another_poster

Like many things in christianity it is a fine balance. While yes there is turning the other cheek God did not intend for us to be doormats either. For the most part he does not want us to remain in dngerous situations.

There is a law that says If you want something done give it to someone who is busy. In other words a busy person is not likely to say no. I am grateful that at a young age even when I was not married I learnt the value of saying no. I learnt it through my work where I always did the extra shift or double shift if asked. In the end with the extra tax payed and the tiredness from the amount of work it just wasn't worth it. So when a minister asked if I would coordinate a role at one of the services I gave my automatic response of I will think about it and give you an answer next week. So there is no pressure in the situation to give an instant answer if whenever your asked to take on a ongoing role. Being comfortable saying no is something many people struggle with and not something that can really be taught.

I have some relatives who are always crying poor. I know there is no money problem. With some what it really is is that they want a certain lifestyle and they struggle with what they have because of the lifestyle they choose to live. They like things such as going to the theatre (season tickets) and opera as well as memberships to art museums. Another relative wanted to be able to say she had a house designed by an architect. So she wasted money on paying an architect and then didn't have enough money to do all the landscaping she wanted. If she hadn't wasted money on an architect she would have had money to do that and paid off the loan before finishing work. I find most I know who are struggling don't tend to say much about it. I like the idea of talking to your husband and saying she has been mentioning money problems to several family and you are concerned about her welfare but didn't feel comfortable bringing it up with her. Hopefully your husband will then work out a way to deal with the situation or discuss it with others in the family. Sadly there is no easy way to deal with it.

Generally dentists will advise against it because it can result in problems especially if one does not clean very well but having the tooth removed is far cheaper. The expensive part of root canals is generally the crown that is required to protect the tooth after root canal.

I think your missing the point. In context of the conversation the claim that Santa = Satan is what is being addressed. So Lady Kay is correct. That he bears no resemblance these days because of the commercialism makes no difference to anything Of course we can say it is about getting candy for the kids. If it is about dressing up as demonic figures then you better explain people who dress up as say wierd al. Or perhaps people who dress up as a princess. Sounds real demonic!

If you are not twisting anything then provide your evidence. It is a simple request and should be easy if you are right. Fact is you have no evidence at all that santa was made from the word satan. Therefore you are twisting and clutching at straws to make it look evil when it isn't. What I am amazed at is that when you ask someone to provide support for a baseless accusation they get all upset. You made the claim so you should support the claim with fact. It is like a lot of the arguments used by KJV only websites as to why other translations are wrong and evil. They are desperate accusations which with virtually no scrutiny at all can be seen to be false claims and misleading. Think about the word "set". Seems simple enough but it has more definitions in english than any other word. It has 464 definitions! A little three letter word. Yet you claim because letters are in a different order it is some hidden meaning. You still haven't addressed several parts of my response to this but instead just repeat the claim as if that will magically make it correct.

If you have to play around with letters to get certain words then you are pushing to make your point. it was just something to share, I am not pushing any thing, and I don't have to make a point at all, but it does spell what it is . does anyone know where santa came from, ? Or who brought this name in, to take the place of Jesus? I would like to know ? and how it all started? No santa spells santa not satan. Santa is not universal in other countries they have different names. Sure if you could provide credible evidence that is how it came about that would be different. Since you have acknowledged that you do not know then it is dishonest to calim it has any significance. Your attempts to link christmas trees to that verse in the bible is stretching scripture. Using that method I could argue all trees are evil and that we should chop them down. So no more fruit trees etc. I don't care for christmas trees but I am not going to twist scripture to make it say something it doesn't simply because I don't like something.

If you have to play around with letters to get certain words then you are pushing to make your point.

My church had a day for kids in the church to play games and get lollies. We have now opened that up to the community which means that a parent or guardian must be there to supervise them unlike when it was just a church only event. Of course I think it is better to have it open to the community even if it is a bit more inconvenient.

so you claim to know the bible very well and then can't even think of one example of a wealthy woman from the NT despite the fact I haven't been on for around a week? Doesn't sound like good knowledge to me. Lydia a dealer in purple (cloth is added by some translations) I already explained what a false teacher is and isn't. You just didn't bother reading. With the parable you still don't get it. Jesus just used things from the day that people would understand such as a person hiring workers to illustrate a truth about the kingdom of God. As I said it is indicated by reading in context. Jesus is not making any comment on what is or isn't allowed in society.

and now we see the familiar tactic of you just endlessly repeating previous posts instead of answering. For a start you called Esther a false teacher yet have not provided any such evidence. Esther is just a person on a forum giving their view. I never once mentioned the Proverbs 31 woman. Since you claimed to be such an expert on the bible and having read it thoroughly and claiming to therefore know what it says I figured you would know that. Guess you don't know your bible as well as you think. Like I said before just reading it does not mean you understand. I was thinking about examples from the NT. Certainly not a woman sitting at home making a few blankets in her spare time. What a joke using that parable as evidence that equal pay is unbiblical. That completely misses the point as to what a parable is about. The parable is talking about the kingdom of heaven and is teaching that it does not matter when one person gets saved they still get to heaven. It doesn't matter if earlier in life or on their deathbed. It never was intended to apply to anything else. Verse 1 makes that very clear. I am sorry that you have suffered as a result of a government policy. That however does not mean it is wrong to do something about it. Just that the approach taken was not the best approach. I've suffered from being a christian. Does that make being a christian wrong? Of course not. likewise that does not make government legislated equal pay automatically wrong. In the example I gave you responded with having worked for low wages. However that did not address the question I asked.

Butero for one you have not provided evidence that you have followed biblical guidelines in calling Esther a false teacher. Yes you provided scripture but you have not provided evidence that your interpretation is correct. Rather you assume you are correct and everyone else is wrong. This has been mentioned. You also did not answer how the bible could describe a woman as a successful business woman and Godly if as you say according to the bible they should stay at home. I am sure you are happy for govt not to be involved in having a say in what people get paid. I'm sure you have been treated well. I wonder how different it would be if you had actually been you. If you had received say $5 an hour while someone else doing identical work was getting $20. This is the kind of interfering they do. If we could trust companies to do the right thing there would be no need for govt to get involved. That is exactly why they are involved. Perhaps study history and see what happens when we let companies make the rules. We can see how companies break the rules these days. But yeah I'm sure your right that companies are totally trustworthy!

It is obvious that you did. That is exactly what was happening. It then changed. Why? Because women got organised and started campaigning for laws to be enforced. You said it was a bad thing. Therefore you support the way things were before that changed. That means you support women getting beaten senseless by their partners. So no you didn't actually say that is what you support but it is the actions that your words support. So how does a woman become a successful business woman such as the examples we see in the bible of women who are described as Godly if they are to stay at home? Once again you do not read properly before responding. I never said anyone was having sex 24 hours a day. I simply said by your description of what the verse means that must be the case. You have also completely ignored a point I made. You decided not to address it at all. I am not surprised but still not used to it. Your example would only work if you ignore context of the passage. You are taking one verse and reading it all by itself which is not how the bible is meant to be read. Yet you always declare that your interpretation of the bible is correct and I have never once seen you allow for the possibility you may be wrong. What you described above re the sabbath is not allowing the possibility that you are wrong. It is just that you have not decided. When allowing for being wrong it is on something you have decided upon and allowing the possibility that you decided incorrectly. This is contradictory. You say there is good but then you say nothing good has come from it. If there is good then that is good. It isn't a scale system where you weigh the good against the bad. What is wrong with citing historical facts when what they are talking about is historical fact? What is your unhealthy obsession with soap box? You can answer questions here without a problem. When you consistently don't respond to various points made in posts then why would it be any different in the soap box. In every thread I have participated in that you have been in and disagreed with someone you resort to name calling. Can you provide evidence that you have followed biblical guidelines by calling Esther a false teacher. For a start just because someone says something that is incorrect does not make them a false teacher.

I do believe there are new testament pastors who have the call of God on their lives who are like young Timothy in whom Paul trained and taught him how to be a pastor and those instruction are in God's word today to guide the pastor in his work for God. The problem is the office of pastor has been changed into something it was never intended to be and those in error are more than those that are righteous following the instructions in the bible to make full proof of their ministry. I believe in the gifts and callings of God that he gave to the new testament church found in Ephesians 4 for the edifying of the body and that their are righteous pastors out there still today who follow the word but they are few in number. This really isn't an issue in my opinion. Essentially it is just a title. All of what is described in the bible as the role of a pastor is done in most churches. It may not be the pastor who does it but it is still done. If it wasn't being done then that would be a concern. Personally I find the the fault really is with people in congregations as they have for the most part wanted to leave everything up to the pastor.

I use firefox as well. Will experiment with suggestions. Thanks

I would really appreciate some help on how the quoting system works now with the recent changes. If I want to reply to two comments by different people it will mix them in together unless I type on reply and post then type the other. Is that the only way to do it? Also today I had the situation where it put in a quote from the day before! How does that work?

Ok then back it up. Back up where the bible says women should be allowed to be beaten senseless by their husbands. Did you really think I would not notice that you chose to ignore that part of my post and instead only focus on one bit you think you can address. That various things were not enforced in marriage was a fact. It was only because of feminism that they started to charge men with assault for beating up their wives. That women were not allowed to vote goes against the bible valuing input of women. That the church felt women should stay home rather than working is not biblical. In regards to sex then 1 Cor 7:5 does not justify sex on demand. When read in context (not that we have the entire context) it is clear it is to be discussed. We see that in verse 6 where by mutual consent they can abstain for a time. If by mutual consent it therefore MUST be discussed. Lets assume your view is correct for a moment. Then according to that passage we should be constantly having sex 24 hours a day. After all we are only to stop by mutual consent! Just doesn't make sense. Your bringing up the topic that it is hard to decide if it was forced or not has no bearing on the discussion at all. That is often the same for rape outside of marriage. It can be hard to tell. So why bring it up? Same for other crimes. In organised crime it can be hard to prove anything against the person in charge does that mean it is silly to have laws against what they do? Of course not The fact that scripture says to submit to one another is all the evidence I need. To go back to the driving the van example lets pretend for a moment that the wife wanted to drive the van because she felt that was what God wanted while the husband would prefer she didn't. Well if the husband is acting correctly according to biblical instruction he would let her drive the van. See Jesus died on the cross even though he didn't want to. He did though because he wanted to do the Fathers will. In any case we always have a choice with God as to if we obey or not. So if it is to be just like that then husbands must give their wives choice. When you claim you have been studying it all your christian walk. Well I can point to plenty who did that and still lack understanding. You have the attitude that you are always right about what the bible says and means and anyone who disagrees is wrong. You always claim to be perfect when it comes to understanding the bible. You have never once that I've seen ever allowed the possibility that you might be wrong. I know people who disagree with you on this matter and they have read the bible far more times than you. Just because you read something heaps of times does not mean you understand. In fact it is not uncommon for people to think I am familiar with this and not really take in the information. What is even more funny is that in one post you claim to not be aware of one good thing feminism has done. Yet you mention things like equal pay and the right to vote. These were done by the feminist movement. The feminist movement that started by the christian church. As I said before, and you made no response to, not all groups within feminist movement are good just like not all people in churches are good. Why do you constantly resort to name calling when people disagree with you?

If you believe that Butero's view is narrow-minded then you would have to conclude that the apostle Paul and the Lord were narrow-minded. As to the "gains" from the feminist movement, if you were to dig deeper you would find that the majority of those women who became doctors or lawyers or what have you were not feminists, and would reject feminist notions. Um, I don't you think you really understand what you are talking about either, because Paul is one of my favorite writers of the Bible. I also cited very specific aspects that are historical milestones in the woman's movement that were won by woman who did not always believe in God. The ism of the woman's movement usually means that these woman are not saved and their endeavor is not a spiritual one but a more practical one. It was woman from the ism of the woman's movement who first published The Courage to Heal, in the 1970's, which is still a very popular book that has help a countless number of women heal from the effects of sexual abuse because the rape crisis movement was largely led by woman who were not of faith, probably because their husbands would never have let them participate in the fight for justice from sexual assault. It was a woman name Judith Herman who identified a similar traumatic pattern between women who were victims of rape and the early research on the subject of PTSD in soldiers in the book Trauma and Recovery. It was Diana Russell that challenged the statistics for sexual assault and published the findings in The Secret Trauma, which is an essential piece of the treatment that is now available for women who have been assaulted. All of these endeavors had nothing to do with the church, and I find the broad stroke of the pen claiming that I am in disagreement with the Bible for my opinion towards the women's movement that has taken place outside the church to be very narrow minded. It is like saying we should take back all this progress because the Bible says the husband should be able to tell his wife what to do and what not to do and reflects being very poorly informed on the subject. In conclusion, it would appear in some ways, that these women who pursued these accomplishments have done more to restore the dignity of women, than 2000 years of male leadership in the church. The problem with everything you said is it isn't Biblical. Where are those of us who disagree with you misinformed? I am saying that the Bible is in opposition to the things feminism stands for, and this is easily proved. My position is when the Bible takes a position opposite of the direction society is going, the Bible is right and society is wrong. To believe otherwise shows that you cannot believe the Bible is the Word of God, or you don't care. I absolutely am saying we should "take back all this progress because the Bible says the husband should be able to tell his wife what to do." God is right and you and the culture are wrong. Rebellion isn't progress. Are you going to seriously try to tell me the Bible supports your views? If you are, I will be glad to debate you one on one on that subject, but if you are siding with the heathen culture over God, I stand with God. Really so allowing women to be beaten senseless by their husbands is biblical is it? Allowing rape is biblical is it? Sorry but I think you really need to look at your bible again. These are things started by feminisim which actually started in christian church. Just like there is a wide variety of views amongst christians there is a wide variety of views amongst feminists. There are more radical ones and others who you wouldn't know are feminists unless they tell you as well as everything inbetween. The rape & domestic violence was known about by the church but they failed in their duty to protect those least able to protect themselves as the bible commands. You are partly correct in that the bible does tell wives to submit to their husbands but it also tells husbands to submit to their wives (its there in the KJV). It also tells husbands to love their wives as Jesus loved the church. Now Jesus did not want to die on the cross but submitted to the Fathers will. To what the Father wanted. So no way in the world is the husband supposed to order his wife around. Any husband who does that has no love in them. I don't say that lightly. Read 1 Cor 13 to find out what love is.

Yes, the Bible does tell us to resolve conflicts and to be at peace with all men. At the same time, the burden of conflict resolution does not fall upon one man. God has ordained that a plurality of elders handle the oversight of the flock. Furthermore we have a clearly laid out procedure in Matthew 18:15-17, where the burden is primarily on those in conflict with each other, and ultimately involves the whole church. As to contemporary music and worship, I believe you should do a little more research. Check out this website, which has a lot of good information on this subject. http://www.wayoflife.org/ I have done my research and know what I'm talking about. Funny thing about that site is that in one article it talks about myths that people believe about why others are against contemporary music (CM) yet in a different article someone lists several of those exact reasons as to why it is wrong. They make all kinds of assumptions. They quote one verse from here and there yet fail to explain how they relate to the topic. Short answer is several of them don't. I didn't look at others after that. Not hard to gauge the kind of arguments they have. The funniest one is that modern songs aren't scriptural. I remember one lady walking into a bookshop and saying that. Person in charge picked up a CM songbook and turned to song after song which was nothing but scripture in the same way that liturgy is scripture. Then grabbed the traditional hymn book and turned to several songs which all appear to have been based on emotion rather than scripture. Some hymns are based on one verse of scripture yet have six verses plus a chorus! From one verse? Not likely. All that still ignores what I said earlier about those songs being described the same way as CM is now described by some people. One of the articles actually didn't realise it but from their argument then all traditional hymns are wrong and should not be used. Sometimes I wonder if people actually read what they write in their eagerness to condemn.

may be secular but it is also scriptural. The bible does tell us to resolve conflict. It even says we should stop if we are going to give to the Lord and go make things right and then come back and give our gift. Logically it would be far easier and make more sense to give the gift then go and fix the conflict. Yet we are told to fix the relationship with our fellow man as it is that important. There is nothing wrong at all with contemporary worship. What you would call traditional worship was once upon a time contemporary worship. It was thought of as bad. The instruction is to worship in spirit and truth. That can be done by traditional style or contemporary style or a mix or something different altogether. Focusing on the style is focusing on the wrong thing. Not God.

Only bit of advice I would give which is important is that if your mum is not pleased make sure you know if you can cope with that or not. I have seen several weddings called off the day before or even the day of the wedding because the pressure from parents got too much. Catholics have a number of views that say you must do this or that in a catholic church but at the end of the day that is their view.

It may be fire for you but not others. Some people have very low sex drives.

To be honest like many things there is no black and white rule where the line should be drawn. A coworker once jokingly asked me for a leg massage. I said that might be crossing the line. When I told my wife about that conversation her response was "Well it all depends". I then explained the following question was not because I wanted to give the leg massage but I was just curious as to what it depended on. She smiled and said "On how far up the leg it goes". So my wife was comfortable with that. However it was beyond my personal boundaries. So essentially whichever person has the stricter boundaries is the one that should be followed. Of course if in doubt err on the side of caution and stop. I don't think you should say anything even if she brings it up as you have no proof of anything. A friend told me a story about his brother in law. His workmates thought it would be funny to put a empty condom packet in his pocket. However what they didn't know is that he had once cheated on his wife and she was aware of that and so when she found the condom packet she kicked him out. So he had not done anything wrong that time but because of previous actions there were bad consequences. On a different forum a person once asked if she should tell her friend that her husband was cheating on her. When asked her evidence was that she saw him purchase two cups of coffee during the day during office hours. We need to be careful before risking destroying the life of a couple of people.

It strikes me as very odd that they started using the word Pastor, a Latin word, when a perfectly acceptable word (i.e. shepherd) had been in use for many years and in every English translation before the Geneva Bible came out (I am referring to the use of this word in Ephesians 4:11 and in Jeremiah). WHY did they make that change? It's the first time that the word "Pastor" made it into our English bibles. Any ideas? Carlos I don't get why this is odd. Pretty much every bible translation has done this and used different words. There may be no reason at all. Perhaps it is in line with words in common use when the translation was done. After all the object of the KJV was to put the bible into common use language. These days it is nothing of the sort because language changes. Another reason could be learning new things about language. One ofthe languages of the original text is a dead language. It is not in use anymore. For that the method of translation is to use other texts to translate the words. That is find writings in that language where they know what is said and work from there. Or to look at surrounding context. Tenses is the latest thing they are learning is very difficult to understand. While in our language with far more words generally it is easy to tell what tense is meant it is not the case in greek. Unless you can build a time machine and go back and ask them personally you will never find out why. You can make a guess but thats about it.

I was not making any assumptions. I could see by the words you wrote. Now Shiloh answered your question and part of that answer was that it is a pointless discussion as they mean the same thing. You then basically condemned Shiloh for taking part in the discussion when all Shiloh did was answer your question. What I find most interesting is that the comments you make are not about corruption of bible but people not researching things for themselves. If people have allowed one single pastor to have total control then that is the fault of people not the pastor. I would say that is a result of people not wanting to do anything themselves. The main leaders at my church are all the small group leaders. The pastor & assistant pastor main role is to support them. At another church I went to they had a leadership team and it was majority rule. Another one they didn't take a vote but came to a consensus by discussion. Another group all votes had to be unaminous. People said that would never work but it did. So I guess the question is what on earth is happening in your country and perhaps it is a cultural thing not because of any bible translation. Eph 4:12 does suggest that it is a position. However let me ask this. You say it is all about oversight. If that oversight is there then does it matter?