Post #426,765
12/13/18 4:00:46 PM
12/13/18 4:00:46 PM
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I'm in the wrong career
Greenville pastor John Gray appears to have gifted his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini sports utility vehicle for their eighth anniversary.
In an Instagram video taken at the celebration, Gray leads his wife to a bow-wrapped car and hands her the keys while saying "Lamborghini Urus."
Gray, who leads Relentless Church in Greenville, acknowledged on social media that he bought his wife a car for their anniversary and responded to criticism of the purchase.
"God helped me to make my wife's dream come true," he wrote in an Instagram post Tuesday night. "Why not? She's made mine come true!"
His wife, Aventer Gray, defended her husband in her own Instagram post, saying he gives away cars and furniture as well as coats off of his back, in addition to tithing and donations.
"I don't see anyone screaming about how basketball players drive what they do while you paying $$$ to see them play in arenas and on fields," she wrote in an Instagram post Sunday. "We don't live for people! We live for God!"
[...]
In an interview with The Greenville News in December 2017, Gray defended pastors who drive fancy cars. He said at the time that he had few indulgences and one of those was to have a fine car.
Gray pointed to his multiple sources of income and said pastors in general who spend on expensive cars tend to use money from outside ventures like book deals or television rights rather than their church paycheck.
Gray, a reality television star with a show on OWN, has several ventures, including other television projects, books and endorsements.
"It’s people who say preachers make too much money and they shouldn’t have this or that," Gray said in the interview last year. "I understand why and how people get there, but I think they should be very cautious to understand that if the individuals that are serving are honorable, and they are committed to serving, if they have saved their money and want to do something nice for their spouse, or they want to live in a home, you’ve got one life."
Gray was previously an associate pastor at Joel Osteen's Houston church and renamed Greenville's Redemption Church in May when he became the lead pastor when founding pastor Ron Carpenter moved to California for another church there.
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/2018/12/12/john-gray-pastor-anniversary-wife-lamborghini/2279857002/
Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" 1897
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Post #426,767
12/13/18 4:40:16 PM
12/13/18 4:40:16 PM
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Prosperity Gospel is a plague
It's a transparent justification for bilking believers. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #426,774
12/14/18 8:34:43 AM
12/14/18 8:34:43 AM
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And whom, pray tell, is more deserving of being bilked?
bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #426,768
12/13/18 5:19:54 PM
12/13/18 5:19:54 PM
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$1 bill preacher for sure
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #426,779
12/14/18 11:55:45 AM
12/14/18 11:55:45 AM
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Note that they only mention "God" . . .
. . no mention ever of the "J Guy" - for pretty obvious reasons.
In the words of a former Jesuit who gave this subject a lot of thought before leaving the order. "You cannot both be a Christian and follow the teachings of Jesus. The teachings of Christianity are not compatible with those of Jesus".
He advised Pagans, "Don't mind the J Guy, beware of Christians". He also warned followers of Jesus to "beware of Christians".
He seemed to imply that it might be possible to follow the teachings of Jesus as a Pagan, but not as a Christian.
Anyway, if these Evangelicals think Jesus is going to be their Savior, they have a surprise coming.
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Post #426,780
12/14/18 11:57:39 AM
12/14/18 11:57:39 AM
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LRPD: "I'm sure everyone who made this game is dead by now. "
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Post #426,782
12/14/18 12:59:29 PM
12/14/18 12:59:29 PM
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LRPD: "This is atomic powered gaslighting."
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Post #426,789
12/14/18 10:50:35 PM
12/14/18 10:50:35 PM
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You may be interested in this:
NY Times: The Return of PaganismMaybe there actually is a genuinely post-Christian future for America.
Here are some generally agreed-upon facts about religious trends in the United States. Institutional Christianity has weakened drastically since the 1960s. Lots of people who once would have been lukewarm Christmas-and-Easter churchgoers now identify as having “no religion” or being “spiritual but not religious.” The mainline-Protestant establishment is an establishment no more. Religious belief and practice now polarizes our politics in a way they didn’t a few generations back.
What kind of general religious reality should be discerned from all these facts, though, is much more uncertain, and there are various plausible stories about what early-21st century Americans increasingly believe. The simplest of these is the secularization story — in which modern societies inevitably put away religious ideas as they advance in wealth and science and reason, and the decline of institutional religion is just a predictable feature of a general late-modern turn away from supernatural belief.
But the secularization narrative is insufficient, because even with America’s churches in decline, the religious impulse has hardly disappeared. In the early 2000s, over 40 percent of Americans answered with an emphatic “yes” when Gallup asked them if “a profound religious experience or awakening” had redirected their lives; that number had doubled since the 1960s, when institutional religion was more vigorous. A recent Pew survey on secularization likewise found increases in the share of Americans who have regular feelings of “spiritual peace and well-being.” And the resilience of religious impulses and rhetoric in contemporary political movements, even (or especially) on the officially secular left, is an obvious feature of our politics. o o o Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #426,791
12/15/18 12:16:27 PM
12/15/18 12:16:27 PM
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Modern Paganism is extremely diverse . . .
. . ranging from strict reconstructionists, to 100 kinds of non-theist Pagans.
Of course, we have our fundies, who say you can't be a Pagan unless you believe in god entities that are completely separate from humans, because that's what our ancestors believed in. This is wrong. Our ancestors had many different viewpoints, theist and non-theist - so we pretty much ignore their insistence.
Even non-theist Pagans often refer to gods and goddesses by name. because these are shorthand representations of complex concepts of nature an human society.
Many people don't realize their spiritual attitude is quite in line with modern Paganism. One woman recently explained her attitudes to me. I told her all she needed to become a practicing Pagan was an altar (could be as simple as a single meaningful item) and a ritual (could be as simple as just a few meaningful words).
She thought that was a great idea. She said a friend of hers had an altar and considered it very helpful in focusing her life. There are many who don't need to be converted, just told what they are and why.
There's an interesting book titled Godless Paganism (available from Lulu) that is a collection of short essays by about 30 non-theist Pagans of various stripes - from Jungian Pagans to Animists.
By far the greatest number of Pagans are solo practitioners, belonging to no organization - the Internet is our organization. There are also print magazines, like Witches and Pagans that serve to distribute concepts and attitudes.
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Post #426,794
12/15/18 4:38:17 PM
12/15/18 4:45:04 PM
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Always a pleasure to hear your comments on this Mondo-topic..
You are of the small minority of folks who need neither to {ugh} evangelize {/ugh}, "defend" nor debate how-many-angels-on-pins there are in a cubic parsec. This is an admirable accomplishment within a world-'egregor' of countless degrees-of-Consciousness.
I am fortunate to know a handful of similar bent, while--when I think of it--feeling sorrow for that vast majority who (my shorthand) always painfully-Believe. In. Certainty. [aka their Own] über Alles in die Welt
That last mind-fart Can kill-us-all, one of n-ways, I wot. Clearly the Orange one 'professes' his perhaps Largest Lie ..but who's counting that one amidst his multitudes?
Or, as the lady visiting San Francisco during a transportation strike?/illness? was told, in explanation:
Sick Transit, Gloria: Muni.
Edited by Ashton
Dec. 15, 2018, 04:45:04 PM EST
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Post #426,795
12/15/18 8:44:13 PM
12/15/18 8:44:13 PM
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standard pin or metric pin?
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #426,808
12/16/18 1:49:13 AM
12/16/18 1:49:13 AM
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It's the number for your ATM?
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