Dan L

[FONT=Courier New][SIZE=2][COLOR=Indigo]..A bit of a long one.. "Then said [i]Christian[/i], May we go in thither? The the [i]Interpreter[/i] took him, and led him up towards the door of the palace; and behold, at the door stood a great company of men, as desirous to go in, but durst not. There also sat a man at a little distance from the door, at a table-side, with a book and his inkhorn before him, to take the name of him that should enter therein; he saw also, that in the doorway stood many men in armour to keep it, being resolved to do the men that would enter what hurt and mischief they could. Now was [i]Christian[/i] somewhat in amaze. At last, when every man started back for fear of the armed men, [i]Christian[/i] saw a man of a very stout countenance come up to the man that sat there to write, saying, Set down my name, Sir: the which when he had done, he saw the man draw his sword, and put an helmet upon his head, and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him with deadly force; but the man, not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he had recieved and given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut his way through them all, and pressed forward into the palace, at which there was a pleasant voice heard from those that were within, even of those that walked upon the top of the palace, saying- Come in, come in; Eternal glory thou shalt win. So he went in, and was clothed with such garments as they. Then [i]Christian[/i] smiled and said, I think verily I know the meaning of this." -John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress --The basic gist of what that quote is about is that there are a lot of "Christians" who simply aren't willing to fight in their faith. I'm not talking about crusades here- I'm talking about spiritual warfare- to do with integrity and righteousness (actual, not "holier than thou" and condescendant). When you see a Christian who goes to church every week but doesn't really believe, or who wants heaven but wants to live nice and comfortably, to suit his own needs, or who just doesn't stand up for those he should (ie. the weak, needy, oppressed, etc.) then that's the equivalent of the men who stood around, afraid of the ones in armour. And that's simply not how I want to live.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

I have a tendency to let people get as close as they want to get (with set boundaries, of course...) in most circumstances.. occasionally I'll find someone who really winds me up the wrong way and I want nothing to do with them- but I don't particularly condone that attitude so it usually wears off.. There are people who I tend to be a lot closer to than others, but usually I let the closeness be dictated by the depth of the friendship- the deeper it is, the closer I am naturally. However I do find that I really need to spend some time on my own every so often (the more regular the better, to a certain point) in order to function when I'm around people- hence I'm an introvert, in that I tend to recharge my batteries away from people rather than with them.

[quote name='HOTpage2004']I think it would do the country good if we told the other Athiests to shut up. This land was made under God and thats how it should be. With the debate on taking the ' One Nation Under God' out of our pledge than it would be the 'In God we Trust' out of the money and I dont even want think of what else. We beleive God is the one taking care of us, and if we turn our backs on him, what ifluence would that be on other countries, cause I know some countries look up to us as a leader. They admire us, and taking any kind out God out of anything of ours would just be wrong. So yeah, tell the other 14% to Shut the he** up![/quote] You believe that God takes care of those who claim to believe in him and then tell their neighbours to shut the hell up? Even if you consider them your enemies, Jesus commanded us to love our enemies too. Maybe your argument would be more convincing if there was some degree of integrity in it. Consider this a rebuke.

I'm pastoral (meaning I generally find myself more concerned for others than myself), I'm an introvert (meaning I need time on my own every so often to survive and tend to think things through over a longer time and on my own), and I absolutely hate being pro-active about anything (but I find that I have to do it and have been getting better at it). But that's nothing to do with my star sign. My housemate Jude was born a few days before me (actually, two years and a few days. Quite a difference) and is the exact same star sign. However, our personalities are almost exact polar opposites. I have more of a carer-type personality, he has more of a pioneer type. I'm generally not all that self confident and tend to beat myself up- he's overly confident and tends to fall into pride. Both our strengths and weaknesses lie in exact opposite areas- and thus we absolutely drive each other up the wall. If that's not proof enough that Astrology doesn't work as a blanket, univesal rule, then I don't know what is (Seeing as our two personalities can't possibly both be covered unless the guys who write this stuff write general statements where some of it can apply to everyone)

I for one don't believe it would work.. or at least not for long. It doesn't matter whether you believe it's due to sin or just human nature, our general tendency as a people is not to habitually unite in harmony but to try and get our cut. It may work for a short time, but even if it did (which I doubt) soon enough people would end up in a disagreement and you'd have two different sects, so that everyone is happy and gets exactly what they want. After a while a lot of disagreement would end up in a lot of splits and before you know it we'd have borders and territories, places off limits to certain people and accessible by others, prejudice all around... And that's just the simple way things would be if the world was no-where near as big as it is. I happen to believe that in heaven things will be different and people will be united- but then I believe that sin, or the bad parts of human nature, simply won't be, because they have no place in heaven at all. But hey- that's a side note, and we're not here to discuss that, are we ;) (though that doesn't mean "don't add your own opinion", it just means "don't bash this one and thus turn it into a free-for-all fight about beliefs") (As I said, I don't think it would work. But I'm slighly disappointed that you didn't add an option for those who ardently believe that it would definitely work, in the poll :p)

Political correctness, at the level which people try to impose it, is pretty foolish. The basic gist of what they're saying is "what you [i]are[/i] has negative connotations among people who are prejudiced against you, so we'll call you something different" What next.. will man be the "Visitor of the gateway to increased population", and the woman the "Welcomer of visitors from a foreign body"?? ... The basic premise of political correctness is that if a term can be abused and have prejudice held against it, then that must be stopped, usually by replacement of the word. It's the basic equivalent of seeing a filthy mess (more to do with the abuse the words are used for than the words themselves) and cleaning it up by throwing a new carpet over it. Either an equal mess is going to pile up on the new carpet, or people are just going to remove it again. i.e. even these new terms will get abused, or simply ignored. I'm not exactly a fan of dealing with negativity by hiding it- an act which I consider to be equally as negative as it is a negative response to something negative. Maybe if we were more positive about stuff.. like actually encouraging people to be proud of who they are and how they are different, and encouraging actual equality within society rather than forced equality. Of course, I dunno exactly how, and gracious as I try to be I can't figure out why you'd want to encourage Dirty Old Men to be proud of their differences to the rest of us, but heh.. I always reckon that positive action does far better than negative action (note: discipline can be positive, as long as it's not out of hatred but for correction out of love. Eg. if someone continues to do something which is actually doing them and others harm)

[quote name='Sieg']I dont if this will help or not, but maybe you should say that it was all your moms fault that you coudn't leave your friends house and help her find her dog and blame it on her and not blaming this whole mess on you. If I were you, I say that I was really sorry and probaly ask if she wants a new dog or something to make it up to her, well thats what I would if I was in your possition.[/quote] Shifting the blame is never good advice. Quite frankly, I had to wonder what kind of advice you'd be offereing when you said "I will help you with all your problems and all your help needs".. and well, I'd suggest that if you're going to make a statement as bold as that then you be sure that you can pull it off without giving tons of bad advice. (Everyone makes mistakes, sure- but some people are foolish to consider even offering something like this. That's not to say that you're a fool, but be careful of making over-bold statements on issues such as this). My personal advice in RPGchick's situation is this: It ISN'T your fault at all. And nor is it your friend's fault. In most people is an inherent need to find blame when things go wrong. Someone (or God) has to be blamed whenever anything goes wrong (However whenever something goes right it's all our own work or good fortune- we're kind of messed up like that), and it's always desirable for it to be someone other than you. The big thing that needs to be accepted in this case is that there is no-one to blame. Really, I think your friend only blames you because inwardly she blames herself. In reality, this is an incident- something which happened, and the only way to move forward is to accept that things have changed, and more importantly to face the hurt and anger rather than simply lash out at others in blame. Now, this isn't so much advice for you, but for your friend, I believe she needs to know this, and I don't know how you might want to approach that. But ultimately, it needs to be accepted that there is no blame, that the loss has happened, and things need to move on.

Apparently people from Stoke are very much like Hobbits. We kind of never move very far from home (or even ever go there a lot- any trip longer than a half-hour drive has to be justified by a long stay, otherwise it's going out of your way a bit). We rarely know where anything is outside of Stoke, and to be fair most of us have no idea about some of the places within the city, other than our own little neighbourhood and various places we need to go such as work, etc. We don't like outsiders (it's said that it's very hard to manage people from Stoke unless you have a Stoke accent- otherwise they don't trust you). And we're quite a bizarre set of people on top of all of that. I'm kind of one of the exceptions to the general rule in Stoke- in that I live about 60 miles away now, without any other Stokies around me, and I don't fear the people in this strange new land. So really I'm kind of a half-hobbit. But Stoke is apparently the real-life version of Hobbiton, according to various locals.

Mine's my name- Dan L, where L is for Lucking. Though my old username, Deus Ex Machina, has a slightly longer story behind it. Basically, I played this game called "Deus Ex". Pretty much no-one knew about it at the time, to the best of my knowledge. No one in England anyway. I always thought the name was pretty cool- but I didn't know what it meant. I looked it up in the dictionary and the closest I could find was "Deus Ex Machina", which roughly means "an unexpected solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem, either in fiction or history", or "God from the machine". I thought both sounded pretty cool so when I signed up at OB again (after a brief, three week OB v2 stint as "Dan Lucking", where I basically insulted everyone, but Thimoc-one of the most notorious spammers on OB, I think- turned me around by rating me with 5 stars, as was the system in those times. v2 was gone when I came back though after the great series of events which led up to it's demise, which I was conveniently not around for, so I had to re-sign up. Wow. This has been a long bracket. Seems a shame to part with it now. Reluctnatly I bid thee farewell, O bracket o' mine) with the name "Deus_Ex_Machina". After about a year-probably about the same time that I became a Christian-I got the underscores removed, and then after a while I switched to Dan L as I figured that name didn't have so much of an ego problem (well, along those lines anyway.. seriously). So yeah. That's the story of my previous name..

[quote name='Innotech']there are both good and bad sides to this. While I myselfbleieve that not following God will probably end in Hell, Im not going to tell someone that they are going there. Simply put, true christians DO NOT consider themselves fit to judge other people based on religion. All of us are sinners, and a sinner calling another person evil is like pot calling hte kettle black.[/quote] It depends what you mean by judgement. On one hand, we are all sinners, and thus the statement "we all deserve hell" is true. Given that heaven is where those go who are worthy of being accepted into God's kingdom will go, and hell is just where all will go who don't get in. On our own effort, there is no man who by his own efforts is worthy of getting into heaven, thus he is only worthy of hell. Even the non-believers must understand that if you hold perfection as the standard, then nobody is able to reach it in an imperfect world like this one. (Regardless of whether you believe that hell is a real place) So essentially the truth is that if we were all judged by what we're worth, we'd all go to hell, on the grounds that we were far less than perfect. Christianity is a bit like a bypass- Jesus lived a perfect life and we get that accredited to ourselves, so in essence all our shortcomings are ignored when we come to be judged. It's not fair, and it's not just. The command that comes with it, though, is to be similarly gracious: As I said, no-one is really worthy of heaven as we are now. Including us Christians. So if we really believe that that's where we're going, and that we've been completely forgiven and forgotten of our sins, then it is a miniscule requirement of us to forgive the sins of others and to be loving. They are only "going to hell" in so much that they are just as imperfect as we are, and just as unworthy of heaven as we are, but we believe that Jesus covered that in us, and that he [i]can[/i] cover that in them. Hence there's our motivation for evangelism. The only problem is that we have the motivation but the majority of us do it so badly in cliche Christian style, that most of our victims don't want any part in the deal whatsoever. And we completely look over the issue of forgiving and loving others to the point that the church has degraded into a holier-than-thou, elitist and exclusive institution, a lot of the time even when it tries not to be. And really, the only solution to it all is love. Love your neighbour, love your enemies. Take the log out of your own eye before you pay the slighest attention to the speck in your neighbour's. I.e. sort your own life out, and judge your own sins, and stick to the standards which you set yourself, before you go judging and imposing those standards on others. And even then, simply do not judge. If the church as a whole wasn't so hung up about things like keeping seperate from the world (which we interpret to mean "make your own safe little haven" rather than "live differently") and the sins of unbelievers (There were no real "believers" before Jesus died, in the sense that there are today, and yet he forgave everyone), then the church would be a lot more effective at bringing people in. And the reason for that would be.. hell, it would be a much nicer place to go to , and unbelievers might actually want to go there without fear of being condemned. Phillip Yancey said it nicely in a story about a prostitute. Someone suggested to her "why not go to the local church for help" and she replied "what?.. and feel even worse about myself". The church has kind of lost the touch it once had with those "sinful men and women" which we often forget we once were, and still are. Of course, this is packed full of generalisations, which on the whole are true (some parts are more applicable to less churches than others) but there are exceptions, but the few exceptions that there are at the moment do little to lift the negative attitude towards church as a whole. And err.. as usual- what I went on about at the end of this post may be unrelated to what I started off at. If I seem to have just preached at you and you think I'm having a dig, don't worry; I'm not. EDIT: HC, Did I really say I was going to be your nemesis?! When was that!? (note: I'm not denying I ever did, I just seriously don't remember saying that, it may have been years ago or something :p)

[QUOTE=zantoff]It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having "In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!! What do you think? :wigout: :flaming:[/QUOTE] because that wouldn't be very pastoral, now, would it. Imagine you are the 14%, and the other 86% want to say "In Satan we alliege" (Bear in mind this is undert the assumption that 86% of Americans are now followers of the Evil One) You say we don't like it, and they say "Shut the hell up". I can't imagine you'd like that. "Do to others as you would have done to yourselves". By no means does this mean you should instantly get rid of the phrase on the coins, and nor does it mean that that is the conclusion that should be come to in the end. What it means is that you should pay attention to what others have to say a little more often. In fact, if Christians did this as a whole, then maybe the 14% wouldn't have that much of an issue with Trusting in God, because hey, the guys who follow him aren't that bad. If in God we trust, then in God we follow, and if in God we follow, then we are the servants of everyone, (That's a shortened version of a few Bible verses) and that means a little less of imposing our beliefs (something Christians are remarkably gifted and well known for) and a little more consideration. (Note: Don't take this as a dig at you personally. I don't even know if you are Christian- maybe you just wanted to start some controversy :p. But once you get me going I take a while to make my point, and so you get a post looking a bit like this one, except this one is unusually short..)

This doesn't look like it's going very far, particularly fast. I'd sincerely advise you to delete this thread before someone else who can, sees it. And maybe have a quick flick through the rules. other than that, have fun

Crimson Spider, I only have a few things to say here, 1- Stop trying to be clever. By that I don't mean that you're not- what I mean is stop arguing in order to try and come out on top. If you really do follow Jesus then you ought to know that it's in him that you find security- and that means that you don't find security in whether or not you win this argument. That and the Bible clearly says two things. One is that God's wisdom is foolish in the eyes of man, and the other is that no-one can see the father other than through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This petty arguing is a complete other means than "through Jesus and the Holy Spirit", so no-one is going to find God through it. You can prove the feasability of your beliefs, but then if it doesn't seem so foolish to the average man then by the first statement you're clearly not operating in God's wisdom. So give it up. 2- Stop judging others and defending yourself. Jesus said do not judge, so do not judge. He never said "do not judge wrongly", he said "do not judge" as in, completely. When you say something like "Isn't like you've done better. Your statements are based off of sheer rhetorics and ideals that only you have, and are often times off of something I wasn't even saying." you are judging this person, regardless of how right or wrong you may be. Thus when you judge someone on that, you open yourself up to the same judgement. It may be right to say what you just siad, but it is just as right to say "Crimson Spider is a sinner and doesn't deserve salvation"- but you were saved out of grace. If you really believe that your sins have been overlooked, then don't judge the sins of others. Otherwise your own sins will be judged, because you can't ask for mercy on yourself and justice on others, it has to work the same both ways. 3- Try to be slightly humbler. That doesn't mean you have to be meek and mild like a soft furry animal, but try to avoid seeing your argument as an absolute authority that you have to prove. It struck me when you said ""In announcer voice" and Racer 0 pulls up to Racer 2 to in the effort to excede her in the debate!". It struck me with sheer arrogance. You have nothing to prove here, and you have no-one to exceed. In fact, you are commanded to serve others, not to try to exceed their standards. And believe me, you know very little about faith considering how much you ramble on about it. Jesus knew a whole lot about faith- more than you or me- and he didn't get in any arguments like this. He got into a fair few discussions, and people either loved him or hated him- but those who hated him always walked away without much of a comeback to what he was saying. You, in contrast, seem to be acting as though you have the source of knowledge that these guys need to be made aware of, and yet your arguments aren't really given any credibility. Perhaps that means you need to find out a little bit more about this stuff before you argue about it? Let me give you one example: [quote]Like I said, the book gets screwed with over time. Jesus was a Jew, and he knew of the book of Leviticus. Similar to how people tried to hold Jesus on trial for not upholding the law from Abrum (can't...splell), and he stated that Abrum couldn't of had a law, because the "law" was givin when Moses was around. They cited the book, and he told them how screwed up it was.[/quote] This comes from a misconception that the book of leviticus itself was screwed up as time went on. Actually, the book of leviticus as it is is exactly as it should be. Otherwise it would never have been included in the Bible. The "screwing up of the law" is actually to do with the pharisees, who scoured the whole of scripture to find new laws that they could add to their collection. They scoured the Torah, the psalms, the prophets- anything they could for even the most obscure thing that could be turned to the law. It was this law of the pharisses that was messed up, NOT the book of leviticus. Leviticus only seems weird to us today because our culture is so radically different. Jesus never said the law was screwed up or anything to that effect- he said that the people were screwed up in that they never showed mercy. Jesus never got rid of the law either- he said that we could, rather than have law, have grace- but also that in order to recieve it we must give grace to others. You can be completely exempt from the law, but in order to be so, you have to grant others the same exemption, but the Law still stands. It was only the pharisaical law that was truly messed up. Reading through stuff that you've said, I can see that very little of it comes from experience so much as stuff that you've just thought up or gotten from somewhere else without too much credibility either. I reckon maybe you should work on that before trying to open people's minds up.

We have a few on TT, my gap year course: "Sausage"- any random thing at all, ie. "Bring us that sausage", "Here's a little sausage for you" (during a talk, referring to a point) "Johnson"- any random thing or person "Go bring Johnson over here", "fetch us that Johnson" "Moley"- Sweaty, derived from "Mole patch"- a patch of sweat There's probably more but it's quite late so not right now

Man, you need to face up to the truth that you've messed up good and proper. You need to quit living in your daydreams and face up to the pain- the daydreams can only numb the pain, they can never get rid of it. You need to stop looking to what you really hope can happen and start taking steps to change your circumstances, because you can never get what you want just by dreaming about it. Like it or not, your daydreams are [i]never[/i] going to happen just like that- and as long as you spend as long daydreaming as you do, they're never going to happen at all, and you're just going to sink deeper and deeper. basically my advice is this: -stop hiding away from reality -accept the pain for what it really is -don't make excuses for yourself but accept that you're generally messed up -take actual steps (rather than just thinking about it) towards improving your life and that's about it When you've faced up to the mess, then you can go about clearing it up- at the moment you're just taking every opportunity to pretend it's not there. You can get her back as a friend, but as long as you go down the way you're going now it's not going to happen

Eh.. Woke up with a cold.. It kind of lessened by the time I started work at 8:00, but the morning was painfully slow. I overloaded with hot sugary things for energy, which actually wasn't too bad. Then later on I had cell group, and afterwards made the excruciatingly hard decision to send Hazel the "when are you free" message. Andnow it's quite late, so I really can't be bothered right now to go into any more detail on any of those points- just want to sleep...

[quote name='Gelgoog Pilot']Ugh! *slaps his forehead* You cannot and will never find matter AND anti-matter together as one substance. It's compleately immpossible. As is the way with and acid and a base, they would cancel each other out. They would then no longer be matter and anti-matter anymore. They would be a completely different nuetral substance. This is all in theory though. ;)[/quote] You're half right there- Actually they'd be nothing but a clump of energy, after they cancel each other out.

[QUOTE=IceWolfEyes]Actually, Gelgoog Pilot, I'm only confused about how they differ from one another. And, if you can believe this, Christianity evolved from the Jewish religion. The forerunners for Christianity were Jewish (Jesus was Jewish, heh). Problem was, we believe in the one G-d, and the forerunners wanted Jesus to be our Messiah. The general population did not accept the idea, and Christianity was born. From Christianity branched several different religions, among them the Catholics. Now, what I want to know is, why did the Catholics branch off? What do they believe that is so radically different from Christianity that they had to rename their faith? Icewolfeyes *Edit* So, Chibi, they pray to saints instead of to Jesus?[/QUOTE] Actually, Catholicism never really "branched off" and re-named itself. Firstly, Christianity was never really given a name as a religion to start off with. After a few years people outside it started calling us "Christians", and so the name stuck. But the word "Catholic" actually means "Including or concerning all humankind; universal:". The word Catholic actually appears in Anglican liturgy- "I believe in the one Holy and Catholic church". Of course, we can't be referring to the actual denomination in that liturgy, because if we believe that Catholics are the one holy church, then surely we're in the wrong place? The Roman Catholics are called such because of this- The base of the religion is in Rome, and the religion is universal- open to anyone, including Gentiles- which is the main difference that came with Christianity. So although nowadays the Roman Catholic church is thought of by many to not be Christianity, actually it never changed the name of the religion, because the name isn't so much the religion as a statement about it. And in fact, the other denominations branched off from Catholicism, not the other way around, because the ones leading those divides felt that Catholicism was missing the point (And then there's Henry the 8th, who just wanted a divorce but couldn't- so Anglicanism on the whole isn't actually a great deal different from Catholicism because he didn't really want to worship any differently, he just wanted to get rid of his wife). As for Mnelmolth's statement that Protestants don't believe in the Holy Spirit, I have no idea [i]where[/i] you got that from, but certainly not from the majority of protestants.

[quote name='Shinken']As far as salvation, I see very little difference between the two. Both state that through doing good things, you will reach something better than yourself.[/quote] Actually, Christianity is pretty clear on one thing: No matter how much good you've done, you will always have done a lot of bad, thus no one can reach something better than themselves (heaven) just by good deeds. If you could, then there'd be no reason for the cross whatsoever. The actual teaching of the Bible is that you are pretty messed up but Jesus takes the blame for it if you believe it- and thus you reach something better than yourself. It may well encourage good works in our life in this world- but it certainly doesn't teach that you will go to heaven through your own goodness. "Salvation"... Why would we need to be saved if we could get to heaven just by doing good things? You don't even get into heaven by believing in God (because the Devil knows about him) or praying to him. Only by accepting Jesus- which usually takes the form of a prayer, but it is always centred on the fact that it's God who does the good things, not us. Buddhists probably have some good values and practices- but the statement that the two beliefs w.r.t. salvation are no different couldn't be farther from the truth. In case you couldn't tell, I'm a Christian. Technically Anglican, but I don't really give much attention to denomination- only the fact that I follow Jesus.

In the UK, the Passion of the Christ has an "18" certificate. Meaning that only 18 year olds and over can see it. Regardless of who else is with them. It simplifies things like this a little more..

Why not...? We beat him, spat on him, and put him on a cross for commiting no crime at all. Why not put him in a pint of piss too. The more ugly, smelly, and painful we make the image of the cross, the closer we get to realising just what the whole thing about grace is. I think the imagery is very good- Here is the saviour of the world, bruised beated, hung, and pissed on, and he still decided to save us. Granted, it's not the kind of thing I'd do to a crucifix, but it makes a good point if you're willing to see it.

Far from it- my 19th year had to be the most interesting year of my life. For one thing, it was the year where I set off on this wacky adventure after becoming a Christian, and all the craziness that came from that. I was a lot less mature than than I've become now though- and it was only 1-2 years ago

change your password to something random (ie. random letters and numbers), about 10 letters long. Just type in each letter/number at a time, in both the "password" and "confirm password" boxes. That way it's long, you don't have to save it anywhere, there's no chance you'll remember it or anyone else will guess it.. and your account is as good as deleted. Failing that, you could PM James or Charles.

Marriage in religious context was made for man and woman, and that's the end of that. As for the unreligious context- it pretty much comes from the religious marriage, but seeing as God is not really brought into it I don't know if I even consider it a proper unity, the way God intended. Which, if you're not religious, means nothing to you anyway. My point is that if it has nothing to do with God anyway, then it can take whatever form you want, rather than the specific form that he wants. And TN, I consider the passages about divorce with equal seriousness as the ones about homosexuality. I [i]do[/i] believe that you shouldn't divorce the one you marry, or that if you do, you shouldn't re-marry because you've already committed yourself. Still, I accept your point that the majority of homosexuality-opposing people don't follow that teaching anywhere near as rigorously. TN, one final point. I don't believe that homosexual relations are sinful for my own benefit, so that I have someone to look down on- my own life is far too sinful to try to exalt myself above anyone. Nor do I do it necessarily for "your benefit", ie. I don't actually believe you will somehow recieve what I say and begin to believe it for yourself. I believe this because of God. If you've never believed something for that reason, then trust me, you do [i]not[/i] understand why I believe it. The nature of my faith in God is something I can not explain, because you think it's just a set of beliefs and practices which I attend to, whereas actually it's more than that- but I'll save the expanation because you simply can't understand until you experience it. My God says that he made men to be with women and women to be with men, in sexual unity- thus any other sexual relationship is sin against him. Sin isn't a measure of good or bad, it's a measure of being for or against the will of God- and if you don't believe in the will of God as I do, then the word "Sin" should mean nothing to you. It isn't a moral high ground or a determination to convert you by which I feel complelled to give these arguments- but because this is what is said by the God I have faith in, and am in covenant with. I am no greater than you, and I am no better than you- I simply believe what I believe and try to be open about it.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Dagger IX1 [/i] [B]Male California gulls sometimes become scarce. When there simply aren't enough to go around, females may choose to raise their young alongside another female, using the same courting rituals as they would with a male member of the species. Some of these couples remain monogamous for years. Yet though they cannot copulate, the female gulls together protect and feed the offspring which were abandoned by their father. These birds' communities are structured so that a two-parent family is required for the fledglings to survive; it seems to me that here homosexuality serves a very useful and specific purpose.[/B][/QUOTE] Rewind back to: [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Dagger IX1 [/i] [B]Male California gulls sometimes become scarce.[/B][/QUOTE] Humans, on the other hand, are far from scarce. Thus the useful purpose doesn't really apply in the same way. Natural or un-natural, from an objective point of view, it is counter-productive, as it prevents the animal/person from having sexual desires which would lead to a continuation of the genetic line. From a subjective point of view however... Well, by it's very nature a subjective point of view has no specific form. My view on it is that homosexuality is just not how God intended people to be. My view is also that God didn't intend people to be lustful, but well, I've blown that one a great number of times. Several times just today, out of habit. I may have lust in more control than a lot of people out there, but hey- it's still there, so it's still a problem. And yet I still hold firm to my faith in God, not believing that my imperfection makes him any less accessable, because hey, if it did, there'd only be three people destined for heaven, and even they would only be one being.