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Fnord
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08 Aug 2022, 9:26 am

Christianity needs a complete overhaul to get back to Jesus' message of love, inclusion, healing, and reconciliation.



aghogday
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08 Aug 2022, 9:43 am

^^^
Amen
Again
For Real..:)



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08 Aug 2022, 10:23 am

A lot of those quotes sound like they are from fringe type denominations as the pastor is held is almost infallible.

Do you know which denominations were involved?

That is a large list of complaints,however, I have been to many churches myself.

Baptist churches for example are under an authority 'the baptist convention' any misbehaviour by a pastor can be reported. I know one baptist pastor who is very humble, he saw me with my fiance and tried to help us get married and was an altogether good bloke.

Christianity is presided over by imperfect human beings, I have noticed the mean ones are the head of churches that are strict 'you're not good enough' type churches.

Pentecostal churches in the UK are some of the most liberal. They seem to teach 'once saved always saved' so they have no need to ask the members about their private lives, the larger ones have 4-5 pastors so all the authority is not with one person. two of my local pentecostal churches serve alcohol in the evenings.

The church of England is similar to the pentecostal churches in the ways I have stated above, they differ widely on other matters.

One fairly strict denomination is Christadelphians but they have a nice family atmosphere, they have no paid clergy whatsoever, so everything is done by volunteers.



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08 Aug 2022, 10:40 am

Quote:
A lot of those quotes sound like they are from fringe type denominations as the pastor is held almost infallible.

There are a lot of issues in various religious groups that go way beyond an “almost infallible” pastor.

Quote:
I know one baptist pastor who is very humble, he saw me with my fiance and tried to help us get married and was an altogether good bloke.

Pastors should not be trying to help people get married, unless, of course, the couple wants him or her to marry them during a wedding ceremony. I’ve seen issues stemming from pastors meddling in the love lives of their parishioners. They are not relationship counselors and they lack an adequate education on the topic, not that anyone should be trying to get other people married.


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08 Aug 2022, 10:53 am

Quote:
Pentecostal churches in the UK are some of the most liberal. They seem to teach 'once saved always saved' so they have no need to ask the members about their private lives, the larger ones have 4-5 pastors so all the authority is not with one person.

No pastors should have authority. It’s a profession with varying levels of worthiness, but they shouldn’t exercise any authority over parishioners.

With that being said, Jehovah’s Witnesses typically have that many leaders per church, and they are extremely controlling, so having more pastors/elders doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be less control.

The Pentecostals I’m familiar with believe in “speaking in tongues” and harmful nonsense like “faith healing.” It doesn’t get much worse than that.


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Fnord
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08 Aug 2022, 11:02 am

klanka wrote:
A lot of those quotes sound like they are from fringe type denominations as the pastor is held is almost infallible.  Do you know which denominations were involved?
Yes.  Jehovah's Witness, mostly.  Also LDS, Baptist, and a few independents.  A few of them were my own observations, too.


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TwilightPrincess
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08 Aug 2022, 11:43 am

I could make an entire lengthy thread about harmful stuff JWs alone have said both to me and in general.

I've heard plenty of cringey stuff from mainstream groups, including Baptists, though, so it's not just a problem with fringe groups - not that that's anything to scoff at. It's a big issue, especially considering the influence it holds on politics.


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klanka
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08 Aug 2022, 12:47 pm

OK I dont have personal experience of LDS or JW but have heard bad things about them from testimonials.

In UK pentecostal churches the pastors dont exercise authority over the people who attend really. They just do a sermon and pray for people. Their authority would be just the fact that they are onstage and prominent, and set the agenda of the service and church in general.
I was saying this was good because then the church doesnt become focussed on one person.

I have heard many stories of faith healing but hadn't witnessed it myself



Fnord
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08 Aug 2022, 1:02 pm

klanka wrote:
I have heard many stories of faith healing but hadn't witnessed it myself
My only direct experience with "Faith Healing" involved going forward during an altar call to have someone pray for my injured back, because I figured that a little prayer could not make it worse.

So I tell the guy about it, and he pats me on the forehead with his open palm.  Then he just looked at me with a puzzled expression, shrugged his shoulders, and moved to the next person.  He patted her on the forehead, she wailed and collapsed backward where someone was standing to catch her.  The guy in back of me told me to go back to my seat.

I saw the woman the next week and asked what happened.  She told me she did it for fun and to get her face on TV.

(TV?  I did not know we were on TV! )

I guess my aspieness kinda put a damper on knowing what I was 'supposed' to do.


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Texasmoneyman300
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08 Aug 2022, 1:03 pm

klanka wrote:
Texasmoneyman300 wrote:
Also I think its wrong for my church to celebrate Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving because historicially the churches of Christ were very opposed to celebrating Christmas and Easter.It is was a long standing rule in the church of Christ that we dont celebrate any religious holidays but that has gone by the way side.


Do you have any reasons other than it's church tradition?

Yes because it was viewed as sin to celebrate religious holidays because the first century church had no religious holidays.



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08 Aug 2022, 1:20 pm

Fnord wrote:
klanka wrote:
I have heard many stories of faith healing but hadn't witnessed it myself
My only direct experience with "Faith Healing" involved going forward during an altar call to have someone pray for my injured back, because I figured that a little prayer could not make it worse.

So I tell the guy about it, and he pats me on the forehead with his open palm.  Then he just looked at me with a puzzled expression, shrugged his shoulders, and moved to the next person.  He patted her on the forehead, she wailed and collapsed backward where someone was standing to catch her.  The guy in back of me told me to go back to my seat.

I saw the woman the next week and asked what happened.  She told me she did it for fun and to get her face on TV.

(TV?  I did not know we were on TV! )

I guess my aspieness kinda put a damper on knowing what I was 'supposed' to do.


I take it that the “healing” didn’t help your back.

Sometimes faith healing can seem to work due to the placebo effect or even adrenaline during some of those crazy enthusiastic church gatherings.


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Fnord
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08 Aug 2022, 1:29 pm

Texasmoneyman300 wrote:
klanka wrote:
Texasmoneyman300 wrote:
Also I think its wrong for my church to celebrate Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving because historicially the churches of Christ were very opposed to celebrating Christmas and Easter.It is was a long standing rule in the church of Christ that we dont celebrate any religious holidays but that has gone by the way side.
Do you have any reasons other than it's church tradition?
Yes because it was viewed as sin to celebrate religious holidays because the first century church had no religious holidays.
Then it should also be a sin to use contractions in speaking or writing because Jesus did not use them either.

(That is Aspie reasoning for you!)


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aghogday
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08 Aug 2022, 4:18 pm



Sadly, 'This' is Where the 'Literal Effect' of 'Materially Reducing Scientism' Comes into Reality too;

Hehe, The Placebo Effect is Actually The Power of Believing One is Gonna Be Healed Through Emotional Feeling
And Sensory Intent Greatly Involving Our Subconscious Minds; And It's True Science Has No Materially Reduced

Way to Determine Discretely
Why the Placebo Effects May
Be Strong Enough in Some
Cases to Put Some So-called
Terminal Illness in the File Cabinets
of Unexplained Remission From So-Called Terminal Disease;


Oh by The Way, If 'You' Don't Believe in 'VooDoo'; Indeed The Power
of Negative Beliefs In 'Nocebo Effects' May Actually Influence Our Subconscious
Minds in Even Actions With Negative Feelings Senses in Emotions to Come to a Most

Unfortunate Early
Demise of Disorder;

Yet It's True, Science Also
Shows, Some Folks Are More
Subject to These Powers of Suggestion
in Feeling And Sensing Synergies of Emotions
Deep Within Consciously Than Others Are For Real;

And Here Comes the 'Drill,' Or in My Case Then, 66 Months
of the Worst Pain Known to Humankind, Type Two Trigeminal
Neuralgia From Wake to Sleep No Drug of Medicine Would Touch For me

in my Right
Eye and Ear,

Shut-in, in my
Bedroom Then for
66 Months; Well Guess
What as Restricted in Left Brain
Thinking Processes As Illustrated Well
By Respected Oxford Scholar, Psychiatrist, And Researcher
Iain McGilchrist, Modernly Today, Well Beyond Old Myths
of Right Brain and Left Brain Characteristics; We Have More

Potential As Human Beings When We Better Integrate Our Left Brain
Processes in Terms of Grasping the World With More Limited Emotions
of Fear and Anger and The Such That is More Inherently A Left Brain Hemisphere Process

Than Right Brain Hemisphere Process; Yes, It's True i Healed myself From What No Doctor
Could Do, With A Meditating Free Verse Poetic Way of Opening Up My 'Rivers of Belief' Within;

And Indeed, i Keep Myself in the 'Spirit of a Child in Play' of Autotelic Moving Meditation this Way too;

What are the Actions
And Consequences
Empirically As Such
For Living A Positive
Emotional And Sensory
Way of Life Like This; Well,
For those Who Cannot Move Past
'Scientisms', There is the Fact that i Still
Leg Press Up to 1520 Pounds at Age 62 as
Sure that may Be Discretely and Empirically Measured

At the Military Gym; and True, Folks Forty Years Younger than
me Get Out of Breath Trying to Keep Up With my Dance For 10 Minutes
Still Now; Also True, if they Try my Free Style of Spiraling Moving Meditation They Often

Are Ready to Fall on their
Butts Within Minutes

of Trying it;

And True, it is very
Possible to Discretely
Measure 10.7 MiLLioN Words
of Free Verse Poetic Responses
in A Longest EPiC Long Form Poem
to Humans All Round the Globe on
Average of writing 100,000 Words this
Way Per Month For 107 Months as Well as Documenting
16,996 Miles Now of Public in 106 Months too; So How Do i Do it;

i Couldn't Speak Until i Was Four, and Was the Weakest Assessed School
Kid Assessed in the Aquarium Then And Surely Not Assessed By A Metro
Area Community in Documentation Way of 1300 Comments in A Viral Facebook
Video with 90,000 Views As Famous, Hero, And Living Legend Just for a Free Dance in

Public For Almost
9 Years Now; Yet
of Course, the First
Day i Heard 'Living Legend'
Was About a Year in, in 2014
of doing That Just For the Healing
Therapy of Autotelic Moving Meditation
That Even Science Shows is a Successful
Therapy For Treatment of Autistic Kids in

Getting Them Out of their Systemizing Mechanical
Cognition Minds And Opening Up Pathways of Social-Empathic-
Artistic-REAL SPIRITUAL FEELING AND SENSING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCES

THEY NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE;

IT'S AN ART AND AT THE BEST SCIENCE

WILL EMPIRICALLY SHOW THE PLACEBO
POWER OF POSITIVE BELIEF IS ALSO HEALING

AND THE NOCEBO POWER OF NEGATIVE BELIEF IS ALSO HARMING;

Don't get Caught Up in Religious Scientific Traditions of Labels for the
Essence of the Healing Power of Real Feeling And Sensing Synergy of Emotional

Belief Far Beyond
Just 'Word Think'

in the Subconscious

Minds and What This Means

Is the 'Little Wafer', the 'Little Sugar
Pill of Jesus' That Some Folks Receive
At Church IF They REALLY REALLY BELIEVE
IT IS GONNA BE HEALING IN THEIR LIFE ARE

INFLUENCED
BY THE POWER
OF SUGGESTION FOR
HEALING NO DIFFERENT

Than a Caring Physician
Who We May Trust at the
Doctor's Office with Complete
Faith that the Sugar Pill is Gonna
Heal Us And If We Really Believe IT, in Some cases it Does;

Voila, We Get Better Without Even Any Actual Medicine at
All Except for the Power of Suggestion in Positive Healing Power
By A Sugar Pill or A Wafer of Bread That Folks Really Believe is an

Imaginary Character
Named Jesus at Church too;

For It's True, if 'You' Don't
(Not Addressing Anyone
in Particular Here Now)
Believe it Works, You Don't
Believe in the Placebo Effect
Either That is Also Real in Sugar Pill form too...

It's True An Imaginary Figure Like Jesus Comes
in Many Forms of Sugar Pills in Healing Through

Wafers of Bread,
Etcetera too...

Yet Voodoo,
in Regard to
The Nocebo
Effect Is Equally
As Real Now;
i Don't Even
Feed Myself any

Scary Movies,
or Murder Mysteries;

What We Consume Indeed
We Come to Be More Light or Darkness For Real too...

Other than that Before i Created My Own Placebo Effects
in Autotelic Meditating Ways of Free Dance And Song there

IS ALSO THE EMPIRICAL FACT, i scored a 45 on the AQ Autism
Quotient Scan As Designed By Simon Baron Cohen; And the After

Effect is Still 11 Now;

And as Far As EQ, i Score
in the Mid-90's As Opposed
to the Mid-50's Before All for

(In Overall Increases of
Emotional Intelligence)

A Free Dance And Song of Life
Springing Deep Within in the 'Rivers of Belief' Real...

Not Everyone Takes Advantage of This; Not even Folks
In Church Who Basically Are Dead Inside, Even When They 'Eat So-called

Imaginary
Jesus in
A Wafer of Bread'...

It is Indeed A Very 'Occult' Tradition in Mysteries Science Discretely
Cannot Fully Measure Now in Practice for Real Like Sugar Pills too;

The Effects Are Real; Science Just Doesn't
Have a Tool to Measure What Cannot and

Will Not Be Fully Measured; Yeah, Like How
Human Consciousness Works Either For Real Within
When 'Lights' And 'Darkness' Are Turned on or off of Course...

Quantum Mechanics Relates How Little We Truly Understand about
Reality; And Nobel Prize Winners in that Field Are Assessed as Only

4 Percent
Atheist;

It Depends

on What one Experiences of Life;

Some View 'Deeper than the Ocean Blue';

Others Can't Even Get Below the Surface of the
Ocean Whole As That Relates to Autotelic Flow

And The Integrating of Much More Human Potential
Realizing in Creativity And Productivity For Real Sort of

Like the
'Depth of
This Blue
Whale Story
Here' Far Beyond
Average Gold Fish Attention Spans
of Modern Humans; Yes, Less than
3 Seconds As Science Assesses that

Shallow
Human
Twitter
Reality Now True too...

Hey, i Understand What It's Like
Not to Have A Creative Bone in my
Body; And Hey, Now i Am No Longer The Human i Was Before...

What Folks Referred to At School As 'Four Eyes' And At Work Then
A Valuable Commodity to Solve Problems and a 'Computer Brain' too;

Hehe, Even When i First
Came to this Internet Site
Some Folks Actually 'Tried to Bully'
me For A Lack of Creativity then, HAha...

Change Happens,
As the Old Sayings
Go, Horatio And Ripley
Believe it or Not And All that Jazz True too...

So Let's (me) Answer the Age Old Question Is God Real;

All That i Do is Naked Enough Whole Complete For Paradise
Within Inside Outside Above So Below All Around Now Eternally Real

For Every Place i've
Explored, i've Never 'Heard' Or
'Seen' About A God More Real Now
Than What My Existence is As Verb For Real

It's Just All That is of My Life Experience Now For Real

As Real As Real
Gets in My
Dance and
Song of Life For Real;

i Don't Trust Anyone Else
Yet me With My Organic Soul;

Already Lost it For Long and i Ain't
Going Back to the Empty Place
Within for Eternally Now at Least..:)



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TwilightPrincess
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09 Aug 2022, 9:11 am

Quote:
”When my sister got pregnant out of wedlock, went to the elders (group of old men residing over congregation) to confess, and repent, they decided to disfellowship her, meaning all other Jehovah's witnesses had to shun her, even immediate family."

This was basically my experience. I poured my heart out to the elders sharing something horrific that had happened to me recently and they still chose to further humiliate me by announcing my punishment from the platform in two churches.

The elders told me that my sin of fornication was as bad as murder because it’s listed in scriptures alongside murder as stuff God hates. I wish I would’ve said exactly what I was thinking, but I was trying to lessen the punishment, and it did work but not to the extent I was hoping. I was “publicly reproved,” not disfellowshipped. The elders praised me for my humble, submissive, and meek attitude in private afterwards. A**holes. :roll:

Once again, I felt like I had no voice, so I don’t think the trade-off was worth it. If I could do it over again, I would do things differently.

I was already being shunned by family for “sinning” and I’m shunned by my extended family now because I don’t go to church. Some family members, including my grandmother, give my parents and brother a hard time for spending time with me on an almost weekly basis.

My brother shunned me for a year. Eventually, he stopped believing, apologized for it, and we are best friends now. It’s really sad that he couldn’t be there for me during the worst time of my life, though.

There are other issues too like my parents using emotional blackmail (especially the risk of losing contact with them) to get me to marry the person I was with. He was obviously a bad person who was abusive, but they were more concerned about my supposed sin than anything else. Afterwards, the beliefs kept me in a very abusive situation for years. Separating for abuse is not allowed.


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Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 09 Aug 2022, 9:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fnord
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09 Aug 2022, 9:16 am

I had a friend who told me that "Shunning" (e.g., Disfellowshipping) did not occur among Jehovah's Witnesses.

I told him to never lie to me again.

He told the same lie to me again.

I had a friend . . .


:(


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TwilightPrincess
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09 Aug 2022, 9:25 am

Fnord wrote:
I had a friend who told me that "Shunning" (e.g., Disfellowshipping) did not occur among Jehovah's Witnesses.

I told him to never lie to me again.

He told the same lie to me again.

I had a friend . . .


:(


My mom did that when I used the word “shunning” with her once. (I typically avoid talking about religion with family.) She said that JWs aren’t the Amish.

They think that when they do it they are right and justified so the words “disfellowshipped” or “limiting contact with the spiritually weak” are words that, in their minds, reflect bad on the person sinning but not on them or their belief system, unlike the word “shun.”

Compartmentalizing at its finest.

It’s disturbing to see decent people engaging in such heartless behavior because of religion, though.


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