OK B****sheep. I am very sorry if I offended you. That was not my intention. I was trying to be funny about your comments of hypocritical Christians praying in public so they could get the recognition for it. I changed Lord to Lawd to try to make it obvious I was being dramatic. I used the examples of going off the cliff, total desruction, poor little lost sheep all to be funny in a dramatic fashion. I kept telling the Lord that this is Rufus to be funny about your comment of Christians needing recognition. Like I said it was meant in good fun. So I hope you see I did not not mean any harm

Accepted, thank you, and no, actually, you didn't offend me at all except for the part about my having no sense of humor. Being able to laugh at the worst life has handed me has kept me alive.

This isn't the first time I've spoken up when someone has said they were praying for someone or otherwise announced this or that act of prayer on OPP, because it is a fact that Jesus admonished his followers to NOT pray in public and said that those who do are hypocrites. I agree with him on that.

I don't think Jesus was any god or other sort of deity, just a man, but he was a great teacher of t***h.

I know it's not my job to keep all the Christians in line and practicing what they preach, but an old retired guy has to do something and it's too cold in the mornings to go out in the workshop. :lol:

:thumbup: I'm glad we got past that. I admit I reacted in anger when I made the comment about having no sense of humor. I feel the same way. I know I joke too much and sometimes it gets me in trouble. I guess it is a built in defensive mechanism to not have to deal with pain. It did bother me that I offended you and reacted in anger. I have had conversations with you over the past couple of years. If my memory serves me right you are the one with the beautiful old truck and a nice piece of land. I've quit going out to my shop too. That is probably why I'm spending more time on here. Anyway, thanks and take care. I've been trying to go take a nap for over an hour so I'm going for it.

I have the utmost love and respect for all my Christian brothers and sisters here. Being Christian does not make us inhuman. In some ways we come to learn more about being human. Christianity is not following a set of strict rules without ever breaking one. If any of us were able to do that Jesus would not have to had sacrificed His life for us in such a horrible manner. But He loves us so much that He died in our place so that we could spend eternity with Him and The Father. The light hearted kidding we are doing on here is just that. But all of us do sin and fall short. God does not love us any more when we are good nor any less when we are bad. He is living His life through us and He is lovingly patient with us. He slowly grows us and we slowly learn and mature as Christians. He is forgiving and patient with us. We are not saved by anything we do. We are saved by faith in Him. Salvation is a free gift to us from God. I do not claim to be good or perfect. The only good in me is put there by Him. The only reason I have the ability to love is because He loved me first. One of my prayers these past few years has been, Dear God, teach me to love you and teach me to love others. He is honoring that prayer. I have a long way to go, but He is working inside me and for this I am so very grateful. I will continue to struggle with sin. I will freely admit that I sometimes struggle with lust. I am human. But if you could only experience His unconditional love then you would want to know Him more and more. Once you begin to truly love God you will develop a hunger and a thirst for Him. If you ever experience His perfect peace and comfort you will always want Him with you looking over you. I truly pray He will touch your heart and you will seek Him. This is such a very short life. But I have the assurance that this life is temporary. I know when I die here I an going to be with Him forever. It is a beautiful thing. I can't wait for Jesus to return.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Several times I've asked Admin to move religious topics out of Main and into General, to no avail. Instead, I posted religious topics in General twice and twice had them moved by Admin to the Main section, which I understood was to be only Political.

So I dunno about OPP's administration. Doesn't seem to me like it would be a big job adding a new topic section for religion.

You can add all the topic sections you want on that forum I put up, but it never took off. To be sure, I didn't advertise it much, either.

You turn on the TV and a program you dislike is on the screen: do you have to watch it? No, just changed the channel. You see a religious thread: do you have to read it and tell people it doesn't belong there, insulting those who posted, or can you just ignore it?

If religion informs a person's political stance, it is proper to a political forum. There is something that informs each of our views. As humanism is now considered a religion, does it have any place in a political forum? Proselytizing for conversions does seem out of place, yet we are blessed with the power to ignore.

It may be every thread I posted with strong religious overtones that admin decided to move from General Chitchat to the Main.

The people we are staying with have five goats, three were rescues, tied to the back of a truck for weeks at a time, barely able to get food or water. Our friends have had them for almost five years, plus the two they bought, and the rescues are doing well and turned into nice goats, not as well behaved as those two who were hand raised by a loving breeder, but nice goats none the less.

Many of the foster homes where our kids end up staying after being taken out of abusive homes, are much like you. these children have a large number of emotional problems from years of abuse, but the foster parents are great. Every once in a while we find a foster couple who work out well with the boy and are able to adopt the "unadoptable" boy. Right now we are working with such a couple and their newly adopted son, and is is definately a miracle watching them work together and how much he has learned about love and trust in the process. We always appreciate the foster parents that make the t***sition possible.