If I find that I'm wrong on the day that I die and I stand in front of God, exposed as the person that I am...then I want to stand in front of God as the person that I am.

I don't want my sins forgiven by the sacrifice of another. I don't need my slate wiped clean by ritualistic confession and contrite acts. I am human; flawed and broken and wonderful. I will stand in front of your God for all my actions, thoughts and intentions.

In my life I have callously hurt others, I have taken what wasn't mine, I have dispensed wrath and sought vengeance. Because I am weak and selfish and scared.
But I also endeavor to heal more than I injure, give more than I take and provide comfort to others when things seem darkest. Plus....I always smile and ask how you are. That's important.

As a thoughtful, empathetic human being, I know that the positive actions of other humans is the only balance against the entropy that surrounds us. We are our own hope and salvation against a random universe that has our destruction built into the very laws that compel it.
I don't do good things because I fear judgement. I don't do them because I'm commanded to. I do good things because I'm one small part of a community that extends as far as humanity can reach. The effect of my actions, positive and negative, ripples out, rebounds and reflects infinitely. I do good things because it's good to do them.

If I'm wrong, I'll be judged by your God and if I'm found lacking in my actions then I'll own my sins and the consequences. But if the balance of my life has been positive and I am found unacceptable only because I could not believe in the existence of a Creator...if the sum total of my affect on others matters less than my ability to accept illogical supernatural conclusions....then your God is Evil.

Besides, if your god is omniscient, then he knew how he would judge me when he created the universe. So I had no real power over my actions. If he did, in fact, give me free will such that he did not know how I would live my life, then he's not omniscient. In which case, upon our meeting, he will disappear in a puff of logic.

Revelation 1:17-18 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.

This is the reaction of John, the beloved disciple, when he saw Jesus in His glory. He fell down at His feet as if he was dead. This is the reaction of the believer upon seeing God. The reaction of the unbeliever is going to be one
of great sorrow, and abject terror:

Matthew 24:30 Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory

Revelation 6:15-16 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

When we stand before God, everything will be in the open. There will be no secrets; you'll be exposed as the person you really are and not the person you present to other people.

What is in this video is all false bravado. No one can stand in the day of judgment except those whose sins are covered by the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus on the cross. He died for our sins, and was raised the third day so that we can be forgiven and have everlasting life. He took our place and took the punishment we deserve so that all who put their trust in Him as Lord and Savior will receive forgiveness for their sins, reconciliation to God, and adoption as Gods children. That is the only way anyone can stand before God in the day of the judgment.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 10:9 Because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.

Thanks Sarzy - always interested in your thoughts on film. I'm surprised how many of your top ten I've seen, and enjoyed them all. Will give Interstellar a go when I can find it in a cinema - I confess to believing the negative reviews given how many they were.

Nonsense.

If you were a true Christian, you'd follow the laws of the old testament too.
I presume you don't go into town everyday and put people of other religions to the sword?

I want to address this scripture quotation first:

Matthew 5:17

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

You have fundamentally misunderstood what Jesus is saying here. What do you think He is talking about? What do you think He means when He said He came to fulfill the law? Please elaborate.. This, however, is what He was talking about:

John 19:28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

He fulfilled what the law and prophets said about Him on the cross.

Luke 24:44 And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

What did they write concerning Him?

Luke 24:25 And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

Luke 24:26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

You need to understand what was written about Jesus and how He fulfilled it before you can understand what He was talking about.

Your misunderstanding of the gospel and Old Testament law not withstanding, a true Christian is not under the old covenant, they are under the new covenant.

Romans 10:4-10 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith says, "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) "or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

The old covenant is for Israel, the new covenant is for the whole world. Christians are not under law, but grace.

Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

So you can drop the "no true scotsman" fallacy....

It's funny you would invoke this fallacy, yet state earlier "If you were a true Christian.." Yet, according to Jesus, there are true and false Christians:

Matthew 7:21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

A true Muslim follows Allah, and Allah has instructed his followers to exterminate all of the nonbelievers.

I've confessed already, as a courtesy to the umpteenth (checks thrift-store dictionary) who happened to pass in the night here, not a fucking underpass-toll-taker, either....Again, labels.

And also the be fair for the fight, Björnsson wasn't trained on fighting with a sword either. In the book, Gregor is quite skilled with his sword. Sadly, Björnsson mostly swung it around, not a bash against him, but I'm sure with plenty of training and lots of choreography the fight could have been even more exciting.

And yes, the fight plays out nearly how it is in the book, his thirst for justice and vengeance over takes his caution to finish the mountain, hoping he would yield and confess. And ultimately get the confession that Tywin ordered it. Thus to get grounds to possibly get tywin. But alas, the mountain was able to kill him, and even survived the fight... kinda.

But the best is yet to come. "Where do whores go?"

I thought of that too, but then I figured that if somebody rolled out in a wheelchair (or with a cane or whatever) the dude could just go over and confess to them that it is a prank with water soluble paint and/or wash it off for them -- he's there filming reaction shots anyway.

Heck, they would probably appreciate the prank even more since they are the ones getting screwed out of their parking places by the other lazy c*nts.

That position doesn't make any sense. Context matters and there are always exceptions to every rule. It seems to be a common ideal of the right that complex systems can have simple solutions. Sometimes they can, but mostly they don't.

Rationalism may allow me to "take a consistent position based on unchanging principles", but it doesn't mean I have to blindly apply those principles regardless of the circumstances.

For a really simple example, let's take homicide. Killing, I'm sure we're agreed is wrong. So everyone who takes a human life should be sanctioned, yes?
Except in self-defence.
Except in a war.
What about other mitigating factors too. Accidental death. Killing by someone mentally incapable of knowing what they're doing.
We could debate the merits of each individual case all day long, but the end point is that yes, at some point we make a judgement, and ultimately that leads to a law.

So it goes for IP law. Yes, current IP in the US is not only broken, but badly broken and broken in many different ways from patent trolling to DMCA lunacy.

That doesn't mean we just throw out the whole damn thing.

We don't have to make an empirical claim about all law. We make judgements based on what a "reasonable person" considers fair. Yeah, that shifts back and forth and sometimes (like now) it's hideously broken, but that's why we have the ability to change laws.

It's not like that everywhere. NZ, for example, has some quite reasonable provisions in it's IP law (or had, they may have changed recently). I can't sell copies of a song I bought, but I can format shift it, time shift it, etc. That seems reasonable to me (and I suspect, to most people).


I must confess I had to look up "hermeneutics" (good word).

THAT'S IT, THANK YOU!

I must confess I actually found the link and went to the site but was so bleary eyed I missed the URL. I had to surmise I was missing something as I have a good faith in your banning protocols and had no reason to question TheGenk's. Therefore, I had to ask.

Ban on...Good work.

I am guessing that I was one of the first pastors, if not the first, in my community not in opposition to gay marriage. I don't say this with any sense of accomplishment of having wrestled through some sort of epic moral struggle, because I never have opposed gay marriage as sanctioned by the State. I don't believe there is any Constitutional basis for opposing it. . I also see no issue with a business serving the gay community. By default, our family business has happily done so for decades. One of my favorite mottoes is, 'live and let live.' I am confident that people around me, including those gays that call me 'friend' know this about me already. Although I am a part of the Christian community where I live, not one of my gay friends has exited our relationship due to that, nor have I ever been considered a homophobe. My views on marriage are exactly that: conclusions I have come to with the resources at my command. And whether or not I disagree with you, I believe that I have no right whatsoever to impose my view of marriage on anyone. In the same breath, after considering my own failings, I have no right to judge how someone else chooses to live their life. I have concluded that whatever path they choose was never between me and them, but between them and God anyway.

The solutions to this common struggle today (the question of religious conscience living side by side with gender liberty) cannot be solved by enacting more law. Americans are, as always, legislating the soupe du jour. The trouble is, in a society where that kind of 'might makes right,' the pendulum can and does swing the other way to deleterious effect. I think that our common issue can be solved by a simple but powerful idea: a stronger community. Like it or not, we are in this together and only together can overcome the vitriol on either side.

I remember an incident many years ago when my Muslim ex-Uncle showed up at my grandparent's house for dinner. On the menu: pork. In one of the most despicable acts of imposition that I can remember happening in our family, my Grandfather decided that serving pork that day would give him some kind of twisted self satisfaction; a victory, of sorts. He decided that he would attempt to get our Uncle to violate his religious conscience and, if that not be possible, at the very least, offend my Uncle as much as possible within his power. I don't think anyone would argue that it wasn't within my Grandfather's rights to serve whatever meal he wanted in his own home. But was it morally right? If he had loved my Uncle, he would have put aside his own rights and made a way to foster community. That is what living together is about.

In the same vein, I don't believe any one of my gay friends would ever ask me to perform their wedding. Even given that right legally, they wouldn't ask because they love me and they would not attempt to get me to violate both my conscience and my own understanding of marriage. While we agree to disagree, we remain friends out of love. Love is what binds. The law divides. The law is a foreigner to community, the enemy of community, when it says, 'we can live together only when you do as I want you to do in order to satisfy me or my sense of offense for another." While laws are necessary in society, they are superfluous when love will do. But we don't want to work that hard. So we make rules. We call people names. We stereotype. We divide, condescend, and foment bitterness toward our neighbors, gay and straight alike.

I had a friend confess to me once, "My whole family is racist. I was racist. But I'm not racist any more." That didn't happen because of legislation. It happened because he got to know some black people and found out that he had some love in his heart for them. Wouldn't you have liked to have been there when he shook a black man's hand for the first time in his life? Yeah, me too.

Just once, I'd like to see someone brew some iced tea, walk across the street to that gay neighbor or that Christian neighbor and sit down and find some commonality. I read above (can't remember who wrote it) that the Bible's morality is trumped by today's morality. I say that the epitome of morality exists in the words of Jesus when he says, "Love your enemies." That, to me, is the fulfillment of what it means to be human.

In related thoughts, I think the Church needs to tell the State, 'Goodbye. We are not going to act as your agent any longer in arena of legal marriage. We will not sign your documents. You have the legal authority over marriage in our society but the Church has the spiritual authority as the Church sees fit." That leaves room for some congregations to perform gay weddings and others to not as they see fit. It leaves room for live and let live. It leaves room for love.

Indeed, a horrible jurist, but it's by reason of this very confession that you'd ACTUALLY make an excellent police officer...errrr cop. Oh, sorry...Enforcement Representative.

Almost certain you'd score above-average in the psyche tests at any police academy.

I confess to be a toilet terrorist. On numerous occassions I have tracked down superiors at work in the toilet to discuss work related matters with them. A great opportunity to talk about topics they'd like to avoid as they can't just leave in the middle of bodily waste evacuation processes.

She actually did not confess in this clip. Even if she did elsewhere, that would not be the same as witnessing the crime itself. False confessions abound. Even if her confession were true, it would take a first hand witness to know beyond a reasonable doubt her confession was true.

It's extraordinarily difficult to convict when following the law, and rightly so. It is better for a hundred guilty men to walk free than to falsley punish one innocent person. See American Jurisprudence for the negative proof.

To be precise, "those to cast the first stones" would be the two or three witnesses needed to convict, confessions notwithstanding. So barring those witnesses, according to Mosaic Law, she can't be stoned. But hey, it's not as important to understand the Bible as it is to hate it.

To be precise, "those to cast the first stones" would be the two or three witnesses needed to convict, confessions notwithstanding. So barring those witnesses, according to Mosaic Law, she can't be stoned. But hey, it's not as important to understand the Bible as it is to hate it. ... <cough>