That is the crux of the matter. Deconversions/Deconstructions among prominent members of a belief system sometimes rock the world of others who adhere to the same or similar beliefs. It wasn't easy for people connected to Moody Theological Seminary when Bart Ehrman deconverted. it was a bit of a scandal in that community, and heart breaking for many of them. There is a lot of pain that can be involved when leaders have a change in worldview. Compassion needs to be extended both directions so people can heal. A huge amount of marriages don't survive these things either, and especially so if there is a lot of outside pressure and turmoil. Dh and I have managed so far and that's partly due to how much privacy we've been able to maintain in the matter. For Joshua and Shannon, privacy isn't going to happen, not when one is prominent enough in the community to have to make public statements about their faith issues. This didn't just happen overnight, and trying to go through it without having the SGM community up in their business was not likely easy, probably rather impossible actually. SGM churches due to their take on "church discipline" tend to be unbelievably snoopy - at least as reported by many folks who have left them - and up in each other's faces, quite judgmental. It is the problem with setting oneself up as a very public figure for your belief system or political system or celebrity status. You choose to live in the public eye and that has its rewards, but it also has some pretty big downsides and this is one of them. For Joshua, he's had to go through the painful process of trying to figure out what to do with his books, and that means dealing with publishers, distributors and retailers, etc. That's not something that normally converts or de-converts have to navigate. The same for the musician, there is published work out there so how does that get handled, and for those that loved the music and found encouragement and blessing, how does that work out for them? Ultimately, the Harris's kids pay the biggest price. The marriage isn't going to make it, and they are living that bad dream in the public eye. They will have to figure out as adults what they believe, and if that is different from their parents, another layer of difficulty added. I feel so sad for them.

Maize, God Be With You is the closing of the non traditional service - which is really a blended, relaxed service but not particularly contemporary. Pastor and I wrote the arrangement so it would be pretty and lyrical, yet upbeat and joyous to sing. I like the keyboard part I wrote. Except for around specific holidays, it is sung at the end of every non traditional service. People seem to really enjoy it

This. Unfortunately, we've experienced some epic with the trains when we used them.

Agreed. Without the sun, the temps would have been too low to sustain plant life even if it was only for 24 hours. While it says "let there be light", light doesn't necessarily mean life sustaining temperature. Instant freeze. So unless one believes in some sort of suspended animation kind of thing, or some other methodology for warming the earth that isn't explained, then it's pretty hard to take as more than a story of how ancient Israelites thought about the natural world and how it came to be. I've listened to all the arguments for young earth, middle earth, old earth based on interpretation of the biblical creation story, and well, the text just doesn't hold up unless one adds a lot of not in the bible supposition about how it could have happened, thus accepting conjecture to support the theories. I think the value in the text is in shedding light on how ancient peoples thought and related to their material world, how they thought and related to god as they perceived him or them, but not as a documentary of what actually was.

I gave up on the new school of thought in chiropractic. It has not been remotely helpful, not worth my money. What has worked is yoga combined with 5-6 therapeutic (so not those comfy, relax you make you fall asleep kind) massages which work out the inflammation and restore good circulation. Those two things have been worth way more to me than chiropractic. But possibly one reason this is so is that I have specific kinds of soft tissue injury, not necessarily vetebra alignment issues. When I was in college, I had an old school DO who gave what I like to call "brutal adjustments" but man did those things work and last a long, long time! I alignment problems back then which is a no issue these days.

It's out there Maize, so I expect you to contribute!

Okay, so here goes: Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring Jesu Bambino Panis Angelicus Ode to Joy (Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee) The Prayer Pie Jesu Laudemus Te - Vivaldi Ave Maria - Schubert Of Standard Hymns: Make Me a Blessing Day by Day O the Deep Deep Love (I am not certain why it appeals to me. It's hauntingly beautiful, and I love to sing it, love to hear it despite not being invested in the theology.) O Holy Night In Excelsis Deo (Angels We Have Heard on High) Contemporary: You are My Hiding Place - Selah You Raise Me Up - Selah Kyrie - Michael W Smith

The Lan Su Chinese Garden is 3/10th of a mile from union station. I can't think of much else that is close by although you could walk the nearly half mile to Cycle Portland and rent bikes. That would give you more options.

Me too. As a matter of fact, I still love sacred music so much, that I serve as the director of church music at our UMC. I enjoy giving them the music that blesses them, and makes life worth facing on Monday. I don't begrudge anyone the faith that gets them through life so long as they aren't hurting anyone else. For Christmas Eve service, not only did we sing traditional carols, but my son played Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring on classical guitar while I accompanied him, a cellist performed What Child is This with me, I brought in a special vocalist to sing Breath of Heaven, and our mixed vocal quartet performed O Holy Night. All of it to candle light with our pipe organist providing lots of Bach for preludes and postludes. It was exquisite, and I loved every minute of it. I am half tempted to start a thread on "sacred music that means the most to you" and then have people pick their top five pieces and post them. It would be interesting to see how many like traditional, classical, contemporary, christian rock, alternative, etc., and it would extra interesting to hear what those from non christian backgrounds find uplifting within their musical religious context.

WoolC, thank you for sharing. I was somewhat aware that the Orthodox have a slightly different view of this issue than other christians. For the record, not everything about christianity is something I've turned my back on. I see a lot of wisdom in the words of Christ, and I attend and serve at a local UMC with dh so he can be nurtured, and we share and work together as part of making our interfaith marriage work. Most would be likely to describe me as a Red Letter Christian, though I am a deist who applies Red Letter principles to my perspective on sharing planet earth with everyone else. I find the discussion of the ancient Aramaic and Hebrew surrounding the translation of these passages to be really interesting.

That sounds delightful!

I wrote out a long post to describe the hell, living hell, heaped on my husband, kids, and I when my mother's husband did something unthinkable, truly devastating. However, there was no way to describe it without risking that it would be triggering, and potentially very painful for people here to read. So I erased it. Suffice it to say, the threat of hell is kind of passe. I've lived hell, for two straight years I lived hell on earth, and when I desperately needed my then friends, all of them committed christians, the most, they couldn't run away fast enough, and the church was just wicked. We were told to "get right with god" before something worse happened. They got it in their heads that god was punishing the extended family because well, who knows. I try not to spend time speculating on what it was they thought we were up to in our private life that would cause god to smite others just to issue us a wake up call. It's a rather depressing line of thought.

((((((HUGS)))) right there with you.

As for again the concept of Satan or man bringing evil or moral decay or however it is put into the world. Here is the issue I take with that. IF god created all things, and Satan and Adam are created things, then they did not create themselves nor did they have any say or any "will" when it comes to whether or not they were created with the ability to sin/make such choices that would bring evil to the whole world, and to every human ever. The concept of disobedience, usurping of power, badness, death, everything is god's concept and creation first by default of the fact that he made creatures with the design to cause such things to occur. There is zero way, if god created all matter, all life, they are his designs, then the design for decay, the design for evil, the design for horror, the concept of gene mutation that would lead to pain and death are necessarily built into the design. Again, this is a Judaic concept about god. And if the bible is god's book for defining his attributes, then it can't be escaped that he literally says Isaiah 45:7 King James Version (KJV) 7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. As much as theology doesn't want to lay the problem of evil or decay or suffering or however it is defined at god's feet and desire to shove it off on Satan or Adam, it still rests with the design and by default the designed because they didn't make this plan, and god actually accepts responsibility for it. Now its a whole different discussion if indeed there is more than one god, and that god or gods has the ability to create and was the one who brought evil into the world in contravention of the good design or something. There are religious groups who have thought of Satan as a god, potentially maybe not quite as powerful or something, maybe as powerful. Depends on the group. And in psalms the name El Elyon, the most high god, Psalm 82: 1-2 God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? indicates the possibility of a pantheon of gods of which El Elyon is the highest in the hierarchy. Genesis 1:1 "in the beginning god". The Hebrew as well as the Aramaic is Elohim which is the plural form of god thus it actually means "gods". This seems to muddy the waters of the concept of only one god.

Hugs. I may have reacted too strongly. I've had people accuse me of simply never reading the bible before so.... You and I, we are all okay. My main concern too was that there are some folks on this thread who have suffered some absolutely horrific things, and I didn't want that pain to be minimized.

None of this actually addresses the issue. First of all. The premise of christianity is god is the only god and god is eternal. God created ALL things, the bible is his word. In Isaiah 45:7, the prophet states that god says he creates evil. If the bible is the word of god and not man, than god admits he creates evil. The only other option is that god isn't the only god, and that some other god in the pantheon created evil. It is pure semantics to say "god doesn't create evil but he wills it". Seriously. He wills it? This is not substantively different. God uses suffering to magnify his name? Okay then. So he is willing to allow suffering because it apparently makes him greater or something. God needs children to have cancer so he can be more what? And it begs the question, why does one want to worship such a god who needs to be magnified through rape, murder, genocide, pain, and horror? This is not an effective argument with non believers. It is however an argument that may cause people like Joshua Harris and Shannon Bonne to re-think their faith. It begs the question "what kind of entity is this god, and how could he or she or it be characterized as good if his need is to be magnified through suffering?" As for Jesus suffered all of the miseries that humans face so its all good, uhm no. I have to admit that made my brain twitch. He didn't suffer genocide, he didn't suffer child birth only to have his baby die, he didn't care for his sick and dying child, there are a host of miseries he did not suffer. On the converse, I have not personally been tortured and crucified. Thus the human experience. We all have different experiences. And I'm not certain where your assertion comes from because the bible doesn't say he suffered every misery of human experience, just that he suffered the temptations. That's rather different. Directing me to go back and read the bible is rather condescending. I've read it from cover to cover numerous times, and in multiple translations, and with parallel studies of the gospels using multiple commentaries. I know what it says. Just because I do not come to the same conclusions as you does not mean I have failed to read it. The problem is neither of us begin with the same presumptions about it.

You didn't address the issue of who created evil if all things had to be created, and all things are created by god. By fiat, if man created evil, and god is omniscient thus knew man would create evil, then evil does flow directly from god's choice to create man. Otherwise god isn't omniscient. This is a standard attribute given by christian theology to god. Now if god isn't omniscient, then that's another matter all together.

Agreed. And I think that this is where the theological concept of god created everything and free will goes off the rails if one is willing to be open to actually following the natural logic. Isaiah 45:7 - KJV - I formed the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. The context of the passage does not alleviate the conundrum. If anything, it makes it pretty obvious that god creates evil. If everything had a creator, ie. all things were created and nothing occurred spontaneously, then evil as an idea has a creator. The biblical story is that god made angels, and one of them had the bright idea to fall. Clearly that meant evil as an idea existed at the time of the creation of angels, and it is something angels could choose to do. Who created that? If not god, then clearly there was another entity with the power to create who did this. Thus, if the biblical narrative that god created everything is accepted, then it follows that whatever evil is, as both a spiritual manifestation and the cause of physical deeds that are not "holy", was the brain child of god. The natural outcome then is ultimately all evil both spiritual and physical originates with god. OR the alternative is that there is another god powerful enough to create not only ideas but their ideological manifestation in the physical world. Most christians do not accept satan as a god or the presence of another god with creation power. If the genesis narrative is supposed to represent the real story of how evil and death came to be on planet earth, then let's examine this and follow the clues to their logical conclusions. God created a tree, he endowed the tree and its fruit with the knowledge of evil, and he allowed another being with this knowledge to provide temptation to potentially open up that knowledge and unleash its effects in the world. God did this, according to theology, in order to have a "willing" band of followers who chose to worship him. But let's explore the choice. These people apparently had no clue what it meant to die. They had no concept of suffering. No knowledge of hell. No knowledge of Badness or what it would be like to suffer badness. They make "the wrong choice", and this is the fate of all people to come who never had a hand in that choice. Death comes into the world. There is going to be eternal damnation, an immortality of agony and torture IF the humans don't choose to worship god and make sacrifices to him. So digest that. Really let that ruminate. Now, exactly how is it a free will choice to worship god and make sacrifices to him when the consequence of not doing so is torture, agony, eternal hell? That's coercion. It's primal self preservation when faced with horror. And that horror, if god created everything, is a result of god's mind and his creation power choosing to make that the way of things in order to get worshippers. It's not exactly benevolent. It most certainly is not a free choice. What he has are a band of followers that are terrified to do otherwise which is a lot like going along with a terrible dictator in the hopes that his terror doesn't fall on your family. In the material world, human kind has a tendency to ultimately call this evil, not a categorical good, unless one of course believes that war is good from an evolutionary perspective - thinning out the herd every time there is a war for resources. I think the issue with fancy theological mishmashes, and here is where "god's ways are higher" and "the great mystery" and such comes in, is because people associate god's assertion that he is holy with being good or what we perceive as good. So the whole thing has to be "man can't really understand god and should just accept this" because the concept that holy could equal rape, murder, child abuse, etc. is a non starter. And I'm not saying it does equal that. I'm just showing the major problems that come from following the logic given the information contained within the bible. And actually, to be honest, the OT kind of supports this. If you take a look at it, god ordered the Israelites to do things like I Samuel 15:3 in which they are instructed to kill even the children and nursing babies of the Amalekites, and this is just one in a long line of orders to commit genocide. A lot of excuses "they were worshipping false gods" or committing this or that sin or whatever are proffered as the reasoning that a holy god would do such a thing, but either genocide, dashing infants against the rocks, and taking virgins into captivity as sex slaves is holy or it isn't, and if it isn't, then hmmm what does that say about god's holiness/goodness. It definitely means at the very least that the rules of what is and is not acceptable as followers of god do not naturally flow from his own attributes. And again, I'm not claiming anything. I'm actually kind of relaying the nuts and bolts of a philosophy of religion class discussion I had in college. Interestingly, the professor was a PHD from Notre Dame of Mennonite upraising. He was quite good at challenging everyone's preconceived concepts about god or the existence of a god or multiple gods. One thing to consider is that the words "good, bad, holy, evil" etc. themselves are problematic because terms are 'true" by definition. Humans equate holy with good, and evil with bad or holy with positive attributes, and evil with negative attributes. Potentially, that may not be actually the celestial definition of these terms. This creates another whole bucket of worms. It also naturally encompasses other concepts such as if an entity creates something is that thing entirely value neutral. Is the creator of the thing responsible for the outcomes of the thing being created. If god created evil, is he responsible for the outcomes of evil. If he created the concept of holy, is he responsible for all "holy" outcomes. If he is responsible only for the latter, than why not the former. And that's the just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. At one point a classmate ended up in tears. The poor girl somehow managed to end up in a senior level philosophy class without the prerequisites and just wasn't prepared to have her faith challenged so profoundly. I think at some time in the course of the semester when discussing truth by definition, we had her convinced that a circle really could be a square. It wasn't pleasant for her. She and I were the only persons in the class not headed to grad school for philosophy, history, religion, or divinity studies, and i loved it. She not so much. I think she got really hurt in the process. It's not something to really give much of your brain power to contemplating if you aren't ready to be challenged. Anyway, I am not promulgating an idea of what god is, who he/she/it is (I have been using the he pronoun out of respect for those on the thread who of abrahamic faith traditions because it just makes it easier to have a common pronoun to use), the attributes this being possesses. But, this type of discussion does highlight some of the problems with reconciling standard christian theology. Ultimately, faith itself can't make total sense. It can't. One would actually have to possess the full knowledge of god/s in order to create a theology that takes into account the fullness of such an entity or entities. It's obvious that the bible is not a full source because there are some pretty important, and basic questions about god that aren't really satisfied by information in the text. So it definitely requires faith to accept the precepts it does outline. I think what tends to be wrong with christian apologetics is the determination to make faith logical, to make faith a nice, neat bundle of theological axioms. But that action works against faith, not for it. I don't mean disrespect to believers. I'm just pointing out where the logic goes for many folks.

Exactly this.

Thank you! Respect for elders, or respect automatically conferred simply for being a generation older than someone else is in and of itself, a troublesome tradition because it gives widespread immunity to old folks to do and say whatever they want and everyone else has to put up with it because "respect for elders". And frankly, the old folks alive today have absolutely been kids, teens, young adults during the civil rights movements, they have lived in the age of changing terminology. They know better. Seriously. The only ones that get a pass are the ones major cognitive issues and dementia because they truly can't filter or understand. The number of folks 65 and older will increase by 105.2% by 2030. 98-100 million people. There is no way in hell anything is going to get better in this nation by giving a pass on bad behavior, racist language, discriminatory culture because "respect your elders".

I don't know the person so that makes it hard. But qualifying an observation to suggest that the American locale is not America, smacks of racism. Probably something the person may not realize is offensive, yet it really is. I live in an area of absolutely unabashed racism. Sigh....I cannot WAIT to move. Dh's retirement can't come soon enough. And this kind of comment is often a "test the waters" comment. Based on the response, they know if they should pipe down, or get to speak up and be even more offensive. That's my area. It's my lived experience, so I'm not saying that was the motivation of the person to whom the OP referred.

Oh please no, just no. And I don't care what comes back in style, I am NOT going to have those thick, curled, poofy bangs again. It's not happening!

That's a very interesting article. I have witnessed some of this myself. One thing that the local florist told me is that her bread and butter used to be funerals, holidays such as Valentine's, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Weddings were a side business, too infrequent and not enough money spent to be a big contributor to her business. But, funerals have really fallen off. So many people are getting way more practical about funeral costs, and often in lieu of flowers, asking for donations to worthy causes. She's lost 75% of her funeral income in the past three years. While Valentine's Day and Mother's Day remain strong, fewer families are ordering greens at Christmas or centerpieces at Thanksgiving with many church's falling off hugely in the what they order at Christmas and Easter. So one way she has tried to make up for the scale back in revenue is triple what she used to charge for wedding flowers. Mostly, people have just sighed at the bill and paid it because...wedding fever. On top of that, the whole fall off of folks spending lavishly for flowers for any occasion, churches as well, has caused four of the six florists in the county to close up shop. Yes, I live in a county of 56,000 people and only two flower shops. We are 60 miles from the nearest Costco, Walmart keeps almost nothing for flowers, so it isn't big retailers causing this. Oh, and there isn't a single cake decorator in the county now either. The bakeries in the city have picked up all the work in the rural areas and with delivery, charge upwards of $5.00 per slice. The last wedding I did silk flower arrangements for had a rather simple cake...white and pale pink fondant, decorated with silk flowers, very simple buttercream icing borders. It was a cake for 175, and cost $750.00. I think the boom of DIY'ers, and potentially more and more people scaling back on specific kinds of spending has caused businesses to drop out of these services, and lack of competition drives prices up. In a five county area, there are two David Bridals, and two private bridal stores. That's it. This lack of competition I am sure has driven the cost of gowns up, and likely driven customer service down. I can honestly say that the DB in the nearest city has about the same attitude towards customer service as the local Walmart. It's not good. Rural areas likely have more issues with this than urban. So many of my sons' friends and acquaintances in college are super, duper practical people. As they are getting married off, their choices really aren't pinterest, high society. Some of them have simply had the religious studies professor meet them in the school garden, and marry them with a few friends and family present while wearing dress pants/dress shirt, and sundress or something similar for bride, people coming and going on their way to class. Someone snaps a couple of photos, and off they go. There is a lot of that going around. I was talking with eldest ds the other day. he is going to be the best man in a wedding in November. The bride's family and traditional church are insisting on a traditional wedding. Bride and groom are seriously not into this and holding their ground. The compromise seems to be getting married at their alma mater's chapel for a low fee, and since groom is going into the Army chaplaincy program, they have a military chaplain coming to do it for free as well. She bought a white suit, her bridesmaids are wearing whatever best dress they own, DS - who owns a tux because of some music performance groups he is in - was asked to NOT wear his tux because no one else was going to rent one. So he's on deck with his black pants and loafers, white button down, and navy blue tie. They made their parents limits the guest list to 50, and they are sharing the bill for that reception meal to be at a local barbecue restaurant. Absolutely no fuss. I am seeing and hearing more and more of that. I think times may be changing.

Oh My Beth S, making me crack up!

LOL, I'm starting to form ideas in my head. Maybe we should just drive up, take a picture from the car, and move on before any harm comes to us! 😄