It's one of those interesting circumstances when it comes to some of the positions that have been stated. People who get called out for heresy, by people whose understanding of a given doctrine itself risks heresy. But then again, we're not bishops attending councils in the 4th century, so...
It does seem more and more that new arrivals on forums are either spammers or do little more than endlessly copy and paste to push whatever bizarre teaching they think is crucial that everybody else follows. You can tell how important it is because Jesus never mentioned it once and the only way to get it from Scripture is to slice and dice the text like a ransom note. Sometimes I think that overtly satanic material is better than some of this drivel. At least with overly satanic stuff they don't even pretend to be on the same side so you know what you're delaing with. A wolf in wolf's clothing seems like a preferable foe to a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Yeah, but even then most Christians are too fixated on what evil looks like, or are too distracted with conspiracy, to be any kind of Vigilius Haufniensis. Could you imagine most forum-goers trying to untangle LeVayen Satanism from Theistic Satanism of some variety? Might as well stick to singing those catchy Satanic pop songs about love that come on the radio.
I've been spending time over at Worthy. Interesting place at times, a couple very informed posters that I'm sure Ath and RK would appreciate. Currently having the traditional Christmas is evil threads.
I don't know. I can put up with classical doctrinal debate, but the second someone wants to spread "Christmas is pagan/genetic fallacy lololol / you shouldn't celebrate it either" is the second they should be ignored. The "Yeshua YeHoVaH" bit is just annoying. I just have no patience for it or the RCC bashing. If it wasn't for Catholic theologians and philosophers when I was younger, I wouldn't be where I am today. People who argue against Christmas, birthdays, etc., have defective reasoning or something. There's no point wasting my time on that.
But, but, but, didn't Jeremiah say something about dragging trees indoors and adorning them with gold and silver? Yeah, I know, there's the old lame excuse about how we don't worship the trees but we are to avoid the very appearance of evil, right? And who knows how many people might see our lavishly adorned tree, think we are worshipping the tree, figure it's OK to worship the tree and end up sucked into a vortex of paganism all because of $3 worth of cheap Chinese-made tinsel? There are so many merits with this argument it's remarkable. All you have to do is swap out Christmas for whatever else you want to take a pop at and the same argument works. You know, you shouldn't have a beer in case a recovering alcoholic thinks it's OK to drink, you shouldn't have a slice of pie in case a recovering bulimic thinks it's OK to overeat, you shouldn't talk about weight loss goals in case a recovering anorexic decides to stop eating again, and so on. It doesn't take much work to expand it to prohibit all sorts of things. I mean, let's face it, so much of the internet is about porn these days we shouldn't use the internet because people might think we are searching for porn, or people might think it's OK to use it for porn, or something. Oh, wait....
Jeremiah describes the creation of wooden idols. Christians: ahhhhhhhh they cut down a tree that can't be anything other than a Christmas tree! Lumberjackism is Paganism! You definitely shouldn't allow a piano to be used during worship! Those are bar instruments; bars, where people get drunk and engage in all kinds of debauchery and hedonism!
Can hardly sleep at nights, currently, so, giving up and concentrating on forum threads for awhile. Have all this equipment and resources sitting around. Takes some of us (ahem) a little while to research, compose and respond - and pray.
Whaaatt you don't think it's perfectly orthodox to suggest that God has very many expressions and might not be a trinity, despite affirming the doctrine of the trinity with a modalistic maths example? Pftttt. I'm going on a trip tomorrow so I doubt I'll have much time to follow up before I get back, Thursday.
See, you've got the hang of it already.... Now go into the world (at least other internet forums, where you can just paste the same stuff over and over with minimal effort) and preach it!
My wife had a bunch of errands to run today so I got busy with the other porch. I got a bunch of new support beams put in place, had to jig some more wood supports than I had hoped to get a solid back box into place, and got the metal cladding back into place. The back box is far enough off center that I can see it's off without even measuring it but with the layout of the supports it's hard to see how I could have made it any better. I guess I could have cut some of the supports and repositioned them (they only support the metal, not the structure of the porch) but that seemed like it was more work than I wanted to make it. I'm still not sure whether I regret that decision now. But for now it's only going to have a light fixture, if a fan comes it will be some time later. I wired it for a fan to keep the option open but it's not happening in the foreseeable future. Now I just need to wire the inside so I can actually turn the light on.
One person said, and I believe in full seriousness, that bending down to get a present out is "bowing" to an idol.
So you just need some short people to hand your gifts up to you and you're OK then, right? I suppose people making their not-Christmas-but-definitely-seasonal pilgrimages to the temples of Mammon aren't a problem though?
Waaaiiitttt. I thought you were supposed to fish the presents from under the tree? You're telling me people have been walking up to the tree an bending over this whole time?!?!