Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[USA Today]

Last week I linked an article where Kenneth Copeland claimed that the Senate’s probe into his ministries and other Health/Wealth/Prosperity teachers were being targeted because they were Pentecostals.  I made a comment that I thought that was unfair to the Pentecostals that don’t teach Health/Wealth and Prosperity.  Most of the Pentecostals I know are Godly people who love God and don’t teach the lies that are being taught on most of the “Christian” TV stations. 

I guess my little post had more power than I thought.  The last three days I have had dozens of people from Kenneth Copeland Ministries on my site for hours at a time.  In fact there are times where there are 3-4 people from Eagle Mountain on at the same time.  Who knows, Kenneth and Gloria may be lurking for all I know.  I’ve also had people from TBN on too!  Wow!

I just want to let you know you are welcome to comment and give your point of view.  I didn’t realize that this little blog would warrant so much attention.  I don’t agree with your interpretation of Scripture–in fact I believe what you are teaching is false teaching.  But if you want to defend from the Bible your view you are more than welcome.  I will be the first to admit I’m wrong if you can prove to me that I’m supposed to be wealthy.  Our family is struggling financially as I type because we are raising our own financial support to minister in our community.  If I’m missing God’s blessing I want to know.

(BTW, Habitat for Humanity has been lurking for 3 days too. )

So, Health/Wealth and Prosperity proponents take your best shot.

[Fox Orlando]

Fed up with the high gas prices? A central Florida church says it wants to bless you by giving you a discount on gas.

For a few hours on Saturday the members of the New SpringChurch will pay $.50 cents of every gallon sold at the 7-11 on Red Bug Lake Road. It’s certainly a smart way for their new church to get its name out but Kirk Henman, pastor of New Spring Church say it’s not the main reason why they’re doing this. 

“For the two hours on Saturday people will come, whether they know we’re having this gas buy down or not,” Henman said. “You know they may just be coming to 7-11. There is no catch. We simply want to show the love of Jesus Christ in a positive way.  There’s no bait and switch. There’s no catch whatsoever.”

And Henman says there’s no lecturing either. 

“Nope, no preaching,” he said. “We’re just here to serve the community. We’re just here to pump the gas and wash the windshield, that’s it!”

Source

[From me]

Me likey!

What do you think?

[Guardian]

The strident secularism of Dawkins and Hitchens misses a bigger point. God doesn’t have to be great for religion to be worthwhile. Albert Einstein’s letter, containing a short rant about God and the Bible, sold recently for 25 times its expected price – thanks, in part, to professional atheist Richard Dawkins being one of the unsuccessful bidders. It’s long been said that religion is a racket. Sales figures of other anti-God rants – much longer than Einstein’s letter to Eric Gutkind – suggest that atheism may be catching up. But is it good for the atheists?

As we know, it helps to have a book in circulation. Dawkins’ recent work The God Delusion is nowhere near as big as the Bible, but shifting 1.5m copies is more than respectable. Book sales have a legitimizing effect. It’s not just the growing number of readers who may be converted by a polemic. Monetary success confers an impressive, almost magical, aura.

If atheism’s a commercial success, associated with a certain kind of high-flying, worldly proselytizer, we may yet see the advent of an atheist sect – reclusive ascetics who wish to distance themselves from the more ostentatious non-believers. Atheist sects? Not as crazy a concept as you might think. In New York, there has even been talk of a “church” - a physical house of non-worship – for atheists. Start a church and, even if you remove all mention of God, a schism seems inevitable.

Christopher Hitchens, declaring that “god is not great,” seems to have designed this phrase expressly to piss off the worshipful. Religion may be childish but so is a show of disrespect. If we’re so comfortable in our non-belief, do we need to go around nettling the believers?

While finishing my third novel, I faced a dilemma: whether to capitalise the G in God when referring to the Christian deity. God is more of a concept than a being to me, but the lower case “god” suggested by Hitchens just didn’t look right. If Nancy, Allison, and Jasmine (fictional prostitutes in my novel) require the upper case treatment, it seems democratic to do likewise for God, who is also a product of the imagination.

As a central character in so many other stories, God has legs, but I am not here to defend God’s greatness. Or legs. I prefer to say that God … is just OK.

Read the whole story here.

[From me]

I like what Ms. Quan has to say.  I guess an Atheist can say what I’ve been asking for years better than me.  If a person wants to be an atheist, agnostic, Mormon, Muslim, or whatever that is up to them.  I will still pray and share my faith but I will respect their rights to believe what they want.  A3 reminds me of Ms. Quan.  

What do you think?

[Tampa Bay.com]

 A 50-year-old Lutz man hired a nude maid to clean his 2,281-square foot home Friday.

The woman arrived at the Cheval home in a one-piece light colored dress. She took off the one-piece light colored dress. She cleaned the house per their $100-per-hour agreement. Four bedrooms, three baths.

She redressed and left.

Shortly after, the man’s wife came home from vacation to discover $40,000 in jewelry missing from their bedroom.

The man told Hillsborough Sheriff’s deputies he’d only left the maid alone in the bedroom a short while, spokeswoman Debbie Carter said.

Deputies are investigating. The nude maid, whom the man found on the Internet, is described as a white female, age 21 to 24.

Source here.

[From me]

How stupid.  Let’s see what kind of excuses we can find for this man to give his wife.  Be nice, but funny.