Stop Baptist Predators: Spending God's Money
The above link details some of the corruption with finances which has crept into the SBC and its churches.
We are having problems right now with finances and there is major restructuring going on = major positions are being vacated and early retirement is being given some 1/3 of the employees of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) located in Atlanta--actually "Affluent Alpharetta."
My father pioneered their work of Juvenile Rehabilitation in the late 50's. I served in the same capacity with the Juvenile Court of Wake County (Raleigh, NC) 1969-70. Dr. Claude Scarborough was the first Baptist Chaplain to the Fulton County (Atlanta) Juvenile Court. His work was an experiment which developed to a full-blown ministry in several states.
In that day the Home Mission Board was located downtown on Spring Street and near the Atlanta Airport via a 20-minute taxi ride. Now it is far from the street people of downtown Atlanta and the neighborhoods of poverty which were served "in serious ministry days" by Mission Centers of the HMB around the country.
Now, with its location in Alpharetta on a magnificent campus, it is 1.5 hours from the Airport. The remote location from public transportation (much of the work is division leadership traveling back and forth to missionaries) Dr. Bob Reccord found it important to have a private corporate jet on standby at the Charlie Brown private Airport some 20 minutes from Alpharetta. We won't talk about the big CP bucks involved in that "mission endeavor." It ended with his leaving, but is was only one of many excesses still haunting their budget.
Be sure to read the article along with the comments submitted about it. They speak volumes about how we got in this financial mess. It started in the 80's and has led to current problems we can't seem to solve without more major expenditures and getting rid of valuable employees who got there by proven success on the mission field first.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Sexual Confusion in a Confusing Age
This is one of the most cufusing times I have ever seen when it comes to sexuality!
I guess by not knowing GLB (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual) and being from Atlanta, it shows I was raised a preacher's kid. In a few words above is an expose of how man wants to play with what God gave us and manipulate a body made female into one with broad shoulders and a telephone pole!
Such stuff is hardly the kind of conversation we have at the Bath Store!!
Years ago I was doing research in the Medical School Library at Emory. Having tired of the statistical research on psychosomatic illness, I picked up the "Anals of Plastic Surgery." In it was contained step-by-step procedures to alter the human body with case studies and pictures. Being 21, my research was immediately drawn to breast augmentation. A magic surgeon could take oversize ones and make them smaller. Through the magic of silicone, they could now take tiny ones and make them into basketballs. Most interesting!!!
They had to excise the nipple and place it into a nutrient bowl for a while. They would remove fatty tissue or borrow some from the butt and insert it pre-silicone. Put rulers and surgical markings on it so that when sewn back together with ever so fine micro-stitching the viewer could not detect it was man-made. HOWEVER, they had problems with that beautiful new boob having its nerves cut and never quite being as sensitive as it was before. There was also a problem that it could not now nourish a baby because the milk ducts had been cut as well! Complications could also occur where it could become hard or tissue did not heal properly and the downward cut became a valley instead of the rounded curves of the pre-surgical breast! God made it right, but man can't quite get the same result!
There was a segment on Androgyny as well. That is the situation where the baby has 3 chromosomes instead of 2. "It" is both male and female or female / male (so the ladies don't think I always put men first). This situation was a great mystery of which I had never heard. In fact, even medicine keeps it hush-hush. How do you tell a parent they have a he/she????
Did God mess things up in his creation of something odd? We must now rush to make a "gender assignment" because we can't have a male-female. According to the fundies, we are either male or female, but never both. Life must be just as the Bible describes and homosexuals are an "abomination." Sodom and Gomorra prove it! REALLY????
This single oddity of sexuality blows away a simple view that one is either male or female, but cannot make it both or "the opposite" of how I was born. "God made them male or female created He them!" In a way, it is the same as it saying: created in 6 days (24X6) hours / having 2 accounts of creation few want to admit / a cracker floating beneath the heavens and beneath it water off of which one will fall into nothingness.
If we grow up and face facts, we discover that "yam" translates "indefinite period of time" / earth revolves around the sun and is not the center the Bible depicts nor a cracker / the 2 accounts of creation are not identical = the Bible is a witness to "why things are as they are with the leap of faith that 'God did it!'"
The account of mankind eating fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is another important one. Satan tempted Eve with the statement that "God is just fooling you and wanting to keep his special knowledge to himself---if you just eat, you will know what God knows!"
REALLY?????
When micro-biology and endocrinology are added to the picture, we discover that all humans have both estrogen and testosterone balancing one another in the system. All humans have both. Further, embryology show us step-by-step how the sperm and egg unite in a single cell. Depending on the X (male) and Y (female) chromosome combination (XX / YY / XY / YX) that chemical combination directs that cell to form a being where the genitals either become an indention for the female or an extrusion for a male. The same tissue with forms testicles producing sperm---form ovaries producing eggs. At one stage of fetus development there is a tail and gills which give us an evolutionary clue as to our origins--none of these mentioned in the Bible!
So here we are arguing about sexuality and whether homos are going to hell when we hardly understand God's creative process. What we know for sure is that religious people seldom can handle complexity nor can they admit God does things we don't understand. We would rather destroy a queer or gender-assign a new baby which is androgynous by the hand of the Creator. We have a hard time with things not simple as we think the Bible is.
Now, in Baptistland, NC, we have decided that a church ministering to homosexuals is not worthy of having its money accepted. In GA a female-pastored church must be excluded from fellowship because BF&M 2000 (Baptist Faith and Message = a creedal statement) states women must be submissive to men and are not worthy of ordination. Other denominations do it different, but the majority rules among Baptists---now taken over by the Fundamentalist Mindset. Something in this reminds me of "Planet of the Apes."
In current politics, the same seems to be the case = "Don't ask / don't tell." It is the next reason for Democrats to hate Republicans. It is just another diversion from the fact that non-enforcement of financial policies has led us to economic ruin. We are spending $10 for every $1 taken in with taxes. Every citizen has the right to plenty of food / work as they please / live in a fancy house with 2 cars / 2-5 TV's / go on exotic vacations paid by a credit card charging 18-23% interest / having the most exotic military destruction toys costing billions just to produce in Texas / etc.
Diversions are good. They keep us fighting which translates to billions spent on election campaigns producing a media-sensitive candidate who never tells us anything about his real position of taxation / honesty / service to his electorate / producing more laws so lawyers can fight and the judicial system can set OJ (and others like him) free to kill again!
This one thing I can safely conclude: We love being stupid / prejudiced / simple so we can bask in the sun on a desert isle and sip our beers in comfort without having to work.
Sound anything like the Garden of Eden from which we were cast for eating of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil???
I guess by not knowing GLB (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual) and being from Atlanta, it shows I was raised a preacher's kid. In a few words above is an expose of how man wants to play with what God gave us and manipulate a body made female into one with broad shoulders and a telephone pole!
Such stuff is hardly the kind of conversation we have at the Bath Store!!
Years ago I was doing research in the Medical School Library at Emory. Having tired of the statistical research on psychosomatic illness, I picked up the "Anals of Plastic Surgery." In it was contained step-by-step procedures to alter the human body with case studies and pictures. Being 21, my research was immediately drawn to breast augmentation. A magic surgeon could take oversize ones and make them smaller. Through the magic of silicone, they could now take tiny ones and make them into basketballs. Most interesting!!!
They had to excise the nipple and place it into a nutrient bowl for a while. They would remove fatty tissue or borrow some from the butt and insert it pre-silicone. Put rulers and surgical markings on it so that when sewn back together with ever so fine micro-stitching the viewer could not detect it was man-made. HOWEVER, they had problems with that beautiful new boob having its nerves cut and never quite being as sensitive as it was before. There was also a problem that it could not now nourish a baby because the milk ducts had been cut as well! Complications could also occur where it could become hard or tissue did not heal properly and the downward cut became a valley instead of the rounded curves of the pre-surgical breast! God made it right, but man can't quite get the same result!
There was a segment on Androgyny as well. That is the situation where the baby has 3 chromosomes instead of 2. "It" is both male and female or female / male (so the ladies don't think I always put men first). This situation was a great mystery of which I had never heard. In fact, even medicine keeps it hush-hush. How do you tell a parent they have a he/she????
Did God mess things up in his creation of something odd? We must now rush to make a "gender assignment" because we can't have a male-female. According to the fundies, we are either male or female, but never both. Life must be just as the Bible describes and homosexuals are an "abomination." Sodom and Gomorra prove it! REALLY????
This single oddity of sexuality blows away a simple view that one is either male or female, but cannot make it both or "the opposite" of how I was born. "God made them male or female created He them!" In a way, it is the same as it saying: created in 6 days (24X6) hours / having 2 accounts of creation few want to admit / a cracker floating beneath the heavens and beneath it water off of which one will fall into nothingness.
If we grow up and face facts, we discover that "yam" translates "indefinite period of time" / earth revolves around the sun and is not the center the Bible depicts nor a cracker / the 2 accounts of creation are not identical = the Bible is a witness to "why things are as they are with the leap of faith that 'God did it!'"
The account of mankind eating fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is another important one. Satan tempted Eve with the statement that "God is just fooling you and wanting to keep his special knowledge to himself---if you just eat, you will know what God knows!"
REALLY?????
When micro-biology and endocrinology are added to the picture, we discover that all humans have both estrogen and testosterone balancing one another in the system. All humans have both. Further, embryology show us step-by-step how the sperm and egg unite in a single cell. Depending on the X (male) and Y (female) chromosome combination (XX / YY / XY / YX) that chemical combination directs that cell to form a being where the genitals either become an indention for the female or an extrusion for a male. The same tissue with forms testicles producing sperm---form ovaries producing eggs. At one stage of fetus development there is a tail and gills which give us an evolutionary clue as to our origins--none of these mentioned in the Bible!
So here we are arguing about sexuality and whether homos are going to hell when we hardly understand God's creative process. What we know for sure is that religious people seldom can handle complexity nor can they admit God does things we don't understand. We would rather destroy a queer or gender-assign a new baby which is androgynous by the hand of the Creator. We have a hard time with things not simple as we think the Bible is.
Now, in Baptistland, NC, we have decided that a church ministering to homosexuals is not worthy of having its money accepted. In GA a female-pastored church must be excluded from fellowship because BF&M 2000 (Baptist Faith and Message = a creedal statement) states women must be submissive to men and are not worthy of ordination. Other denominations do it different, but the majority rules among Baptists---now taken over by the Fundamentalist Mindset. Something in this reminds me of "Planet of the Apes."
In current politics, the same seems to be the case = "Don't ask / don't tell." It is the next reason for Democrats to hate Republicans. It is just another diversion from the fact that non-enforcement of financial policies has led us to economic ruin. We are spending $10 for every $1 taken in with taxes. Every citizen has the right to plenty of food / work as they please / live in a fancy house with 2 cars / 2-5 TV's / go on exotic vacations paid by a credit card charging 18-23% interest / having the most exotic military destruction toys costing billions just to produce in Texas / etc.
Diversions are good. They keep us fighting which translates to billions spent on election campaigns producing a media-sensitive candidate who never tells us anything about his real position of taxation / honesty / service to his electorate / producing more laws so lawyers can fight and the judicial system can set OJ (and others like him) free to kill again!
This one thing I can safely conclude: We love being stupid / prejudiced / simple so we can bask in the sun on a desert isle and sip our beers in comfort without having to work.
Sound anything like the Garden of Eden from which we were cast for eating of the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil???
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