And pray tell me where I’m not acting according to my own faith, oh wise one?
I didn’t know being a Christian forbade me from expressing my opinions…
Did you even read my post? Or did you just see it was from me, scan it and post a (wait for it) kneee-jerk reaction? I said that if you do not consider yourself an adherent to the tenets of the Christian faith, then I am wrong, and I apologize.
If you do consider yourself an adherent, though, then your actions are in contradiction to the words of Christ and the tenets of the faith. Here’s that verse I’ve been urging you to read. These are the words of Jesus Christ himself, purportedly:
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the mote in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye." (Matthew 7:1-5, NIV)
So there it is: If you do consider yourself a Christian, you are acting a manner which is in contradiction to the words of Christ in Matthew 7:1-5. I’m afraid I cannot get more specific than that. If it doesn’t bother you, that’s cool with me–it’s not like the Religion Police are going to take you away. But that’s what, IMHO, puts you in the “Wildest Bill Pile”–saying you are Christian when it suits you but acting like, well, a bitch all the time.
I may not be religious, but I can bloody well read and understand how a Bible verse applies vis a vis how someone is acting.
I never said I was judging anyone. I said I judge their ACTIONS. And I also believe in sticking up for others and telling someone to calm the fuck down.
How, praytell, should I go about doing what you say-never speak up in anyone’s defense? Never ever dare voice opposition to anything that bothers me? For crying out LOUD, I’m hardly the only Christian on this board who does this.
I don’t know you, like I said, so I can’t judge you personally. I can only judge the ATTITUDE I see on the board. If it’s being a bitch to tell someone Hey-get over yourself, then so be it.
I try to respect everyone. But that doesn’t mean if someone’s being a prick I’m just going to stand by and take it. If THAT makes me a Wildest Bill clone, then so be it.
For the most part, I’m very hard to annoy. Most assholes amuse me…it’s good for laughs. But you know what? I found out a long time ago, if I don’t stand up for myself sometimes, no one else will. If that makes me a hypocritical Christian, so be it.
Phil already showed you that your assumptions are wrong, so I’ll just ask: And these are caused by people not believing in God HOW? sigh
And Guin, you HAVE judged us. You’ve judged Phil and woodstock to be assholes because they gasp disagree with you! (And before you make your knee-jerk response, yes, I HAVE read the thread.)
Well, if that was how I came off, I appologize. I admit, I got a little heated…perhaps because right now retail is a mother fucking son of a whore. And I get very pissed off when people try to tell me that if I don’t like it, quit. Right now-THAT IS NOT AN OPTION.
For the record, I’m not calling Phil an asshole because he disagrees. He can disagree, that’s fine. No, it is the WAY he came off about it. Pretty fucking harsh-like, “Oh, you want time off on Xmas-too bad-suck it up, you’re just a peon, so too bad so sad.”
I don’t MIND if one disagrees. For the record, others in this thread have. I only called Phil an asshole because he acted like one. I admit, I’ve been a bitch. I appologize and will try to calm down a bit. It’s just that right now, retail is really shitting over us.
You are right, to a certain degree. I certainly know a lot of religious hypocrites (and atheist hypocrites, for that matter.) But personally, I think it takes more than getting pissed off at someone about their behavior and taking it to the Pit. Maybe that makes them a little hypocrite, it depends on the circumstances.
I know as a fellow vegetarian, you know that many times people want to brand the “hypocrite” label on us. People are just itching to do it, like they think they know what our personal standards for vegetarianism is, and even what the definition of a vegetarian is. This gets my goat more than anything - they are not experts on MY diet, and MY moral/personal reasons for being veggie. And I think in some cases, a person can be that way (itching to find hypocrisy) about Christians, or about religious people.
This is true, to a certain point. But as I have mentioned in the veggie example, it depends on what the thing is, and how the person finding hypocrisy interprets the Christian tenets. To bring up the veggie example again - are all veggies who wear leather shoestrings hypocrites? Some of them may be veggies for diet reasons, some have different standards as to how far they will take their vegginess. It’s not so clear-cut, but oftentimes an “outsider” wants to make it so. It often depends on the specific circumstances.
You’re right, that is so irritating. When they tell you how great and moral they are, but turn around and admit to some really shitty behavior, or display some totally reprehensible behavior or attitude. Yikes.
However, I think the case can be made that Guin’s behavior here does not rise to that level. She had a beef with you, and she felt (if I am not mistaken - I cannot speak for her) that you were ragging on someone else. She didn’t like it. It could be said that she was standing up for someone else who she felt was being treated unfairly. Her motives then, were not just to rail on you for “disagreeing” with her, but because she felt you had been needlessly harsh to someone else. Her manner of doing this may or may not have been correct, may or may not have been effective. I do not think that “sticking up for someone else” is a non-Christian attitude. I think that was her intent - rather than just being a “bitch”.
I am sure you will disagree with my assessment, and that’s fine. And I am sure she made missteps in the application of this attempt to “stick up for someone else”.
But you know, the Scriptures are LONG, and they have lots of stuff in there. Lots of things to be interpreted, and each denomination interprets verse differently, and emphasizes different things. If someone is so inclined to take every word seriously, every Christian is a hypocrite. I believe it is in Corinthians where Paul says that women should not have their hair “plaited” (I believe that means braided?) Well, I am a Christian woman with braided hair. So I must be a big honkin’ hypocrite, then! Every Christian woman who has her hair done up in a certain way is a hypocrite. Some religions expect their women to all wear dresses or skirts and have long hair. (One of my friends belongs to this church.) I wear pants. Am I a hypocrite, or is she? One of us is not following the tenets of the Scriptures accurately.
But you know, I bring up these examples as just examples. Please please please let’s not rehash multiple scriptures and start a whole hijack about whether women should have braided hair, or wear skirts. I just bring them up as examples that the Scriptures are a complicated text. Hence so many different Christian denominations, and different interpretations of the Scriptures.
I am glad to hear that, Phil, because I actually like you. Grumpiness notwithstanding, I always valued your posts, especially on the veggie threads. I just think you can be too grumpy, have too much of an edge, especially on certain issues. And I have come out of these recent debates/arguements with the belief that certain issues bring out more grumpiness in you. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just the time of the year, or maybe it’s just me. Whatever.
I will add one more thing. I DON’T think that I am being a Christian hypocrite or a “bitch” because I admit that I am finding you “grumpy”. I don’t think you’re a bad guy, at all. Do you regard it as hypocritical for someone to tell someone else that they are being grumpy? 
Oh my gosh. I am so confused. I thought I was posting in the “Pissed in Cheerios” thread, Phil. I’m sorry.
This post will probably make no sense to everyone. I am so sorry!
And it was a really long and rambling post, too. Oh my.
Guinastasia, I’m as willing to abandon the judge-me-judge-you-blues as anyone else is. Just remember, you started a Pit thread about me, not vice-versa. You took it upon yourself to call me out in here, so you have to expect that that opens you up to criticism from me as well. You want to drop it and move on, I’m cool with that.
It wasn’t so much I was judging you, Phil, but your methods. Yosemite had it right. I have no problems with YOU, personally, since I really don’t know you. It was more I think you sometimes become a little TOO abrasive for some arguements, all right? Like you try too hard.
All good things in moderation, am I right? It’s like you have a good point, but you’re too harsh in your delivery.
Whew, there!
And issues in retail really honk me off because right now, we’re getting a major screwing at KrapMart. They made some major lay offs, which MAY have been necessary, but then now we’re shorthanded-to the extreme. And it’s all falling on us-the employees.
So I’m sure you are a nice guy, as everyone said. Just too abrasive sometimes, as Yosemite points out. (I’ve never been very good at getting right to the point-I tend to ramble).
So, now I’m going to bitch instead about Netscape freezing on me EVERY FIVE SECONDS!!!
DAmn computer…
Hey phil, you’ve got a lot of nerve trying to counter thea’s unfounded and (SURPRISE!) mistaken opinions with facts. Hey, she BELIEVES them, therefore, they MUST be true! Reminds me of Sunday’s Dilbert. “Since when did ignorance become a valid point of view?” That one’s on my fridge.
I’d better stop now, before I am recognized as being your sock puppet - or is it the other way around? Oh yes, high and mighty sanctimonious thea, I did read before posting. Unfortunately, it was the back of the Cheerios box. Slip $10 on the Pass line for me, okay?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pldennison *
**
[aside]
I realize I may be banned for life for posting nice things in the Pit, but I wanted to thank youpldennison for the compliment. 
Zev Steinhardt
Dinsdale, ten dollars they do is a bet. 
Phil, you do have a good point about the divorce rate. I forgot how many multiple divorcees I’ve encountered in my wanderings through this vast universe. And as for the divorce rate being higher in the Bible belt because horny young people tie the knot before they’re ready for the commitment, all I can say is the failure rate for people who marry too young would likely be higher whether they were virgins or not. The thought of young people getting married just so they can get laid scares me. I think a lot of the problem is that in our culture, we get a lot of mixed messages about sex. On one hand, especially coming from the fundamentalist side, sex is evil, bad, dirty, and on the other hand sex is used to sell everything from cars to beer to hamburgers. (If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.) If we, as a society, could get the message across to our young people that sex is a beautiful, wonderful expression of love between two people who have made a vow to spend the rest of their lives together, but not constantly shove it in people’s faces, I think that the kids might decide it’s worth waiting for, and be able to hold out for that one special person.
Now, if the rate of out of wedlock births is declining, especially among teens, because of the availability of abortion, yes, I would prefer live births. I am very much pro-life. Of course, I would prefer that teenage girls (and unmarried adult women, for that matter) not get pregnant at all.
OK, how about some completely unscientific anecdotal evidence? I’m forever meeting guys while in restaraunts (I eat out alone a lot), on the bus, on the corner waiting to cross the street,(red lights here in Vegas are long. You could get married and raise a family out here while waiting for the light to change) and in the course of conversation they ask, “What’s your name?” “Loretto” “Where do you work” I tell them “You married?” “No” “Have a boyfriend?” “No” “Ever been married?” “No.” “Do you have kids?” :0 So, the rate of out-of-wedlock births may have declined a few percentage points, but it has become so much the norm in this country to have kids outside of marriage that “Do you have kids?” is the next question a guy asks a woman he has just met, after she has just told him she has never been married.
As for the road rage/aggressive driving issue- Drive much? When I have some more time, I’m going to have to do an internet search on the subject, but in the meantime, you might want to start keeping track of how often you are deliberately cut off, how often you try to change lanes, only to have the vehicle in the lane you’re trying to get into speed up and force you back into the other lane (and the traffic in that lane), or how often you’re honked at for doing something atrocious like pull over to let an emergency vehicle pass. And ask yourself, was this type of behaviour (oh, dear, I’m spelling in British) commoplace twenty years ago? If your not that old, ask your folks.
And your local high school may be the safest place for your kids to be, it is still becoming less so. [bad analogy] A casino in Las Vegas is probably one of the safest places in the world, because casinos are basically crawling with security, and there are cameras everywhere but in the past year, there have been three people shot to death inside casinos- a blackjack dealer was murdered by her ex-boyfriend at the Golden Gate, which is where I broke in- and the cashiers cage at Bellagio was robbed. I’m not sure what the statistics are, but during the first two years I lived here, there were no news reports of people being killed inside casinos, and only one of someone being killed in a parking lot (Circus Circus). The only killing I had heard of inside a casino was the murder of Sherrice Iverson, and that happened in Primm, just about the time I moved out here. I’ve heard of assaults from time to time, but even those seem few and far between. Sure there were probably people killed in casinos before this year, but I don’t think we were averageing three a year. I imagine the same is true of high schools. A disaffected student opening up on his high school with a gun may be an aberration, but there have been more of these aberrations in the news in the last two years than there had been in the previous ten. Prior to that, whenever we heard about a kid killing someone, it was an individual grudge, not a random mass shooting.[/bad analogy]
Thea -
Yes, that type of road rage was common 20 years ago here in DC. Probably in LA too, and most major cities.
I’m STILL waiting on how all of us being good little Christians would fix it, though.
Falcon, I don’t think it’s really so much a matter of what particular religion, if any, you practice, as much as it is of being decent human beings. And it’s not just all of us, although we can do our small part by showing courtesy to others on the road, we have to find a way to make all of them drive and play nice together too.
I’m thinking we could maybe dump several thousand tons of kava kava into the water supply.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say the driving/road rage situation is more a function of increased congestion on the roads than a function of religion or lack thereof.
Besides, in my experience, limited as it may be, you can be a devoutly religious person and still be an crummy, inconsiderate driver.
Bzzzzzz, thank you for playing. The rate of abortion in the country has hit an all time low. This CNN report sumarizes the CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, published in December of 1999. The abortion rate in 1997 was 305 per 1,000 live births, the lowest rate since the legalization of abortion in 1975. The number of abortions for women of child-bearing age (15 to 44) also declined to 20 abortions per 1,000 women.
And this would be different than everything else you’ve claimed on this thread so far… how? Do you notice a pattern developing here?
And I was using information on abortion/live births provided by pldennison…
Whoa, whoa–I only gave numbers on live births. I assumed that the number of live births could decrease without a corresponding decrease in pregnancies due to an increase in abortion. Looks like I was wrong, though. Looks like fewer teens are getting pregnant, period.
Thealogica:
I worked Christmas day. Although it was far different from your place of work, I think the point I am about to make might be as valid in a casino as in any other place where someone who professes the Lordship of Christ works. It might even be especially true on a date that that person holds to be especially important in the celebration of Christ’s life.
I worked as hard as I could, because it was His birthday. I was as cheerful as I could be, because I think that would be His preference. I tried to give full measure, shaken and pressed down, for the pay I received, because I wished to give that work in tribute to the Lord.
I don’t celebrate Christmas as a feast day, or gift giving day, or homelife pilgrimage day. I always work on Christmas. That is my choice, and my work is my celebration of His life. But even if my work were something entirely commercial, and uninvolved in other lives, I would feel constrained to give my employer my best performance, and my customers my most sincere good cheer. Because they might know I am a Christian, and they they might judge His spirit by my actions.
Just one man’s opinion.
Tris
All I can say to that is “Yay!” Hope the trend continues. I still find it disconcerting when someone asks me if I have kids after I just told them I’ve never been married, though.
Triskadecimus,
Well said.