1) "To [email protected] square: I agree that the usher may sound a bit
unfriendly, but you also have to know that being an useher is not
easy too. I get offended by them also but we must forgive and
forget. "
Response: I agree that being an usher may not be easy (depending on
the circumstances), but I don't believe that the difficulty of the
job should be used as an excuse to justify rude behaviour. It is of
course incumbent on ourselves to forgive those who are guilty of
rude behaviour; but forgiving such behaviour does not in any way
mean excusing it, much less condoning it. I also do not think that
it is a necessary part of one's commitment to forgive another
person (or even oneself) that one should be resolved strictly to
forget the sins that might have been committed by this person (or
by oneself). I think that there is something to be said for not
forgetting one's own sins, as a means to the end of ensuring that
one should always be vigilant in exercising restraint upon one's
own disordered impulses; and by the same token, I think that there
is also something to be said for not strictly forgetting the sins
of another person (even while you have decided no longer to hold
them against him) so that you could be in a position the better to
warn him away from occasions of sin that are likely (in view of his
past) to induce him to relapse into certain habitual patterns of
sinful behaviour.
2) To keeth: I DID NOT SAID YOU CANNOT REJECT INVITAION, but please
have some kind of courtesy by not throwing the postcards away. It
takes for time and effort for them to give and write it to you. If
you don't want , just tell them. I am sure they will gradly not
give it to you and instead they will give it to some one else. It's
just a present, when someone give it to you, do you throw
away.
Response:
If Keeth had the opportunity of refusing the gift of the postcard
before it was given to him, then it is true that he may have been
morally obliged not to accept it.
However, an invitation to the services of a church should never be
presented to someone in the form of a present, so that his refusal
of this invitation would be tantamount to his refusal of a present
which it should have been wholly yours to give.
This is a deceptive tactic, for the person being invited to church,
will be made to feel obliged to regard this invitation, just as if
it should have been a present which it would have been within
someone's power to give to him; and if the person inviting him is a
friend of his, or if she makes out to him that she has personally
taken a great deal of trouble and expended considerable energy and
costs in preparing whatever document or object in which her
intention to invite him to her church, shall have been embodied,
then a situation may arise in which this person would be made to
feel that he ought to accept this invitation, by way of accepting a
gift that a friend of his should have troubled herself to give to
him.
In any case, if the aforesaid postcard wasn't specially prepared
for Keeth then it is again deceptive to claim that it was intended
to be strictly a present for Keeth, so that if he wasn't going to
accept it, the purpose for which it should have been prepared would
be frustated; for you have already admitted that this postcard
would have been given to someone else if Keeth had not accepted
it.
This being the case, why even bother calling it a present then,
when it is obviously intended to serve the function of a
promotional gimmick?
Do you know see how the unbelievers have come to despise you for
your blatant and shameless use of such stratagies of
deception?
Why do you have to conceal from them what you take (or ought to
take) as the real reason why they should be attending the services
of any church?
Why not divulge to them this reason as a part of your attempt to
convince them of the need to attend the services of your
church?
3) To Mr Bach: ONCE AGAIN, i don't I have said how many times that
I did not said you cannot invitation. You see, I don't how many
times must I emphase it. 4th point: We do not force them to give,
how many times must I say that also? Sorry, no offense.
Response:
You are so uncomprehending, that I truly wonder whether you may not
have been brainwashed.
I already conceded that you do not employ force to compel anyone to
attend the services of your church, or to begin to pay tithes once
they become the members of your church.
However, you do employ deceptive strategies (as demonstrated above)
to induce others to attend the services of your church, and it is
your position that anyone who is a member of your church would be
MORALLY OBLIGED to pay a portion of his monthly income (on a
monthly basis) into the coffers of your church.
4)To Ogbunwezeh: We are still young, they are a lot of things they
still don't understand.
Response:
If they and you are 'still young', then why are you accorded roles
that would be more suitably accorded to more mature persons?
Do you think your youthful exuberance (which is as much a product
of biological factors as are the mood-swings of some people) is an
index of your maturity or level of competence in functioning
properly in the aforementioned roles?
5) To laurence82: We don't lose anything, it is your life not my
life. We don need your pathetic money. You can keep those money
instead. Church is a house of God not market place. If you want to
talk about the maketplace, please go to marketplace and talk.
Response:
If Laurence's money is pathetic because he doesn't happen to be
able willingly to donate it to your church (and because, as you
said, your church doesn't 'need it'), then it still wouldn't follow
from this that whatever points he may have raised about the
strategies that your church regularly deploys to increase its
funds, are invalid.
In a word, Laurence' wasn't discussing the 'marketplace' per se; he
was discussing (as I understand the matter and I admit that I may
be wrong on this score) the uncanny resemblance that the aforesaid
strategies bear to promotional devices that are routinely used by
the advertisers of commerical products.
6) 'To Yunhaier: That is why we do not encourage chrictian and
non-christian together. They will have a lof of conflict. It's not
totally her fault. This is a religion, you don't convert because
his girlfriend ask him to. Is a personal decision.'
Response:
Please practice what you preach.
If it's wrong for him to convert to Christianity for the sake of
maintaining his relationship with his girlfriend, then how can it
similarly not be wrong for you to invite others to the services of
your church, by the device of presenting these others with cards
which you then say that you have specially prepared for them and
are intending to give to them as presents, when it is clear that by
doing this, such persons may be led to accept your invitation for
the sake of cultivating or of maintaing their friendship with
you?
Repent of your own sickening deceptiveness.
7) '...some say that we want 10% of their money, is a compulsory
thing. If I don't say that will you know??? "
Response:
No if you didn't say we probably would never know; but isn't this
precisely the point, namely, that you make it a point of doing your
best to conceal (especially at the point of inviting someone to
your church) your position that it would be morally obligatory for
the members of your church, to 'tithe to God' by way of making
periodic donations to your church's coffers?
"That is why I say a lot of things that WE DO, you
will not understand. What I mean is that, we will grow as never
before and some of the people will be shocked by the things we
do."
Response:
I was shocked by the dress that your pastor's wife wore to a public
gathering, as the various relevant photographs appearing in the
media, have each already attested.
9) "To:laurence82 Hey, what are you trying to say. You want
Christian and Catholics to have conflict?? "
Response:
Wake up, Catholics are Christians; hundreds of years before the
Reformation in 1517 the only Christians in Europe were Roman
Catholics.
City Harvest Church never existed then.
Christ did not found it; and earlier generations of Christians
would have regarded it as an apostate church and a false and
heretical church.
10) "How do you feel. As for other-christian , you may not like it,
just accept it. What is the point of helping the non-believer to
cast stones on CHC. It makes not different between you and
them."
Response:
I don't utterly reject any organisation that brings the Name of
Christ (who is my Lord) into disrepute.
I don't accept the teachings of such an organisation, insofar as
they conflict with what I believe are the true teachings of
Christ.
'Non-believers' may be 'casting stones on CHC' and I seriously
could care less: to my mind, I do not accept 'CHC' as a legitimate
church; on the contrary, I view your church as being all the more
dangerous for the fact that it should be willing to call itself a
church.
11) 'As for non-believer, the way CHC does have it's own purpose,
how many times you go there. How well do you know and their doing?
Simple thing like thithing kind of things can make your
misunderstood, how much do you really know about other thing. I am
not here to pick a fight with your but to speak the truth out of
it. If you find the answer I gave may be harsh, please don't get
offended. Kindly drop out of this topic. I really don't want to
find fault with yout or you find problem with me.... "
Response:
So because non-believers are liable (in your opinion) to
misunderstand the position of your church on tithing, do you then
think that this would give you the right to conceal from them what
might be described as the costs of discipleship, by way of an
attempt on your part at inviting them to the services of your
church (and this, in turn, by way of presenting them with what you
tell them has been a gift that you have specially prepared for them
and are specially intending to give to them)?
Do you not see how deceptive this sort of strategy makes you, or
are you so deceived already that you cannot see this?
I would strongly caution the unbelievers here against attending the
services of their 'church'.
Ben
Ps. Fugue, do continue to keep these people on their toes! I like
your trenchant questioning.
