Apr 24, 2012 -- 7:58PM, Goodtobehomestill wrote:

Ed, post 167 is rather 'personal' and I don't feel the need to continue to address your personal issues.

Well, it would seem to be like the private messages. If it's personal information that I am willing to divulge about myself, then there shouldn't be a problem. Also, I hope you aren't trying to use that as a cop-out.

Apr 24, 2012 -- 7:58PM, Goodtobehomestill wrote:

Regarding this however,

And if so, in my opinion, to include the scatching remarks about how homosexuals feel about TG and TS people...really looks like a 'put down' by proxy to TG and TS people by the Watchtower Society. And if you can't see that, GTBHS, then something really must be wrong with your religious views.

It is interesting that you admit this is your opinion, but then 'somehow' your opinion, and my not seeing things your way, or in harmony with your opinion, means something is wrong with my religious views.  Fascinating.

Okay, then it's a fact. And I can demonstrate this to you by how I was being euphemistic about the example of low income caucasian people who lived in trailer parks...and how I asked you to use your imagination to subsitute the 'real' words and phrases that I actually meant.  And by the examples of substituting that example with either black people, latino/hispanic people, or asian people. And the reason for doing so is because I knew how ugly and offensive it would have sounded if I had used the 'real' words and phrases that I had in mind for those examples rather than using euphemisms.

Apr 24, 2012 -- 7:58PM, Goodtobehomestill wrote:

If 'Time magazine ran an article, and it profiled the inhabitants of a neighborhood, who had a difference of opinion with their neighbors who lived on a certain circle drive who all had a bunch of trailers, and Time reported that the inhabitants of 'Oliver Place' distance themselves from the inhabitants of 'Twist Circle' whom they consider 'trailer trash,' I would consider the opinions reported to be the opinions of the neighbors interviewed, not that of Time magazine.

Now if I had severe personal differences with 'Time' magazine, and wanted to make them look badly, I might pull this up and accuse them of 'insult by proxy' toward trailer dwellers.  It would still just be my opinion.

But there's a big difference in your example, GTBHS. Time magazine is a secular magazine, whereas Watchtower publications are religious magazines. And in being a religious magazine, then they would have the obligation of being more loving and compassionate and considerate of other people's feelings...and should have been considerate of how what they published in the 76 Awake may have effected TG and TS people. However, they seemed not to care about how TG and TS people may have been offended by or even hurt by those comments.

Apr 24, 2012 -- 7:58PM, Goodtobehomestill wrote:

On the actual issue of choosing the Kingdom, or the world and its pleasures, we can consider

(2 Timothy 3:4) . . ., lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God,

this was prophesied to be the attitude of mankind in the last days.

And it seems to be an 'either/or' choice.  If one is a 'lover of pleasure' one is this RATHER than being a lover of God.  God isn't against pleasure, he created a great deal from which we can derive appropriate pleasure.  But the wisdom from above is 'first of all chaste.'  Any 'pleasures' which by the Bible's standards are 'unchaste' would be part of the 'earthly, animal, demonic' which would be NOT the wisdom from above, but what the world, which Paul writing to Timothy explains as made up mostly of 'lovers of pleasures,' considers appropriate.

(James 3:15-17) 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is [the] earthly, animal, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and contentiousness are, there disorder and every vile thing are. 17 But the wisdom from above is first of all chaste, then peaceable, reasonable, ready to obey, full of mercy and good fruits, . . .

And your point?