Oh, I guess that's true. Why I always play with sandbags.

Wait, spades? How do YOU play spades? There's no dishonesty in spades. Mau, though, is definitely mean (but funny).

Hopefully this hasn't been discussed to death, but here's my take on it. There are two separate issues going on here, I think.

First, God is perfect. I always picture heaven as this completely clean place. If anyone comes with any dirt on them, whether the dirt of lying or murdering or whatever, that would make heaven dirty, and that goes against God's fundamental nature, so no amount of dirt is allowed in. That's Jesus' job, to clean off our dirt so that we can be in heaven.

The second issue is who can get to heaven. I'm sure many of the people on this site will disagree with me, but I have no problem picturing Ghandi in heaven. He worked for justice and truth while he was here. And God is Truth, so anytime you are seeking Truth you are seeking God. You might not recognize it as Jesus, but it is still Him. I always think of a scene in The Last Battle - there is a man who ends up in heaven. And he says, "But I never followed you, Aslan, I followed Tash" (or whatever his name was). And Aslan tells him, "You sought after Truth, and thus were seeking me." So whether Ghandi confessed Jesus specifically on earth is to me irrelevant.

That was my first reaction when I heard planes had hit the WTC, too. Funny how it wasn't even in our radar screens that it was a deliberate attack, just an assumption of little planes.

This is me. Every time I get a cold it ends up in a cough that lingers for a few weeks. I'm not contagious anymore, but of course I get a tickle in church (and class, for that matter). I always thought leaving was more disruptive, so I tried not to do that. Apparently staying is more annoying than I thought it was.

It's always during prayer. I can be great through the singing, but as soon as everyone gets quiet there's the tickle.

We used to always eat Sunday dinner at Grandma's house growing up. It was fun.

I know I can't speak for everyone, but I always considered saying someone was "full of hate" was more the beginning of the explanation than the end. However, that's often a conversation that needs to be had more one on one, and isn't always possible in forums like this.

That's true, there's no way to completely make a church scandal proof. But I think the point of the post is that if we are more accountable with each other and give pastors a chance to fall, if they do fall it won't be a scandal, but something we can lovingly work through. And also, if those safeguards are in place the fall won't be so far, and can be caught before it turns into a scandal.

I bet some of that is just never bothering to go through and update computer files. My parents receive election information from their old state three years after moving (at their new, out of state address). The mail goes in the recycling, but the computer generated phone calls get annoying.