If you ask for the government to solve a problem, it will make two more. In the case of the deck collapse, good old personal responsibility, rather than preemptive government intervention, would suffice. The property owner should be held liable for the injuries rather than taking away my right to build a deck on my property without asking permission.

(I moved from MD to Brigham City, UT. Oh, and I now own gold and not a minute too soon)

Was the building permit issue the real reason Kent went to jail? I know the popular media tries to make it a case of him not paying his taxes, but I just don't buy it without some proof. He seems way too smart for that. Is the trial transcript available yet?

It seems relatively straightforward to me. It's his land, he can erect a giant pink flamingo on it if he wants to. Otherwise, what's the point of having private property?

This sounds a lot like Warren Jeffs calling a formal education "worldly", because it causes people to doubt the FLDS belief system.

Jhawk44 wrote:
How many times is this EXTREMELY OLD (to the tune of hundreds of years) story going to be trumpeted a "bold, new and daring?"

I can assure you that my rationale is not to avoid Biblical authority or to avoid sound preaching. I want a group of people who will strengthen me and keep me accountable and who will allow me to return the favor. I also understand that you were speaking in generalities and not necessarily accusing me of ill intent, and I harbor no resentment towards you for bringing up your questions.

This actually has a bit of irony to it. Choosing a home church because it "suits me better" than the institutional church I left is the same logic as changing churches for carnal reasons, only it is masked as a better motive. It's all an economy of scale. If my complaint is the commercialism and consumerism, my recourse cannot be in any form that utilizes that same system to express my disfavor. The only logical escape to this inconsistency is to stop speaking of changing teams and leave the league entirely. When I chose to do that, I found others outside the arena who have similar stories.

What if the only churches within 100 miles were Catholic? Would it then be sinful to not attend? What if they were all Universalist? Does the context of which you speak give an implicit command to attend the closest church no matter what?

Which shall I pick? I could go to A, but B has more comfortable seats! Wait a minute, C has child care AND complimentary coffee? Oh, but D has a bookstore, casual attire, coffee, AND donuts. With so many choices, what's a consumer to do these days? Poor Paul, he only had one choice.

If the context card is to be played, it needs to be done consistently. The context of the 'ekklesia' passages (those "one another" passages) is not the American system that we have created. The "gathering together" those passages reference is the fellowship and iron-sharpening experience to be had with other Christians.

I'm not afraid of personal conflicts within a real church, because they are a side effect of real fellowship. You don't have that in the institutional church where people dress up and pretend for 2 hours once a week.

Neil is right about the conflicts, and marriage is a very good analogy. The real church is made of real people with real imperfections. When you strip away the dress clothes and the fake smiles, you see each other as fallible human beings, and personal conflicts are inevitable.

As for your question about the "starve" statement, yes. The typical pastor is the CEO of a business which is part of a larger multi-billion dollar corporate empire. Each church is nothing but a business looking to capture customers on the open religious market. I absolutely loathe his worldview, but Richard Dawkins hit the nail on the head in "The God Delusion" when he said,

"Rival churches compete for congregations - not least for the fat tithes that they bring - and the competition is waged with all the aggressive hard-sell techniques of the marketplace. What works for soap flakes works for God..." (p 41)

I have heard that charge about Margaret Sanger from several independent sources, so I decided to check it out for myself. I'm about half-way through her autobiography, and I have yet to see a racist tendency. So far all I have read about is her fight for freedom of the press.

If you've ever debated with an atheist, you've heard that phrase. If this flood isn't one of those examples for which that challenge begs, I don't know what is.

If this flood had happened in the year AD 102 with no one to watch it, school children would be taught that it took "millions and millions of years" to form. Yet, it was observed to form quickly.

Even when faced with a clear example of how a canyon, which would have otherwise been assumed to take millions of years to form, can be carved quickly, these robots still hold to the belief that the Grand Canyon "obviously" took 5-6 million years to form.

Attention all 14-year-old boys! Does anyone want to pass up the chance to use the girls' locker room?