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@Tradesecret
If you would please talk about one thing at a time, It is not easy, as you can see from the formatting of my above posts, for me to respond in this break up posts type of manner.
Besides this, shotgunning me with all these arguments makes it harder to address any single one of them in meaningful detail.
And that is a shame, because you are very wrong.
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The laying on of hands occurred several times in Scripture. I am not saying that laying on of hands is a myth. I am saying that the apostolic succession that both the RCC and the OC hold to is a superstition. The Holy Spirit is not communicated to us from God by the laying on off hands. The Spirit goes where it wills. There is no evidence that the apostles laid hands on James, a so called bishop of Jerusalem. The words in the Greek for Bishop and elder are interchangeable in every case. I am not against tradition per se. Yet when Scriptures disagrees with tradition - scripture prevails. Also there is no command to lay hands on persons - to set them aside as elders or bishops etc. These people are known by the character and their godliness and deeds. Not because they have had hands laid on them.No one is saying that the holy spirit is communicated to us by the laying on of hands here.There is evidence that James was the first bishop of Jerusalem, but you wouldn't know that because you ignore anything that wasn't written in the collection of writings that we, The Orthodox Church put together.The church certainly does appoint leaders, and scripture even tells us to listen to these leaders.Once again, do you think that the entire Church just sat around and waited until The New Testament was officially agreed on? This is certainly not the case. You don't know what Church Tradition is. If you did, you would know that we have writings dating back to the very people who were appointed by the Apostles as bishops. I belong to the church of Antioch. We have the writings of Saint Ignatius, who was appointed by Peter when he left Antioch. The letters that Ignatius wrote while on his way to being executed for being a Christian survive to this day. We have the writings of Clement of Rome, a contemporary of the Apostles.And these writings very easily refute the claims of protestants and strengthen the claims of the very church founded by Jesus and The Apostles.Misleading. The OC just compromises to the cultures it exists in. It from the beginning - compromised to focus on icons of the surrounding pagan nations - not like God commanded the Jews to be rid off. Don't forget the OC continues to justify its reasons for breaking the second commandment. Probably like the RCC they simply try and delete it.There is nothing about the use of icons that violate the second commandment. There were Cheribum on the Ark of the Covenant. The Temple of Solomon was filled with images and sculptures. The Bible itself is an icon. Church Tradition says that Saint Luke, the very same Luke who wrote the majority of the New Testament, painted the first Icon of Jesus and Mary.There were several periods where The Roman Emperor adopted Iconoclasm and tried to eradicate them from the churches. It didn't work, and the 7th ecumenical council denounced Iconoclasm as a heresy once and for all.And yes, Iconoclasm is a heresy. In fact, if you throw out Icons, you throw out everything.The OC lacks a full and complete understanding of the Trinity. This is one of the reasons the church ex-communicated it. Go and read the council's minutes. Entertaining. And full of evidence. The OC is incomplete in relation to salvation. It does not have a proper understanding of sin - hence it can never grasp why simply trying to restore the image is not enough. We don't want to become Adam in his perfect state again - we want to become like Jesus in his perfect state. The two are quite different. the practice of iconology simply confirms this fact. Reducing Jesus out of fear of not understanding his deity reveals an incompleteness. And looking at only one side of history by itself is incomplete. These are not just opinions dear mopac - it goes much deeper than this.Orthodoxy IS The Church, and I find it baffling that you, someone who does not even believe in Roman Catholicism, the very church that your churches rebelled from, would dare defend these heretics as being the true church when not only does history make this very clear, but your own churches believe that they were in rebellion as well.You undermine your own argument because you don't even believe it.And to be frank, you don't know what The Orthodox Church teaches. But that is what this topic is for. Asking questions.I am interested though, since you seem to think that Orthodoxy lacks a full and complete understanding of The Trinity... How can you substantiate this claim? It is simply just a claim.I find it utterly baffling that you are arguing for a non-existent complete Protestant Church, and that you would dare defend The Papal heretics as claiming greater legitimacy to being The True Church than Orthodoxy when you don't even really believe this yourself.
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@Tradesecret
There is a clear implication that the creed could be altered if it were to improve its meaning - obviously no one at that time believed that the creed was equal to Scripture because no one was infallible like God.Yet even scripture says"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:"It proceeds from the father, not the son. You could say that the spirit proceeds from the father through the son, and maybe not be incorrect, but The Holy Spirit proceeds from the father, not the father and the son.So scripture is on the side of those who did not corrupt the creed.And by the way, there is no such implication at the council that the creed can arbitrarily be changed if something better comes along. The churches are Catholic, meaning that they all believe and teach the same thing.The OC had and still has issues with the roles of icons in its place. It also has strong links to Constantine. The RCC now has significant issues in respect of icons as well.What exactly is the issue with the roles of Icons? Icons have been in the church since the very beginning. Jesus himself is described in scripture as The Most Perfect Icon of God.Please also explain how sin is not necessarily a breach of God's covenant but rather a diminishing of God's image?I wouldn't go so far to say that sin isn't a breach of God's covenant, but it certainly is a diminishing of God's image. How does being dead in sin reflect the life of Christ?So we should all be Calvinists then?I have yet to meet an Orthodox Priest that embraced calvinism. Quite the contrary, It seems to be viewed as one of the most pernicious and abominable deviations of the faith. The priests I know are very anti-calvinist. It genuinely offends them.
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@Tradesecret
In Australia the Methodists formed a new church with the Presbyterians. It took three churches and made one new one. the older churches to a large extent becoming redundant. Calvinism is simply Augustinian in essence anyway. Even the orthodox church accepts his teaching as one of the early doctors in the church. The Methodists derive from the Episcopalian church - and never sought to become its own denomination. To be perfectly honest - the Episcopalian Church is a broad church and both Calvinism and Wesley's disciples are able to fit quite comfortably within its ranks.
I'm sure you will find a protestant church that matches some ideal of what you would like Protestantism to be, but the fact of the matter is there is no single protestant church.
So you say the older churches are to a large extent becoming redundant. What that means to me is that protestants don't honor their parents and lack the charity to continue with a church, preferring to set up their own church.
And that is what defines protestantism. Accepting no authority, because even claiming to accept the bible as authority alone is a pretense for accepting one's interpretation of what the bible says.
We Orthodox do respect Augustine as one of ours. However, he knew Latin, and the bible that he used led him to believe that all of mankind shares the guilt of Adam's sin. That is not actually what Orthodoxy teaches. We inherited the mess of Adam's sin, not the guilt. Just as we are where we are because of what our ancestors did. It is very different.
Oddly enough, this one little misunderstanding has come to define Augustinianism in the west.
I would like to note that I have always really enjoyed Augustine, but he isn't the only Church father. As far as the protestant west is concerned, he might as well be the only one! A history of the church book you will find in a protestant seminary will have a span of 1,500 years that can fit on 3 pages. Then to Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, etc. The protestant church is a church with amnesia, because despite claims to the contrary, they threw out a great deal more than just the papacy when they broke from the Latin Church!
As for the Lutheran Church, yes protestant. Yet, like the Episcopalian church, the RCC, and the OC maintain the fictional apostolic succession.
Yet The Roman Catholic Church is schismatic, and the Episcopalian church is a schismatic off of a schismatic. So really, they aren't The Church.
I also see the great variety of denominations as one of the most amazing things that provides real unity to the Church. Rather than seeing it something negative which is what many people - especially the atheists - do - I think it is one of our chief strengths. When Christians can disagree with fundamental aspects of their religion yet still unite on the primary truths of the Gospel, this signals tolerance of the greatest virtue - something which the rest of the world tends to fall behind in all over the place. The only time we see unity of any kind in the world apart from what the church brings - is either in times of great tragedy or the Olympics. Sports tends to act as an equaliser yet - it only goes so far. It is the unity that the world sees of the church when it comes together that is staggering. If the church had only one opinion - it could not demonstrate unity - only sameness. This would place it in the realm of the cults or the sects. This is probably why the OC is often put into a the realm of brainwashing - and superstitious because of its sameness. Sameness is not unity. It is the blind leading the blind. Unity by virtue of its definition requires variety - and non-sameness or otherwise its loses its meaning. When people of different views can disagree and unite it reveals real love.
The next logical step is calling loving Hindus, Muslims, and even secularists Christians.
If you love people, that is great. That is what we are supposed to do. The good Samaritan was not a Jew, but his love was to be emulated. However, gnostics, arians, iconoclasts, monophysites, etc... They are not Christians. They are Christian in name only. What heretic admits to being so? They all think they are Christians. Well, they can't be because they not only believe and teach things contrary to the faith, but they take so much pride in it as to separate themselves from the rest of the church and even wage war against it.
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@Swagnarok
Is there anything the Orthodox church can do to make itself less...ethnically exclusive? Is the larger church taking concrete action now to give itself a broader appeal? If not, why not?
I don't see how the Orthodox is ethnically exclusive. In my parish there are people from Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Ethiopia, China, Mexico, Romania, Russia, Greece and of course.. The United States.
Our services are in English.
There is nothing ethnically exclusive about The Orthodox Church.
The Church is less interested in being broadly appealing than it is maintaining The Holy Tradition faithfully.
The churches in the west that care about being broadly appealing tend to be corrupted by the prevailing culture.
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@keithprosser
Orthodox Christianity is about purifying the heart, not explaining things.
I would say that you have a superstitious understanding of The Ultimate Reality as the idea of it coming from anywhere is nonsensical(though you don't know yet), and you have an idea of human consciousness that you attribute to God, which we would not accept either.
I would say that your understanding has been influenced greatly by the heretical western church which has fallen into two major errors.
1. A dominance/submission fetish that in do doubt is the influence of Rome's heresy, which is defined by submission to the Bishop of Rome, and said Bishops dominance. The reaction of the protestants against this, which was to reject the Roman Bishop and Church Tradition with it. Secularism is the natural progression of the protestant mentality, eventually rejecting the bible, and even God all together.
2. The idea that God is grasped through proper education and logic rather than purifying the heart, which has caused the west to stray in that a corrupt heart full of idolatry is incapable of seeing clearly to reason, and is blind to its own blindness. The Latins adopted scholasticism(rejected by Orthodoxy from the beginning), and after the west rejected it, what filled the void was nihilism and the arbitrariness that naturally developed as a means to grapple with the absurd through intellectual means alone.
But of course, if you don't believe that Orthodox is the true and original form of Christianity that has remained faithful to Holy Tradition guided by the spirit of truth, you are going to be confused in believing our claims are just as valid as the heretics!
And so, just like depression, the nihilism intrinsic to atheism is self defeating and self perpetuating. And like most people who are truly depressed and negative minded, they will say, "I'm not pessimistic, I am realistic!"
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@keithprosser
The consciousness of a plant or an insect is very different from the consciousness of a human. I wonder if an ant would see a human being as conscious? Well, you of course would not give an ant such credit to think in such a way, which would be an easy way to dismiss the point I am making.
Say God was conscious. The form of consciousness that God takes would more than likely be incomprehensible to you to begin with.
But here is a real question for you. Why is it so difficult for you to accept the possibility of God being conscious?
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@keithprosser
That may make sense to to you, but it isn't true.
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@keithprosser
You believe there is Ultimate Reality.
You at the very least believe that God exists, even if you don't know God.
Without acknowledging this, you are really just debating me over the meaning of words, and I absolutely cannot compromise on this.
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@Fallaneze
Lol
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@Fallaneze
You don't understand my religion, you aren't interested in understanding it, and you are trying to refute it.
Well, I'm not interested in playing straw man for you.
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I don't think atheists would necessarily deny the existence of the thing you describe. The probem is that calling it 'God' implies a lot more than 'reality exists' - it implies that it is the God of the bible that exists.
I'm sorry you can't reconcile your idea of what the God of the bible is with what I'm saying. Maybe one day you'll realize you don't have it all figured out and get over your hang up.
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@Fallaneze
I don't really believe you are interested in hearing what my religion is about, I think you are only interested in mocking the whole thing all together.
But there is a topic I created if you have sincere questions. I am not interested in entertaining you.
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@janesix
Don't mind me, just a momentary lapse of patience.
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@Fallaneze
Yet, I have read the writings of the church fathers and the saints. I have read the scriptures. I know my religion. I know my faith better than you could ever hope to as an atheist.
And you know what?
You're wrong.
And I know you are wrong.
You on the other hand, don't know what you are saying. You don't know you are wrong. If you knew you were wrong, you would abandon your atheism.
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@Fallaneze
There is only one Supreme Being.
You do realize that "being" means existence right? What is the supreme existence?
It means the same thing as Ultimate Reality.
What I am saying isn't contingent on an obscure definition in a language that didn't exist a thousand years ago.
This is always how Orthodoxy has understood the concept.
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@Fallaneze
Yet God has been understood as this for thousands of years.
So when you argue over these things because of your aversion to God, you are really doing little more than creating unnecessary strife. The theists are never going to budge on this, so it is a waste of time trying to get them to or debating about these words.
You must understand, we take this very seriously, it is not something we hold in irreverence.
And God isn't simply reality. God is THE ULTIMATE REALITY. Matter isn't ultimately real. Matter doesn't account for everything. Matter is creation. The Ultimate Reality is Uncreated, Eternally Existing, perfect in every way, and accounts for the entirety of existence.
It is a reality that is the year 2019. Next year, this won't be reality. I am not talking about a relative truth. A transient reality. I am talking about that which is always true in every sense. I am talking about God.
And as I said, we theists are not going to give up our God. 66.5 million orthodox martyrs in the last century show that. And the people who have tried to kill this are aware of this.
And we are alot nicer than the Muslims, who don't tolerate anyone so foolish as to blaspheme God. They will kill you. Good luck convincing them to give up God.
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@Outplayz
my concern with religion is the people that not only wrote, but the high priest that picked which stories to keep and which not to. I don't know if the latter applies to Orthodox since i don't know these specifics, but i would guess it went through that process
Orthodoxy accepts Jesus Christ as the eternal high priest. We do not have a single priest or bishop who runs the church. We do have the bible, but there are always new writings in the church. In fact, we have a lot of really good books!
So not only do you have to trust the Orthodox church never had a person that would corrupt the church for his own game, you have to also trust every person that wrote and arranged the Bible did so without corruption. Both together... i don't trust humans at all... so for "me" i'm still not convinced
The Orthodox Church is structured in such a way as to make the corruption of it by one person very unlikely if not impossible. There is no one person who runs the church.
We do not make the bible an idol before God. Scripture points to Jesus Christ, that is the intent. The church is made up of people, and all have sinned. The purpose of the church is to be a hospital. It is not structured in a way so as to be exploited for gain. In fact, those who are ordained as bishops tend to be monastics, and you don't get to be a bishop if you are chasing after filthy lucre!
The faith is not in people though, it is God, and the priests are supposed to help you with that. They aren't really supposed to lord authority over people. In fact, orthodoxy emphasizes free will, and as such is against using methods of coercion. They tell you the truth, and it is up to you what to do with it.
Now if I understand the rest of what you are saying and your whole post, it has to do with trusting people and an organization made of people.
There are examples in history of the government trying to hijack the church and use it for their means. It doesn't work. Besides, at best, governments can only corrupt a piece of the church for maybe a short period of time. When the oppression is lifted, the church is helped to revert back to base by the rest of the church. The church itself? It is not made to have secular power.
See, in the west, The Roman Catholic Church has done a lot of these types of things. They are not with us. They practice a very perverse deviation of the faith, which is why they are not orthodox. They have had secular governments. We orthodox consider this a big no no. We maintain that we must operate independently of the state. Orthodoxy has been, and is the state religion of some countries, but we are. distinct from the government, and claim no secular authority.
Our priests are not rich, and they are burdened with a lot of work. They are servants of the people, not lords over them.
Even if there are corrupt laymen, corrupt priests, corrupt bishops, these bad ones cannot corrupt the whole church because we take Holy Tradition very seriously.
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@Fallaneze
Of course, because you believe that the material world is the ultimate reality. You are calling the material world God.
I would not personally identify the material world as God. You do. So we would understand God differently, but we still believe that God exists.
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@keithprosser
St. John Chrysostom is actually very good, he is considered by the church to be one of the greatest preachers who ever lived. "Chrystostom" means "golden mouthed".
His form of the liturgy is still the form that we practice today in many Orthodox Churches.
And fyi, Orthodoxy has a thriving monastic community, and being a monk necessarily means getting rid of all your things.
Besides, there are several examples of believers in the new testament who were financially well off.
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@janesix
You asked me about purifying the heart. I gave you the same answer would have given anybody.
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@WisdomofAges
Tldr
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@janesix
I walked around for 8 years owning nothin except what I could carry. I don't think material things are something between me and God. Even now, I am not wealthy. All my money is accounted for. I don't have spending cash.
More important than looking at others as their judge though is to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
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@Outplayz
The Orthodox Church has been teaching the same thing for 2000 years. In fact, one of the things that has worked really well in terms of the reconciliation of Orthodox and many non-chlacedonian churches is that even after over 1500 years we still pretty much teach the same thing. The point of schism is pretty much understood as different ways of explaining the same thing.
One of the reasons I am orthodox to begin with has to do with how the orthodox church matches the earliest descriptions of how Christians did things.
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@Fallaneze
The Ultimate Reality is what the word "God" means. As this is the case, you believe in an ultimate reality. Therefore you believe in God.
You can deny this and call equivication fallacy all you want, you are simply in denial. I don't expect to convince someone who is so delusional they would define themselves by their lack of belief in reality.
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@Outplayz
I am answering questions about Orthodoxy, not myself.
Now if you have any questions about Orthodoxy, I will do my best to answer those questions to the best of my ability. Please, one question at a time.
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@Fallaneze
Yes, you are. You're conflating "ultimate reality" (which theists and atheists both agree exists)
Full stop! (My deb-8-a-bull impression)
THAT IS WHAT GOD MEANS
So whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, you believe in God.
with the particular branch of theism at your church.
No, YOU ARE, and so does everyone else who finds it easier to dismiss a church than it is to dismiss God.
And if I were to preach God alone, simply the Ultimmate Reality, attaching it to no religion, atheists would still reject it, and I know this because I have already seen this to be the case.
The issue here has more to do with an aversion to the very concept of God or the word than anything else. Anything but that!
You are using the term "God" to refer to two different things. You may believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God is the ultimate reality while atheists believe that the material world is the ultimate reality. Get it?
No, I believe that The Ultimate Reality has ultimate authority, power, and influence of all thing (omnipotent), has within it everything there is that can be known(omniscient), and being that what The Ultimate Reality does is Truth, that The Truth is what is truly good(omnibenevolent). It isn't that I have thos arbitrary qualities and say they are God.
And what I am saying is the truth.
You say the material world is God. I disagree. I say the material world is creation. I would say that without God, the material world would not exist.
Pardon me, you wouldn't call the material world God, because as an atheist, you have an aversion to the word "God" because your understanding of the very concept is riddled with superstitious nonsense.
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@janesix
This annotation I have in my study bible explains it pretty well...
"To be perfect, one must willingly sacrifice all and follow Christ. Nothing is gained unless this sacrifice is given freely. The specifics of how one follows Christ will be different for each person. Because wealth had such a grip on this man, his only hope was to sell and give away all his possessions. St. John Chrysostom tells us that giving away possessions is the least of Christ's instructions here; following Him in all things is a far greater and more difficult calling."
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@keithprosser
You think the truth is incredibly important. You don't believe it is the most important.
And that is why I say you have idols before God.
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@Stronn
No, it's a way of explaining that there is a difference between the experience of truth and the truth itself.
Which is why we have the trinity.
You don't understand it, so you dismiss it as nonsense when really it is nonsense.. to you.
What do we do with the trinity? We acknowledge the medium. Who else does this?
You know, there is a difference between a picture of a cow and a living breathing cow in front of you.
Now imagine for a moment that the only way we could see The Truth is through a picture of The Truth.
So when we experience God who is The Ultimate Reality, we are doing it towards God in Truth with a spirit of Truth.
And that is as close as you are going to get with it.
And the reason why they are all 1 is because it is The Truth we are talking about!
And if none of that makes sense to you, it isn't because it is nonsense. It is called a mystery for a reason!
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@Fallaneze
I am not making a fallacy, but if you refuse to accept how we understand God while denying that God exists, you are commiting the fallacy of invincible ignorance.
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@keithprosser
If you know what I believe, then you should know by rejecting my God you are rejecting reality.
It isn't charitable for me to point this out but...
It is more charitable for me to believe you are ignorant than for me to believe you knowingly waging war against The Truth. After all, if it is the later, you are commiting a great evil!
And really, you are commiting a great evil by taking on the role of an anti-Christ, because if I am right about what the church teaches(and I certainly have good reason to believe so), you are making yourself an enemy of truth to satisfy your aversion to the concept if God.
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@Reece
The Ultimate Reality is not simply anything that is incomprehensible.
It is Reality in the truest sense of the word. What you can imagine is by definition not reality in the truest sense of the word. Likewise, just because something is incomprehensible doesn't mean that it is God.
If I think you would be better off repenting of this blasphemy and abandoning this faulty line of reasoning.
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@Reece
I'd would say that you are expressing a superstitious belief.
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@Reece
We are talking about The Ultimate Reality.
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@Reece
I would say that this has nothing to do with what we are talking about, and you should stop making the pretense of being reasonable.
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@keithprosser
You speak of things you don't understand.
You'd probably be better off believing that I am speaking very plainly about what the church actually teaches rather than try to fit what I'm saying into your preconceived notions and understandings.
You are, after all, not really that familiar with Orthodoxy, only the unenlightened perversions of the faith that managed to proliferate in the west.
And I really hate to refer to western Christianity in such a derogatory manner, but it is the truth and it is very frustrating trying to teach real Christianity to people who think they already get it when they really don't.
Something you really don't get is that we have always taught this understanding of God, and your only argument against it is to go nuh uh and contradict what the church has been teaching for thousands of years.
So if you could look at it from my perspective for a moment, you should realize that contradicting me is an exercise in futility because I know what I believe, you don't, and there is not much you can do while disputing on this that would convince me that you aren't simply uneducated.
To you, it is an arbitrary thing. To me it is not.
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@Reece
It is very easy to resort to mocking and scoffing. I'm sure you will be popular around here.
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@Reece
Certainly God would have to be incomprehensible. Necessarily, God would have to be greater the intellect's ability to apprehend.
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@Reece
Not just truth.
The Truth.
As in, reality in the truest sense of what that means.
The way things actually are. Truly.
That is what I mean by God. The One True God.
That is what it means. It is The Most Real.
The Truth.
As in, reality in the truest sense of what that means.
The way things actually are. Truly.
That is what I mean by God. The One True God.
That is what it means. It is The Most Real.
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@Reece
The Supreme and Ultimate Reality.
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@Outplayz
If you have any questions about Orthodoxy, I will do my best to answer. Please, one question at a time.
I am going to tell you what I know to be true. I am not trying to convince you of anything.
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@Reece
Definition courtesy Merriam-webster...
Full Definition
1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as
a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe
b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind
2 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3 : a person or thing of supreme value
4 : a powerful ruler
So I am talking about God not god. As you can see, these mean two different things.
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@Reece
Why do you say that?
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@Reece
I say The Truth is The Ultimate Reality. This is my God.
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@Outplayz
If I told you that I knew, you wouldn't believe.
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@Outplayz
Well, you may not like to hear it, but what you are describing are the symptoms of idolatry. While it may seem appealing, it is in fact the embrace of death.
And if that offends you, it cannot be helped. I am certainly not a bigot, and I certainly do not hate you. I am not telling you what you want to hear. It is not to cause harm. That is certainly not the intent.
And if that offends you, it cannot be helped. I am certainly not a bigot, and I certainly do not hate you. I am not telling you what you want to hear. It is not to cause harm. That is certainly not the intent.
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