The following explains why they keep talking about "fear-mongers," "fear-peddlers" and the "fear meme." It's why they keep posting that Hucksters article and why think think Hewitt selling Y2K stuff is OK but Hyatt, Yourdon, Lord, et al., are not OK. They are trying to save our souls from Hell! (And get merit badges from God?) We are to put our trust in God and cease worrying about Y2K. According to cpr, Norman Vincent Peale says worrying is SINFUL, therefore we are all sinners and must be saved. What's so laughable is all this crap about Y2K worry being a "religion," when all the time this bunch is using religion as justification to disrupt this forum!

Posted by (208.189.71.48) cpr on December 05, 1999 at 20:27:25:

...A Ph.D. is not required to believe John 3:16 and I believe somewhere Christ discussed suffer the "Children to come unto Me". The standard line from the Y2k faithful referred to the Prudent who prepared vs. the Fool who did not or the 5/10 Virgins and their lamps.

I would answer that with: "The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of All Wisdom" (AND HIS FIRST NAME IS NOT.....JIM).

The "real answer" is in the verbiage........."Concern" need not be crippling "worry" or its inverse "what, me worry?".

In Christianity, there is one line that cuts through the Fog, "Sell all you have, give to the Poor and come follow Me." THAT is not very popular (Convents and Monasteries aside).

Translated another way, it is a Clarion statement to the "rich man" about the Eye of a Needle with far more significance.

It states what is found later, that you can not place your Faith in worldly things and that...... Faith is sufficient.

"Good works" is debated but NO major Faith condones bad works and all have modified forms of the "Golden Rule" (NYC's has always been "do unto them first before it is done unto thee.)

Now, I have heard and read enough Norman Vincent Peale to be convinced that Worry.........caused by Fear is SINFUL. For in essence, it is a statement that one does not......HAVE ENOUGH FAITH or even... ANY at all. And that is the reason that the "old timers of GUILT" railed against him and Schuller with their Positive thinking and acting ideas. FACT is that nothing except Prisons or Forts were built by negative thinkers.

The debate was.......the How can we do this to get to Heaven vs. those how lived by "how do I avoid going to Hell". The Religion of HOPE beat the Religion of Fear.

We do not need Scripture or quotations to prove that. It is the CALL to the COMMITMENT to GOD and it really doesn't matter which Flavor of Christianity or Judaism or Islam you choose.

At the core is: IF you believe with all your heart etc. YOU WILL NOT FEAR.

That does not imply you take a walk against traffic on the nearest Interstate because you "believe" for suicide is not approved in most Major Faiths.

Which is where the "CONCERNS" part enters vs. "Worry".

In India, it is also clear that IF you do the right thing in accord with the Hindi Beliefs you will come back next trip with a better seat. Buddhism, Confusionism and Shinto are driven another way.

Y2k aside, Comparative Religion courses would suggest that all major Faiths exist to "make life tolerable" if not totally explainable. The endless question of "If God is good, why is there pain and suffering" is explained away in responses drilled into the Priesthood in Priesthood Schools everywhere. The are more Anthropological than religious. With Freud, a major revision of "GUILT" was somehow made to accomodate many things.

Monotheism in the Judeo-Christian sense, became what it is because of a simple reason, IT WAS THE BEST DEAL AROUND (which could explain why my Jewish Ancestors jumped all over it).

In the day of the Golden Calf, the Sacred Goldfish Pond and the Snake or Cat God, THE ONE TRUE GOD who gave you Eternal Life afterwards gave you what we called in NYC, "sucha Deal I couldn't refuse".

Not only that..... but later, the spin was that IF you behaved yourself you might prosper here before you left for your Reward. That Climaxed late in the 1800s with the typical American exaggeration that "God is in League with Riches" as the defense of the Robber Barons who thought nothing of torching their competitors gas stations (Rockefeller), child labor (garment workers), unsafe working conditions(the Triangle Fire), contaminated slaughter houses(the Muck Rakers got that fixed) and Slums (still a problem). It took a Pope to call for a "Just and Living Wage" but that took 75 years more for many.

All along, the "Carrot and the Stick" served as the rule for most forms of Religion until "Modernism" entered the picture (to Gary's horror).

I know of no Major Religion that would openly encorage worrying if it were "fear Based" which does not imply that the Established Religions do not have negative sanctions.

The greatest works ever written might be either Dante's Inferno or Jonathan Edwards immortal, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" with his reference to :"...you are as but a spider suspended over a fire and" ONLY HIS HAND prevents you from that which you deserve and..BTW..HE is MOST ANGRY or as Edwards' wrote, "provoked". (Since that was during the Great Revival in 1745, when the ways of the Puritans were being abandoned by the more Commercially inclined New Englanders, the Frame of Reference should be recalled. Gary North is a pale imitation even shadow of Edwards who tried to be a Scientist when he was not Scaring People with the Very Depths of Hell as a Minister.)

Protestants have come a long way since then (Gary and his band of tradition oriented types notwithstanding.) The Catholics are not so lucky,,for each there is a Sister Mary Elizabeth who explains the same things Edwards taught early on.

In Islam the penalty for stealing has been the removal of fingers then hands.

In the rest of the Major Faiths, some are Positive and Active and a few Passive. Again the whole purpose of Religion is to make life tolerable whether there is a Bonus at the End or not in terms of Eternal Glory.

http://stand77.com/wwwboard/messages/6174.html

Listen, buddy, I do not FEAR Y2K because I WORRIED enough to prepare. Can you get that through your zealot's skull?

-- I can (see@clearly.now), December 10, 1999

Answers

blah blah blah god blah blah blah


-- holy moly (laff@this.com), December 10, 1999.

Yah whatever. Have you ever stopped to think that CPR may simply be a control freak basket case?

-- Honest Abe (HonestAbe@Me.com), December 10, 1999.

-- m (g@n.m), December 10, 1999.

needs at least one more........

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), December 10, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Incoherent.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), December 10, 1999.

see@clearly.now Very nice piece of writing. It seems you have shut them up to the point of one sentence babbelings. Nice writing.

-- (...@.......), December 10, 1999.