would know better than to engage in rabble rousing. But maybe all that money and power has gone to his head.
This sermon certainly is an apostasy ... a rebellion against God. If God will throw aside His own children just because they are poor, then God is nothing but a tyrant and the proletarian rants of Karl Marx were correct. If God will throw aside His own children just because they are poor, then Jesus' sacrifice was for nothing. If sin has been reduced to just one offense against God -- being poor -- then Jesus didn't need to die, we can save ourselves by killing, raping, stealing and pillaging, being New Testament Vikings. The idea that Donald Trump is more righteous in God's eyes than Mother Teresa is about as ludicrous as the idea that chitlins are healthy.
Beyond that, though, Dollar's speech is an irrelevant message in our dire times.
It is unconscionable for a preacher to live in a mansion and preach prosperity during a mortgage crisis. Don't tell a guy to believe he receives by giving all his money to a church when he's facing foreclosure. It is unconscionable for a preacher to drive a Rolls Royce when gas prices are looking at $ 3.50 per gallon. Don't tell a woman to believe she receives by giving all her money to a church when she has to work two jobs just to buy gas to take her children to school. It is unconscionable for a preacher to fly everywhere in a private jet when the rest of us are being strip searched in airports by paranoid security guards. Don't tell a man to believe he receives by giving all his money to a church when it takes longer for him to get through the airport than it does YOU to fly from Atlanta to Chicago. It is unconscionable for a preacher to tell anyone ... ANYONE ... to obey God's laws, when he will not obey the laws of the United States, much less Romans 13 (Dollar is stonewalling the US Senate as much as Copeland, but at least he is being civil about it).
Creflo Dollar and people like him (do I have to say their names?) are totally out of touch with reality. When was the last time they had to work for a living, get grease under their manicured fingernails, balance a checkbook, or make a decision between buying groceries or gasoline? I would listen to him and his ilk a little more if they did what Jesus said to do ... sold everything and gave the money to the poor and followed Him. Let Dollar sell his mansion, his gate, his jet, his Rolls Royce, pay off someone's mortgage and buy someone's gasoline, and work in Wal-Mart and drive a ten year old Chevrolet and live on soup for a year. Let him live like US, then maybe I will try to hear what he has to say. Otherwise, he has nothing to say that can help me. Or you. Or anyone else whose last name isn't Rockefeller, Trump, Gates, Mellon or Carnegie.
Dollar's prosperity sermon is not only apostasy, but it makes him an irrelevant preacher with an irrelevant message in a time when we desperately need to see a very real Jesus.
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| BIGFOOT RISES FROM THE CRYPT!
Don't ask what he was doing in the crypt in the first place ... | | |
| THE REDHEAD STRIKES AGAIN!So, Saturday afternoon, Trish and I did a round of browsing in Lake Worth, and afterwards, we wanted to wet our whistle, so we went to Starbucks. I pulled up in front of the store, and as we got out, I felt Trish bristle. I noticed two middle aged men sitting in the back table, outside, under the awning. I didn't pay them any mind, but I noticed one of the men looked at Trish and appeared rather ... unsettled by seeing her. Trish shot him a very cold look.
We went inside and Trish said "Let's get our coffee and go and drink it in the truck."
I asked why.
She said "One of those men outside is Craig Atnip."
OH! For those of you who don't know, Craig Atnip is the CFO of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, and one of the Excellence Nazis who probably arranged for Trish to be fired over posting her Halloween costume online.
I placed my order and went to the restroom. I had every intention of going outside and sitting down and enjoying a clove with Trish, regardless of what Copelandite might be lurking around. It is a free country, and we have a right to go where we please. By the time I returned, Trish had decided the same thing. She said "Let's go outside and sit! I will NOT be scared away by that bastard!"
So, we went outside, sat about twenty feet away, enjoyed our coffee and had a clove.
Apparently, Trish made Atnip uncomfortable, because soon afterwards, he and his friend left, and they walked a long way around to give Trish a wide birth, never once looking her way.
SCORE!!!
The Irish Redhead fears no man!
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| Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
The once and future king lives!
HAPPY EASTER!
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