and i've got to say, duffy is one of the most intelligent people that i know. you could learn a lot josh. maybe instead of bickering and picking each other's words apart, you could kiss and make up and actually use the other person to your advantage and hear their points of view.

A friend of mine told me about this and I should have stayed away.

damn, we got a rep goin on here.

I didn't see any point considering how badly you were conducting even the pointless little spat at hand, not to mention your other attempts at "serious" statements.

My problem with your statements lies not necessarily in that I disagree with them, but that they're so incredibly obvious, and that you seem to think you're so damn clever when making them.

bitch bitch bitch bitch

anti-bitch anti-bitch big word anti-bitch

bitch, come over here and i'll kick your ass

I sat down and read this whole thing between classes. A friend of mine told me about this and I should have stayed away. All I can say to you guys is, thank you for making me dumber. The preacher had some good shit to say and it was cool to watch how no one took it too heart longer than 2 pages. It is sad to see people unhappy with the situation they create for themselves, and too blind by pride to see that it is their own dam fault. I don't know how any of you can go on the rest of your life using you energy in this negative way. May God forgive me if I ever come back to this board again.

p.s. I think I left enough spelling errors for you guys to have something else to feed your hate with.

The preacher? Did he mean me? I stopped reading this post when it collapsed into what I knew it would become, an etherial mess.

I hope he meant me, because I don't want to read back through this and find out there was another preacher upstaging me

Despite the fact that I am a preacher and indeed feel like throwing down in this thread, I'm only going to say this:

99% of the world is made up of ignorants and hypocrites, and they make up every factor of our social order from politics, economics, to families and religions.

Most people who preach tolerance, aren't. And most people who want their rights respected, don't care about other's rights.

For the majority of the early period of our nation's foundation Christians bickered amongst themselves, going so far as to divide the northern and soutnern frontiers of the west as areas where one particular denomination could proseletyze and where another could not.

Christians make mistakes as much as anyone else because we all experience the universal condition of being human. That's why the same hypocrisies pointed out in Christians are exhibited in non Christians.

The fact that for a Christian, their lifestyle needs to be acted out in every facet of their lives, is why a Christian seeks to demand preferential treatment. What they see as their blessing is what others see as their curse.

On the contrary note, non Christians see much of what Christian's desire as their own curse. Where Christians say no (Or supposedly are supposed to) to drugs, particular sexual acts, alcoholism, etc etc, this will forever be a point of contention between them and everyone else around them.

Which is why you can't Christians to give up their proseletyzing any more than a non Christian can be asked to give up their lifestyles and the pursuit to implement those lifestyles into a more mainstream pattern in America.

But to make a statement saying Christianity as a whole is a mistake is somewhat assuming. Ask the Tupi Guarani if they would have lived through the slave trades of Portugal without the Jesuit Fathers who died to protect them. Or what about the 720 outreach homes established by Mother Teresa in a lifetime of charity in places primarily inhabited by Muslims or Buddhist, et al.

The denomination I belong to denounces dancing for its own reasons which I won't get into here. However personally speaking, I love to dance, and do so often, because I arrived at the decision that it is something I feel is beneficial to my life.

So there will always be contention between two contending groups, but from my view as a preacher, Christians should not start condemning people. For instance, someone here said celebrityguest was a fag, and blah blah, whatever. Okay, I personally disagree with the lifestyle, and am proactive about promoting my beliefs and how I feel they should be implemented politically. This can't change. But I'm not going to point to him and say that because he's gay his opinion is worthless, or that because Jeremy is so vehement towards religion that I'm going to denounce him.

Jeremy acts like an ass sometimes. But I don't hate him. I've met him once. I think he seems like a good fellow sometimes, and a bad fellow other times. But that contradiction in his nature has nothing with him being a non Christian, it has to do with him being human, and every Christian has the same contradictary nature in that we behave the way we feel we should sometimes and other we don't. However as Christians we should be more responsible about what we say and do.

Would I picket an abortion clinic? I don't know. I honestly don't know what that would result in except for more resentment. What I do know is that I've spent hours with young women who've had abortions and weren't prepared for it mentally, and their word is worth a lot more than mine because they experience it.
What I do know is I can exchange ideas and communicate with celebrityguest about what and why I feel about his lifestyle and though we can never reach an agreement, we don't necessarily have to have hatred for each other. It's also why I respect Jim's position as a Muslim despite the fact that internally and intrinsically I feel that Christ is the way to salvation, but trying to 'recruit' him would never produce any results. I live my lifestyle, I tell other about Jesus Christ and what He's done for me, and then they have their own decisions to reach on that matter. But if they don't choose to believe as I do, I don't have hate for them. Rather, I will continue to demonstrate love where I can and do what I can for them whenever the need arises.

I'm not going to join this post and take pot shots against beliefs I don't believe in. Nor will I join in this unsolveable debate beyond this one post. But both sides need to understand their own hypocrisies and attempt to understand that their actions speak louder than words, and that we are both stereotyping each other when we take examples and apply them to the whole.

However, don't insult a Christian person and expect them not to defend themselves. Each person has to fight for what they believe in every day until the day they die. Anything less and then we have to question what we are really living for.

Oh damn.

If that's supposed to be funny then haha.

If that's supposed to be an attack then I will let you slide with just this one warning.