Elen1107

I know people whose parents survived Auschwitz I've met people who have survived POW camps I've worked with people who have survived 18 years and more of POW like conditions, as children, at the hands of their own parents To me it's amazing that any of these people can manage to crack a smile at all. I can fully understand how they are simply unable to forgive. It's enough to let go and put it in the hands of the All Mighty. If the All Mighty can enable them to forgive, fine, until then they need to move on and just have the burden of dealing with it off of them. Letting go and forgetting is one thing, forgiving is another. Somethings one just has to leave in the All Mighty's hands.

Wads the madder, you don't believe what our presedent says . . Dat the pandemic is going "to just disappear" and by last "Easter" ? ? ? This is killing me. Yes, it's important what people "do" to control the pandemic. But good leadership is also important, perhaps very, very important. Look what happened in New York. New York City is the most densely populated city in the United States. It has like twice the population of LA and about half the territory/land. It has 4 major international airports in and around the city. The covid-virus had spread to Europe. In January, February and March, 30,000 people or more got off of planes from Europe, in New York. They got hit hard and heavy, back when no one had a clue how to handle this virus and when no one saw it coming. The Governor of NY took the bull by the horns and lead the city and the state back to some sense of normality and sanity. Look at these charts. Look at the graphs in the center of the links showing how the pandemic is spreading in various states: This is New York https://bing.com/covid/local/newyork_unitedstates?form=msntrk This is California https://bing.com/covid/local/california_unitedstates?form=msntrk This is Florida https://bing.com/covid/local/florida_unitedstates?form=msntrk This is Texas https://bing.com/covid/local/texas_unitedstates?form=msntrk This is the Country as a whole https://bing.com/covid/local/unitedstates?form=msntrk To quote what the Governor of New York said recently, "This did not need to happen" They stopped and controlled it in New York last spring. This did not need to and shouldn't be happening to the rest of the country. It was the NY Governor Cuomo's leadership that stopped the virus and got it under control in New York. It is Donald Trump's lack of leadership and foolishness that is causing the spread and the thousands of deaths across our nation.

I agree that he was "brilliant", he was also sometimes, 'not so brilliant'. This is not so uncommon among people who are considered brilliant or even geniuses. I'm sorry that he got executed in Rome and that I don't, and that a number of people don't agree with All of his ideas, but there it is. I suppose I don't agree with All of Socrates ideas either although he died for the sake of Athens and Democracy. It doesn't mean that I don't like Democracy any less. How much time and acquaintance Paul actually had with Peter and James is another matter. Did he only spend 15 days with them, and this was after he himself had been in ministry for 3 years? When were is letters written in relation to this meeting? Before and after or just after? I'd have to research this more before I have a full perspective on the subject. Here is an interesting article on this https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/paul-meets-peter-and-james/ ------------------------------- Concerning the "Spirit of Christ and the "Holy Spirit", one can read in the New Testament that people were filled with the Holy Spirit and or the Spirt of Christ and or God. I've heard many modern sermons and messages from the pulpit concerning this. I'm pretty sure that I've heard Marcus Borg talk/preach about this (online). I'm thinking that many of the sermons that I've heard, a good number of them online, would consider themselves part of Progressive Christianity, whether they would use a small or capital 'p' I can't be completely exact about. It hasn't been something that focused on that much, (whether they identify with the 'p' word or not), though I'm sure that most if not all of the sermons that I do listen to are what I certainly would consider progressive, that's what I'm looking for when I go online or looking for a church or a talk on Christianity. In fact that's all I'm looking for. They say things like, "Let us be filled with the Holy Spirt" or "Let us be gathered in the Name and the Spirit of Christ", "Let us be filled with the Spirit of God and Es Grace and Es Wisdom" If I have time I'll try to find you some examples, or the next time I watch one I'll post you a link.

It was JS Spong that introduced me to Progressive Christianity and lead me to this website. When I first came here, like 5-6 years ago I expected this forum to be a bit more Spong-y and be more about his ideas and outlooks. Since then I've come to realize that PC covers a wider umbrella, though Spong's ideas are still appreciated and celebrated. For myself, I don't know if I care so much if ideas come from biblical theologians or biblical scholars. Bart Ehrman is considered to be one of this countries leading biblical scholars, it would be interesting to see what he has to say about Paul specifically. Most people, including biblical scholars tend to stick to their own agenda and find information and ideas and evidence that supports their own point of view. I don't expect many people to be much different. Actually, I don't think I care so much if an idea comes from a scholar or a theologian or an insightful layperson, or even a child or just an everyday person. What matters the most is if an idea or outlook is good or not. If it is good, insightful, helpful and if it reflects the Light and Insight and Spirit of God. Not whether it was written or expressed by person A, B or C... What "wild speculation" are you talking about? I don't quite understand your statement. Thanks for reading

Does Paul have more authority than most Christians and the Spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit speaking through many, more or most Christians? A lot of Progressive Christians strongly disagree with some of his ideas, while they agree with and even strongly agree with others. This is usually our relationship to any other human being. We agree and disagree, sometimes strongly, sometimes not as much. Paul has been raised to the status by many people as being the absolute and infallible word of God, simply by regard of who he is and how he is placed in the bible, not ness. by what he says or what his points of view are. Spong disagrees with this. A lot of Progressive Christians disagree with this also. Just last night I watched a teleconference between two preachers on the PC's main website. What one of them was saying was that if people want to subjugate or oppress another group, the first thing that they do is sever that person's connection to God. Make them feel that they are less than, less of a reflection of God, and if they can, make them feel more evil, less competent, and less worthy. He talked about how this is done to female people, to gay people, to people who are in servitude or bondage. It's even done to people in relation to government and governmental authorities. They talked about how the bible itself is used for these purposes and that this is not a true reflection of or true overall picture of the Spirit & Light of God. One can relate to this in terms of how one interprets the bible, or do what JS Spong does and simply state that everything in the bible is not the infallible word of God. Some of it reflects the Spirit and Light of God and some of it does not. ---------------------------- btw, it was JS Spong that introduced me to Progressive Christianity and brought me to this website. I understand that PC covers a wider umbrella and all if not many outlooks are welcome. But Spong's ideas and insights are still regarded, found very insightful and celebrated.

Yeah, but who was Paul to go around organizing the churches on that level? Saying women could not be preachers or even speak in church, or if all that's pseudo-Paul, still setting up negative distinctions and limitations? In my last comment to Thormas I've mentioned some of his ideas about marriage and getting married. Who was he to inject these things into Christianity, whether it was just to one church or to the whole world? He never met Christ. Never saw him preach or teach. He didn't spend very much time with those who did and those who knew Jesus best. He was a first century evangelist who knew Greek and was able to write, so he wrote a bunch of letters. He was sometimes great and inspired, and other times missing the mark completely. He was just Paul. His words are no more "the absolute word of God" than anyone who is sometimes inspired and sometimes mixed-up and just plain wrong. Spong talks about; 'these are the words of Paul, not the words of God'. But they have been presented to the world as the infallible word of God, by just about all the Christian churches through out all time.

I guess no one had heard of the Prodigal Son in those days, though I suppose the PS's parents didn't have to live with him. It's not what I'd exactly call an "insight" myself. If people did that in the US today to someone's offspring they would get life in prison. Myself I would say that it is not nor ever was "the word of God", not even close. ------------------------- What do you think of this verse?: Deuteronomy 23: 2 2 No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. [b Deuteronomy 23:2 Or one of illegitimate birth] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 23&version=NIV

Have you read 'Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism'? I remember a good deal about Paul in that book, if not others. I don't ness. agree that Paul was gay either. Never heard him say anything about Mary being raped. Paul did seem to have some odd ideas about sexuality though. He says that people should get married just so they don't "burn with passion" or some such thing. No mention of love, no mention of children, no mention of providing or caring for children. Again, when people are married, he basically says that one partner or the other cannot say 'no' to the other. That each partner's body belongs to their spouse and they can't say 'no' unless they both agree. No mention of children, no mention of providing for children or more children, no mention that pregnancy can be a life and health threatening event, no mention that one partner might not be healthy enough. It's just about passion and the adults and that's it. I looked up JS Spong, he has a Wikipedia page. This is what it says about his education: He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. He has had honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees conferred on him by Virginia Theological Seminary and Saint Paul's College, Virginia, as well as an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters conferred by Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. In 2005, he wrote: "[I have] immerse[d] myself in contemporary Biblical scholarship at such places as Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School and the storied universities in Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shelby_Spong

What do people think of this verse from the Old Testament? Deuteronomy 21:18–21 18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+21:18-21 Do you think it's "the word of God"?

What you're saying is really true. He made up a thing about injecting ultraviolet rays and disinfectant into the human body. In another news article he said he made this up right off the top of his head. The next day different disinfectant manufacturers went crazy trying to let the public know that they should never use disinfectants inside the body. How many people heard them? How many people heard and believed the president? It's really sad

I keep thinking about what JS Spong has written and said about Paul. That Paul was just a person and just a man. Sometimes articulate and inspired, other times sorely mistaken, mislead and confused. He never met Jesus during his earthly life, he was not one of the 12. Sometimes he reminds me a bit of the way I think of Bruce Springsteen. He can say/sing something great and inspired one minute and then something odd and dysfunctional the next, sometimes in the same song. Difference is, no one expects Bruce Springsteen to be singing "the word of God". Not the same for Paul. It's in JS Spong's book, 'Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism' that he writes about Paul in this way, as well as in some of his other books and lectures. The Book was a NY Times bestseller. He wrote it before he was teaching at Harvard.

"It's just like the flu" "It's just like the flu" "It's just like the flu" Why is it that people expect him to know what he's doing and to have access to the best medical experts in the country? Why is that? As of today there have been 4,461,216 cases in the US according to MSN Gates Foundation

😄 Well he seems to have heard of one of these: Romans 13:1ESV : Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. Titus 3:1 ESV : Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work 1 Peter 2:13 : Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. Problem is, he thinks this just pertains to everyone else and not to him. I've heard some of the state governors and senators call him out and let him know in no uncertain terms that he cannot do things that are un-Constitutional and unlawful. Wonder how the Jews and a lot of the allied nations felt about these verses during the Nazi occupation of Europe. Dumpster!!! Maybe we should use d's insdead of t's . . . 😄

I too believe in both. I believe in evolution into Christ. Christ is still every bit as much Christ and God is still every entire bit as much God. Just like people didn't need to know that the earth is round to believe in Christ and be saved, they/we didn't need to know the exact story of creation. It's not the end of faith and inspiration, and in some ways it may be a bit of a new start or beginning.

I agree with you,... but as long as it is a job or a trade, as well as being down right wrong in so many spiritual and other ways, it's against American law to discriminate against women in paid positions, ie. the work place. The question is, what were they called to preach. If it's the same old fundamentalist stuff then who cares? They truly and honestly may even have done more harm than good. They may have been called, but was the Jesus who called them the same Jesus that the ended up preaching about?

I keep thinking about his having the protesters teargassed off the street so he could get a photo-op in front of a church. A reporter had to ask him like 5 times whether he ever did what he said he could do concerning grouping and being a celebrity, before he would give him an answer. They say that the American creed is based on Christian foundations. Seems like the dumpster never heard of the following verse, even though he stands there with a bible in his hand: 1 Timothy 5-2 Treat older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. Nope he just missed or skipped that one.

I don't see any of these women as being really progressive, except for maybe Mary Dyer. Women can be digressive as well as anyone else. Galatians 3:28 - It's one of the best lines in the bible 🙂

It's good to hear this. I'm glad she will not go through all the searing and incredible pain that some of us have had to live in and with. It can even effect and hurt the unborn. How people treat women can effect the prenatal/unborn both psychologically and physically. I hope she has a great future and many great years ahead of her, & if she has children, the same for them. Ten years is not that long as these things go. Don't know if there has been a more recent study of this type.

I wonder if all the hierarchical and dysfunctional stuff was taken out of the bible, all the stuff JS Spong calls the "The Sins of the Scriptures", if a lot more people without ulterior motives would show up in the churches, and those with ulterior motives would pack it up and go away. It would make church a lot better experience, and as far as I'm concerned one much closer to Christ.

I grew up in a world where it wasn't done and didn't happen at all. I grew up in a world that didn't even have a female Muppet on Sesame Street, and when they finally did is was a vain, selfish pig. I've seen things getting better, but how much is another question. This quote and link is from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research (it was done in 2010): "The Faith Communities Today 2010 national survey of a fully representative, multi-faith sample of 11,000 American congregations found that 12% of all congregations in the United States had a female as their senior or sole ordained leader. For Oldline Protestant congregations this jumps to 24%, and for Evangelical congregations it drops to 9%." Here's the link to the article http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/quick_question3.html I agree with you that some people continue to grow and others not so much. Probably pseudo-Paul. But so many people don't know that there is any such thing as "pseudo-Paul", never mind that so many of the books in the New Testament were written decades after the "earthly life" of Christ, or that they were edited and verses were inserted that were not in the originals and or not in the first textual witnesses. So many people think that it's "the word of God" and that's that. Yeah, that feeling of kind of being "controlled" ends in about the 5th grade if not before. Good to hear you don't feel that way either. It would mean like surrendering like your own discernment and discretion and intelligence to what ever any speaker is saying. I think it's a good and necessary skill to develop these things and it's very intellectually and spiritually helpful and important. Apparently somebody, back in the first centuries didn't think so, and there have been a lot of people since then who have been willing to up hold that point of view. Maybe they don't know how to think for themselves or something, I don't know.

Well, the opening post is about "preachers". I used to have like 15 bibles, I had to get rid of them because of water damage to my last apartment, I know I've read the word "control" used here. I've looked it up on biblehub, it seems that most versions that they currently publish use the word "authority" instead of "control" while some use the word "dominion". Had to take a second look at the International Standard Version, which reads as follows. I've never heard the verse put/translated that way before International Standard Version Moreover, in the area of teaching, I am not allowing a woman to instigate conflict toward a man. Instead, she is to remain calm. Here's the list of various translations and interpretations on biblehub https://biblehub.com/1_timothy/2-11.htm This is from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research (it was done in 2010): "The Faith Communities Today 2010 national survey of a fully representative, multi-faith sample of 11,000 American congregations found that 12% of all congregations in the United States had a female as their senior or sole ordained leader. For Oldline Protestant congregations this jumps to 24%, and for Evangelical congregations it drops to 9%. Here's the link to the article http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/quick_question3.html ---------------------------------------------------- The video that you posted in the OP lead me to other videos on the same subject. It eventually led me to a YouTube channel called CBE International (Christians for Biblical Equality). Apparently there are a lot of sane and strong men who are standing up for this cause. I also listened to the stories of a number of women who feel that their honest, God given calling to be a preacher (or whatever one chooses to call people in that position) had been cut out from under them, either because of where they live or because of a denomination that they had become affiliated with. I've heard of this happening to a number of people, both male and female, in a number of different professions. It reminds me of the movie with Robin Williams called, 'Dead Poets Society' where a young man, who wishes to be a poet, commits suicide because his parents are like forcing him to be a lawyer or something. Here's a link to Christians for Biblical Equality, CBE International, if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/c/cbeinternational/videos

I keep wanting to get back to the main topic of this thread and the opening post, but I it's so searingly painful that my mind just goes blank and I keep avoiding and not looking at the subject. One question is how does it hurt men (or males, so as to include boys/children in this), and how does it help or enhance male's lives if women are given equal voices and say in church and in spiritual matters? One thing I can think of here is that women get the advantage of learning from all the men and male insights in scenarios where only men are doing the talking. We can then get together, just women/females and exchange ideas and insights among ourselves. This gives women more opportunity for spiritual growth, insight and learning. I'm wondering if men are getting left out of a good number of ideas and even getting left behind. ---------------------------------------------------- The other thing that often jumps out at me, is that Paul said women cannot be preachers because he doesn't want women to be in "control" of men. Over my lifetime I've listened to numerous teachers and preachers and lectures and so forth and I've never felt like any of these people were in "control" of me. If I disagreed with any of them, I might not have been able to say something right then and there, but I've never felt like I couldn't express my outlook at some other time. I don't see how being a preacher or a teacher or a lecturer puts one person in "control" of another. ----------------------------------------------------- Thanks for reading

Has anyone ever done that? Refused to leave when they have been voted out of office?

I wake up every day thanking Heaven for term limits.

Do you mean this 10 Commandments? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 20&version=NIV