I'm sure this will be a huge news story.

Creflo Dollar, a leading proponent of the false prosperity gospel, pastors a church in GA.    Apparently this is now OK in churches.

 

"I just want to say this because I want to see how it sounds.  Governor Stacey Abrams just walked in.  So you already know what to do, right?  How many of you have already done it?  Wow. It's big time.  Make it happen. Do what you git to do."

 

On a related note, Stacey Abrams as magically seen her net worth grow from $109,000 to $3.17 million, despite not actually having any sort of job that would have allowed her to earn that much money.  

 

Maybe Creflo is right, and God can make you rich.

 

 

Curious?

https://winteryknight.com/2022/10/25/uk-joins-france-finland-and-sweden-backing-off-gender-affirming-care-but-biden-doubles-down/ 

Strange, the number of western European countries accepting the "Gender Affirming" model continues to decrease, while the US continues to blaze down this path full speed.   It's almost like folx in the US are choosing to ignore what's happening in western Europe when it doesn't fit with their political agenda.  Are y'all really saying that the data coming out of western Europe, and the US is so badly wrong that we should ignore it and plow ahead?

Breaking the law.

 Despite the title I'm not a Judas Priest fan, and I don't think they belong in the Rock HOF, but the title was too good to ignore.  

I'm going to start with this premise.  The terms rule, law, and command(ment) are functionally identical, and can be uses interchangeably for the most part.   The second premise I'm going to start with is that sin is (at least in part) the breaking of the rules THWH has given us to follow.  

So, on a very basic level breaking a rule, is us concluding that our judgement is superior to the entity that promulgated the rule.   Even in the case of breaking a rule for a "good reason", we're essentially saying that the entity that promulgated the rule wasn't really intending that the rule be followed in this particular circumstance.

So let's look at the rules that YHWH gave us to follow.   I'm going to focus on the top two only for this post.   Mainly because Jesus Himself was very clear that these two rules are the foundation for every other rule YHWH promulgated.  Those rules can be summarized as follows. 

Love YHWH with all of your being, and love your neighbor the same way you love yourself.  

 

Let's look at the first one first.

It seems safe to say that no one in the history of the world, except Jesus, has succeeded in loving YHWH with the totality of their being, every minute of their life.  If there is someone else who's done this, I'd like to meet them.  I think it's interesting that Mother Theresa (someone who many would offer as an example), was pretty adamant that she'd failed to adequately love YHWH or others.   So, can we agree that any discussion of sin and it's seriousness starts from the place where we've all failed to follow the first and greatest commandment?   Can we agree that failing to follow this commandment is a sin against YHWH?

I'm going to use Dan''s cookie example, because it points something out that subverts the point Dan thought he was making.  

In Dan's example, some guy eats the last cookie, even though he knows that his wife really wanted to eat the last cookie.  

The conclusion that Dan draws is that while the guy might be a bit of a cad, he's (at worst) committed a "minor" or "trivial" sin, which isn't big deal in the grand scheme of things.    It's not like he raped anyone, right?

 But, hasn't this guy really broken the second greatest commandment, and chosen to love himself more than his wife?  Going a little deeper, didn't Paul (as a seeming extension of rule #2) command husbands to love their wives as He loved the Church?   Which would, minimally, consist of sacrificing the husbands desires on the alter of elevating the wife's desires?

But, in all seriousness, is violating the second greatest commandment, to love others the way we love ourselves, really "trivial"?    It's not a stretch to say that literally every single negative thing that plagues our world (war, murder, rape, slavery, theft, fraud, lying, etc) would not be a problem is we simply loved others as we love ourselves.

Let's go a level deeper in this.  What the cookie eater is essentially communicating by his actions is that he doesn't have to follow rule #2.   More than that he's communicating that he's really not that interested in following rule #1 either.   How do we get here you ask?   It's simple.  Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep My commandments.".   One one level, as the second person of the Godhead, YWHW's  rules are literally Jesus' rules.  On another level, when Jesus confirmed that these rules were #'s 1&2, He was making those rules His as well.     Which leaves us with this guy who's self contentedness has led him to conclude that he doesn't need to follow rule #1 or rule #2. 

All of a sudden, it's starting to seem like calling his sin "trivial" or "minor" might be understating things a bit.

So, what is the common denominator to violating rules in virtually every situation?   It seems like it is the human tendency to focus on one's self, and what's best for one's self at any given moment.   It's the tendency for humans to conclude that this rule doesn't really apply to me, because I really need to break if for a really good reason.   It's our focus on our selves.  

But don't worry, focusing on and grounding our behavioral standards on ourselves, is "trivial".  Why, because we do not need the Bible to tell us what the right thing to do is.   

WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO DO SO.

 "WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO DO SO."

 

Dan made this emphatic assertion in the 5000 comment long morass that started in August.   I think it's pretty interesting to see someone who claims the name of Christ, to empathically proclaim that "WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO...".    

In this case, he's emphatically trying to claim that "WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO...", have a universally applicable, consistent, objective, standard of morality.    That "WE" can construct a universally applicable, consistent, objective, standard for morality all by our selves.  That we can use our "God given" faculties to construct a universal moral system.  That our limited, finite, flawed, subjective, imperfect, (but "God given") faculties are up to the task.

If that claim is True, then why hasn't this happened?  Why do we have entire societies that have concluded that things like FGM, child rape, disfiguring children, slavery, government appropriation of private property, and the like are moral and acceptable?  Who is Dan to tell them that they're wrong?

Or, what about this.

What if "immoral" is functionally synonymous with "sin"?  Would that change things?   Secular culture and sociologists define morality as "Any system of behavior or mores that any given society, culture, tribe, or similar grouping define as acceptable and appropriate".  (or something similar)    This definition precludes any sort of universal moral code, it removes the ability of one culture to refer to the behavior of another culture as moral or immoral.  

But what we (according to Dan) know with absolute, emphatic, certainty, is that "WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO DO SO" (Determine of something is moral).    I wonder, in what other areas of life does Dan insist that "WE DO NOT NEED THE BIBLE TO..."?

Enough

 Dan has been dragging a thread out for about 5,000 comments while he's trying to demonstrate that YHWH saves everyone, or that WHYH wants to save everyone, but can't because He's at the mercy of His creation, or something else that I don't understand.   He's also back to introducing this notion of "trivial" or "minor" sins.   These categories haven't been defined, supported, explained, or the like.   Dan just acts like they are official categories and the YHWH agrees with him.

What I find interesting, and want to explore further in this post is how scripture speaks of sin and our relationship to it.

For example scripture tells us that we are "dead" in our sin, and the Jesus offers us "life" free from sin.  Or scripture tells us that we are "slaves" to sin, and the Jesus bought our freedom from :bondage" or "slavery" to sin.  

That language doesn't sound like there is room for "trivial" or "minor" sins, does it?   Death/Life or Slave/Free sound like mutually exclusive categories don't they?  Can you really be 95% alive and 5% dead?  Or 95% free and 5% enslaved?   

What I'm not interested in for this thread is Dan trying to rehash what he's already said elsewhere.  If he wants to do that here, I'll keep posting his comments on the other thread.  Or he can spout whatever he wants over at his place.   

I'd prefer to not allow comments on this thread until I flesh the premise out a little bit more, but I suspect that Dan will find himself unable to control himself and will not honor my request.   I could close comments, but if he's determined to comment on this before I'm ready, he'll just comment on another thread.  

That's all for now.  Hopefully I can revisit this soon.

I've fully intended to do a deep dive into this post, but the overwhelming number of repetitive, banal, unhelpful comments else where has prevented me from using my limited time to do so.  I'm just going to point out that all of the language used in scripture to describe sin is binary, there is no sliding scale.

We're either:

Sick, or Well/Healthy

Dead or Alive

Enslaved or Free

For or Against

Guilty or Innocent

Wide Path or Narrow Gate

 

We never see the writers of scripture talking about humans just being a little sinful, just a little taint of sin.  I realized that this language is so obvious and so well known that I probably didn't need to dig as deep as I was planning.  

 

Have at it.  

Quotes

" Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up."

Always give credit to P-BO when he is right.

"I think it's very hard to communicate to the median voter convincingly the chaos that a GOP victory is likely to unleash, and I think a lot of professionals vastly underestimate the tail risk."

Chris Hayes

I don't know for sure, but the above sounds like threats of a return to the chaos and violence of 2020 if Hayes doesn't get the election result he wants.  I wonder if he'll recant this when there's no GOP led chaos after the midterm elections?  

Eaxggerate much?

"I was doing Meet the Press, and lightning struck a little pond behind my house," Biden told the conference Tuesday. "It came up through the ground into an air conditioning system."

"From the basement to the third floor, the attic, everything was ruined," he added. "We almost lost a couple firefighters, they tell me, because the kitchen floor was burning between beams, and then the house, in addition, almost collapsed into the basement."

An Associated Press report at the time described a "small" fire that was contained to the then-senator's kitchen, though it did mention "heavy smoke."

``Luckily, we got it pretty early,'' Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn told the outlet. ``The fire was under control in 20 minutes.''

 

So Biden is trying to claim that a "small fire" almost killed a couple of firefighters.    Exaggeration as a part of political rhetoric goes back  to the earliest days of our country.  The difference is that when David Crockett spun his yarns on the campaign trail, no one really believed that he was actually telling the truth.  It was understood that he was exaggerating for effect.   Yet somehow Biden thinks that he can "exaggerate" regarding all sorts of things that can be easily fact checked, with a straight face, with impunity.   At some point, doesn't "exaggeration" simply mean that he's lying, or losing his cognitive abilities?

UPDATE:

Just this morning I saw a video of Biden claiming that Gas was $5.00 a gallon when he took office.  In reality I think the average was less than $2,70 when he took office.    

I guess folx only object to stupid lies, when it's expedient for them to do so. 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/08/25/twitter-factual-covid-info-labeled-misinformation/

 

Is anyone really surprised that Twitter has been flagging factual information about COVID and the "vaccine" as "misinformation"?   At least they had the decency to reverse themselves after enough outcry from the medical community.   I can see why we wouldn't want peer reviewed studies pointing out risks of the "vaccines" to be too widely spread, especially when the FL surgeon general is posting about it.

Anyone who thinks that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram haven't been actively censoring things in ways that favor the left, as well is influencing information flow that might affect elections, is probably in denial. 

Right wing bigot alert.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/10/11/us/la-city-council-racist-remarks

 

Why am I not surprised to hear that DFL city leaders engaged in a racist converstaion.