I hasten to add that has nothing to do with treating anyone badly.

Chris,

I sometimes get so sad when I read your posts. I don't read about joy. I don't read about loving. I don't read about enthousiasm. Your posts are so full of worries. Worries about enough gas and food in the house. Worries about escape routes. Worries about how to survive a great flood or the fall of the bomb. Worries about other people going to hell. Worries about yourself.

And sometimes I imagine you on top of a mountain, enough food and drinks for weeks. Enough gas to have light and warmth for quite a few days. There you are. You survived the flood. But nobody's there.

I read how you write about your beliefs, the dogmatics. Somehow there's the lemma 'love of God' but that one is intermingled with the lemma 'wrath of God'. In your posts they seem the same.

So you write about the love of God. But never did I see a post in which you showed us you enjoyed the love of God. That faith really is good for you. In stead of that you only tell others, like Max, that their way of living is wrong; i.e. wrong unto God; good in society.

In doing that you threathen practising gay people (OMG did I write those horrible three words; practising gay people...?), you insult God and you deprive yourself of joy.

You are an aspie. You like control in your life. You'd love to control everything and are prepared for the worst. You warn us all for oncoming dissaster. Have we got lifesavers, food, gas, water, pension arranged for when we turn 100. You'd love to have us all under control. Because in a way we are dear to you. You want us safe.
And you'd love to be in control of God. That way you could safe us all.

You can't control us. You can't control God.

But you want us safe with God. You try to threathen us towards your beliefs with hellfire and doomscenario's. And it hurts like hell when you do that. Because when you say God hates gay love; you say that your absolute truth says that gay love is to be hated. Like the bully who brings his superbigdaddy along just to say, "I did not want to bully but my dad says I have to."

About love without wrath you only can tell that you've been lovebombed and that it hurt you.

It is as if the idea of unconditional love is unknow to you.

I asked you a while ago Chris if you could write how faith affects you in a possitive way. Why are you a christian. Can you give a reason that goes beyond fear. Can you give reasons of feeling loved unconditionally.

Your posts about homosexuality hurt me. Yes they do. Whether you use impolite words or not. The intention hurts.

Your posts about God hurt me too. Because you seem so scared and alone before this massive god of wrath. Most people here on AFF that post about their faith post about the comfort, power and joy it gives them. I do hope to see a post like that from you once.

I'm looking forward to that one. I really am.

I'm looking forward to that one just as much as I not hope to see a post about homosexuality from you again. (Not until you understand how you've hurt us, and that might take some years)

Oh dear, Hyke.  I am truly sorry that you have been this sad, this long.  And like a mouse, if you see one mouse, you probably have twelve, so who else?   It doesn't make a difference that you're nice about, the feelings are identical all around, but it does register over here that it is a persistent problem that isn't going away.    

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Being a Christian is amazing like seeing UFOs, though.  That is one positive part.

I guess it is kind of like Close Encounters....

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind   In my case, sniping at a bunch of them until their demeanor earned my respect, especially when I considered what the difference between them and me was.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind     Finding it impossible to categorically hold a grudge like that again, having met something I wanted to tell about.  I received a reply from one I-didn't-think-she-was-Christian friend quickly.  She said she already tried it but was already disillusioned with human greed and failure.

Close Encounters of the Second Kind   Having had a miracle, something like being thrown from a car with the doors still locked (Christian sister later deceased from Huntington's Disease)

Close Encounters of the First Kind   Near death experience

The truth is up there....... and it leaves me wanting more

Positive #2: Being saved because I let Jesus in and Jesus is God.  Not simply a behavior thing, I know I am different, thinking different causes different behavior.  Probably irreversible.  

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Yes.  I did overreact to lovebombing in my second year of college.  I do not recommend that women witness to men from vulnerable populations or vice versia.

Effect 1: Academically incapacitated, comparable to the U.S.S. Stennis in the Sum of All Fears after it was hit by missiles from Soviet Backfire bombers, 15 months repair.  Just short of sunk.

Effect 2: Categorical anger and hatred.  16 to 24 months.

Smile.  The woman and her husband and I, as we are all Christians, mutually accept one another peacefully.  I listen to her especially with regard to (last Thanksgiving) dieting, weight loss (another woman added a strong recommendation that husbands should be lean).

I was such an angel dieting up to and including January 1 2008.

Don't use weird movie/cartoon metaphors. Don't use metaphors at all. And don't repeatt the chonology of "I was this in 1987 and there was this lady in 1989..."

Just tell what your religion and your love of god brings to your life. Now. Not by comparing it to some mutant in season three of Stargate Atlantis, just tell it as it is.

Well there are no twelve mice. Just one.
And though my life can be complete chaos once in a while I do not feel sad or bad in the eyes of God. I do not feel sad or bad in my daily life either.

You state four types of 'close encounters.' It's very abstract to me. Only the last one evokes an image. I'm not really understanding the sf metaphors you use.

For me faith is about living here today. Having 'close encounters' or not does not change that for me. It is about unconditional love. It is about being able to take pride in who I am, without boasting to be better. It is about accepting that I'm accepted and loved by god even when I'm not up to accepting myself.

Deep down I'm a severe Calvinist.
I can not earn my personal salvition. It is completely impossible.
There only is the love of God. Unconditional.
Enjoying my life can be seen as gratitude.

I've rejected a lot of calvinism. But the idea that earning your salvation by all kinds of restrictions etc is utter BS is a very dear doctrine to me.

I'm of to bed now.

'CU' all tomorrow.

I believe that there was a very good reason that Christ likened God to a loving Father.

When your father loves you, he does so unconditionally. It doesn't matter what you do (pull the wallpaper off, tread mud through the house, throw a ball through the window) he continues to love you, whilst teaching you that he disapproves of bad behaviour. His words teach you how he expects you to behave. If you do something really wrong, you may be afraid to tell him as you know he will be disappointed. Your guilt puts up a barrier between the two of you.

I believe that Christ meant that God loves us unconditionally. We have free will because He wants us to love him back and love freely given is true love.

Parents are supposed to represent God in the family as God is to humanity AND LOVE THEIR CHILDREN UNCONDITIONALLY. Nothing a child of mine does could possibly stop me loving them.

If you have selfish, autocratic parents you will grow up believing in conditional love. You will believe that it is up to you to 'earn' the love of God. When Christians tell you that it is impossible to 'earn' the love of God you will feel lost and frightened of the future.

I say that it is impossible to 'earn' the love of God because you already have it. There is nothing that you can do that will stop God loving you. The reason that sins keep us from God is the same reason that the naughty child avoids the parent; guilt creates fear and fear creates a barrier to feeling love.

Which is why Christ spent so long preaching in tales to people; to explain this simple truth: sin is merely the absence of love. The only things that are sinful are acts that aren't loving. That is why Christ said that the two important commandments were the first two and everything else was because people like to nit-pick about what constitutes a loving act.

That is why I am a Christian. Peel back the layers of tradition and pomp, of nit-picking and confusing doctrine and what you have at the core is Jesus Christ saying "Love God and love one-another".

Everything else is people arguing about the meaning of the word 'Love' and how one is supposed to show it.

Good night, Hyke. You are wise and very loving and your posts are much appreciated.  Sleep well. CU tomorrow

Hyke I do not think my salvation, sincerely sought from Jesus, is reversible, nor yours.  

Pretty much two things: You asked for salvation, and Jesus said so (that is His way, is His authority to save on request).  It is no longer a matter of how much you try to please God.  

I think you know it if you realize you have been changed.

I realize I grew up since age 23 becoming baptized.  Graduate school had that very helpful class by Dr. Linkey about conflict resolution and applied attribution theory.  Dad did not live very long after I came home from Huntington WV after graduation (Mom actually asked me to come home two weeks ahead of schedule because she feared Dad would not make it that long), she did not nearly have the physical strength to change bedsheets for a man dying at home, that was why I was coming home.  Maybe if I wasn't a Christian I would have left dad to die by himself, or been very mean to him about it.  It is plausible, my brother was not a Christian and he kept his distance in his own little apartment on the other end of the county.  I did not.

You know Dad wanted me to leave like my brother did, but I did not have his option.  It is just as well, someone needed to do the shopping, laundry, and taking out the trash for Mom, and it wasn't my brother, and if I hadn't been there......

Thanks Tigger

Why then do you hammer us with doomscenario's brought upon some of us who happen to love one of the same gender.

Why these threats if nothing will reverse salvation.

(I try to think in your language and the logic belonging to that language, but it is hard for me)

You called this thread 'A better way to fight on forums: language evolution'. You still seem to want 'fights' (I'd rather have debates) and the language you use towards the 'practising gay person' (oh oh, I used it again) is insulting, hurting, bullying. It is not an opening for a debate. It is a provocation for a fight out of selfdefense.

I still happen to think that you don't want that. But I wont be patient enough to let it happen again. Next time I will report. The pain is enough. Even if you do not mean to inflict it.

Thank you, Hyke!

* shy * thanks Mahler5