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Real picture and real name. Hi everybody! Great points made about putting additional thought into posting prior to posting. Looking forward to 'meeting' more folks here that I may have known by caricature or nickname for years.

My name and picture is me ... granddaughter doesn't mind my sharing her picture. A long time ago I made a decision not to hid behind an alias or fake picture. It helps me to be more aware of what I say on the world-wide web ... as for privacy on the computer, it is not difficult for anyone with some computer skills to identify us so why try to hid behind the computer screen.

Just a thought about income tax refunds. My accountant usually has any refund which is due me applied toward the next year's taxes. That way, no money changes hands, and it saves me from worrying about how much I'll have to pay next year. Also it avoids having the money "out there" and subject to being stolen.

Do you understand what a "contradiction" is? You are going in circles. The stories, parables, that Christ told were not always 'true stories'. Inspired, do you know the meaning of the word? Does the Holy Spirit inspire or not? The H*S only can only use what is already in the Bible? That is limiting!!!

Aubery I am sorry that has happened to you. I realize it would create much inconvenience. As for myself, I have and still do much of my personal business on-line.....when one travels a great deal it is a God-send. A couple of times the Fraud Prevention dept of one of my credit cards have called to verify a purchase charged to my account. In both cases the charges were legitimate. I appreciate their overseeing of my cards. I do not give personal information with places that I may feel are questionable and try to use pay pal as much as possible.

In another thread here in Townhall, the mention of identity theft sparked an interest in me. Identity theft has happened to me twice already and our personal information has been breached 4 times. Currently I am still waiting for my 2014 tax refund because of identity theft--still! And I'm starting to get anxiety about filing this year's tax returns. Ugh. Am I the only one this has happened to here? Anyone else experience the nightmare of identity theft? ___________ Note: I'm fairly certain that information I've shared here on CA had no impact on my identity security._

Right on, CoA! A prime example of one of those stories in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In the story, Lazarus is lying in the bosum of Abraham listening to the rich man burning in hell across a chasm. I have to conclude that this is fiction rather than truth because: 1. The rest of the Bible says people don't suffer forever in hell, they burn up and perish. 2. Abraham's bosum can't POSSIBLY be that big. A fictional story to illustrate Biblical Truth! Sounds like there is Godly precedent for telling stories.

sometimes the stories in the Bible can only be understood if the culture of the times is known... For example, if a non-Christian who has no knowledge of ancient times was to read about Ruth going in to Boaz and laying at his feet, what might that person conclude? That women should lie at the feet of men? Stories with spiritual meanings need to be applicable to the target audience and understood by the same.

the only thing that ever happened to me was the theft of a credit card #... I found out about it when I checked my account online and saw a purchase of over $200 in the Ukraine for cigarettes. I've never been in the Ukraine, nor have I ever bought cigarettes..

I feel that sharing my name and photo is almost as bad as sharing other personal info such as birthday, place of birth, SSN, etc. Using a handle and avatar reduces the chance of turning up on someone's search engine, perhaps someone with no good intentions. I tend to use a fake birthday if one is needed to join a group, and avoid publishing any personal info in a social setting just to reduce the possibility of identity theft, which my name and photo might make easier. Although I did share a photo of myself in a group setting here in CA, but it's not a great picture.

They do have form but they travel faster than the speed of light which gives me second thought on the need or use for wings. Truly interdimensional beings.

Here's the context of the last EGW quote: Do you agree with this quote?

Absolutely aka, on more than one occasion have I been bailed out by them.

dog whistle politics...

Penguin Joke Q: What do you call a penguin in the desert? A: Lost!

You really don't understand the question? The question is, given that Christ did something for every person, why should unbelief result in the sinner not going to heaven?

PAM this is very good and shows JESUS is the theme of the bible dgrimm60

Regarding the payment idea, I agree completely that this idea doesn't make sense, and, futthermore, the idea didn't exist at the time of Paul. No early Christian writers had this idea, much less first century Jews. A fundamental problem I see in Robert's position is that it assumes the problem that God needed to solve is a forensic one, yet the evidence doesn't support this idea. Everything Robert writes starts from this assumption. Therefore Robert's conclusions regarding the corporate work of Christ are slanted this way too. However, if we start from the assumption that the problem God needed to fix is that we were at odds of Him because of believing lies about God spread by the enemy, then it's very easy to see how the work of Christ could be a corporate work. I don't disagree with the corporate theme, but with the foresnsic application of this theme.

Interesting idea, we are not to emulate Jesus, that is, use His methods for teaching. We can only use the stories He told. Any parable(story) told today will be unholy/error/bad/etc? Wonder where you got the idea that truth is stagnant or the methods of explaining it are set in stone.....rather limiting of the Holy Spirit.

@Tom Wetmore Of course my list of conservative "values" encompasses values shared by self-identified liberals. And it is not meant to be a list that excludes anyone. My point was that we likely share more values than we disagree on. Liberal pundits constantly hammer on how mean-spirited conservatives are and how we hate the poor and we hate immigrants and that's a total lie. While there may be some extremists on the right and left who hate, the majority of us who self-identify as Tea Party conservatives spend on average far more of our own personal income and time helping the poor and down-trodden. Where we are at odds with the mainstream liberal community is strictly with regards to method. I worked with a guy in East Texas when I was doing some community organizing around transportation issues. He was a traditional American liberal. He favored government transportation solutions because, as he said, "Governments don't run out of money. They can always get more." The guy had a PhD. And there's the difference. The guy completely doesn't recognize that the money he is talking about is being taken from everyone's pocket. It's charity at gunpoint basically and it never ends. Look at history. Governments always wind up getting greedy, taking more and more till practically nothing is left to take. America was supposed to be different. Now that transportation coalition actually came up with some truly innovative solutions for transportation. Man of them got shot down because, as one disability advocate told me, "They make too much sense." But some actually worked. Our transportation problem was caused by the fact that East Texas is like the Old Texans graveyard. Lots of folk retire there because the fishing is great and there are lots of lakes. Old people eventually lose the ability to drive. As a result more than 20% (1 in 5) East Texans over the age of 18 can no longer drive due to age or disability. Many moved to East Texas to settle in the country for their retirement. They don't want to live in town and shouldn't be forced to. Unfortunately, without adequate transit resources, you can't maintain yourself in a rural setting. Our first challenge was getting our government funded rural transit system up and running. We made alliance with the new Republican majority in the Texas legislature and changed the funding formula for rural transit. We were the second largest rural transit district in Texas and received the smallest appropriation. Federal funds for rural transit are sent to the states on a per capita basis. The two Democrat dominated districts (Houston and Austin) Were receiving 6 million and 2 million dollars respectively. East Texas received $300,000. Democrats are better at lobbying. We corrected that and tripled the ET rural transit budget. The director of the district (a die-hard liberal) fought us tooth and nail. This is a woman who, when asked, "What's the difference between private and public transit?" responded. "Private transportation has to satisfy its customers. With Public Transit, the customer has to satisfy us in order to get a ride." I kid you not. That's how she ran things. And she had no interest in upsetting her apple cart to provide better service to customers. She was already telling little old people they had to build a circular drive in order to get a ride because she didn't want her drivers to have to back up. We were pressuring her to make service more customer response. I was warned to check under my truck before starting it during all this because there might be some piddling with the funds going on and I was bringing scrutiny on the Council of Governments by increasing funding. And that consistently has been my experience with big government (i.e. Democrat) solutions to social issues. Private people were more than willing to help our seniors and people with disabilities. We conservatives in the group set up a howl when we discovered dozens of colonias - illegal immigrants kept in ramshackle camps and transported to work in the rose farms in the backs of pickups. One guy was charging $80 worth of food stamps for a woman to ride into town in the back of a truck. They were using baby formula as currency. It was the conservative Christians who were making a ruckus about doing something about that - illegals or not. We also got in trouble for being too efficient with our church and community nonprofit based food pantry program. It was working so well that applications for food stamps dropped dramatically. As a result the Feds cut $800,000 from the East Texas food bank program. We were publicly chastised by Food Stamp officials and asked to support a $200,000 ad campaign that said "Food Stamps are not part of welfare reform." They wanted us to waste time trying to get more people to apply for food stamps. The qualifications weren't changing. The embarrassing and humiliating process wasn't being changed. They just needed more applications so they could say, "See we have all these hungry people." We were supposed to encourage people to apply for "free food" and tell them not to worry, the welfare to work initiative didn't apply to them. I worked for decades with abused children and saw the tragic consequences when kids have been run through the public child care system. They came to us battered and emotionally scarred and on enough medications to tranquilize a moose. And for $56 a day (the state facility was spending $185 a day at the time for taking care of the same or less difficult kids) we helped them find their way back from damage caused by the tender mercies of the public welfare system. I raised money for seniors, children, people with disabilities and low income families for 40 years and in that time ran into precious few bureaucrats. They had no qualms about shutting down facilities and dumping the kids in psych facilities in order to meet a budget (remember this was when Democrats ran Texas). Thirty days and out and then off to the prison system. We're still cleaning up the debris from those days in Texas. We came up with a plan for turning 22 state human services agencies into five in order to improve the odds that a wounded child or a person in need might find the help they needed. Boy did the bureaucrats set up a howl. These 22 agencies were each run like private fiefdoms according to the agency that reviewed the welfare system shortly after the Republicans came to power. One did not talk to the other and it was a crapshoot as to whether a person got the help they needed or not. One hand did not know what the other was doing. I attended a town meeting where a man got up and railed against the streamlining of the system, painting pictures of starving old people standing alongside the road and children living in dumpsters. I stood up at the meeting and asked the man who did he work for. "The People United for the Equitable blah, blah, blah..." he said. "No," I said. "I mean who signs your paycheck?" He hesitated and then kind of mumbled, "The Federal and State Employees Union." Most of us walked out of the meeting at that point. That's why I have a problem with "liberal" solutions. They usually involve expanding government; shuffling off responsibility for the poor and disadvantaged onto some distant government authority so we don't have to worry about it. Joy Behar of The View once said exactly that in explaining why she wanted the government to do it. She didn't want to have to become personally involved. I don't remember Jesus ever telling his followers that they should get the government to take care of the widows and orphans. He told us to do it. Sadly, most of us think the government actually does take care of those most in need and yet we see them living by the skin of their teeth or out on the streets or worse. The problem with big government solutions is that they don't work. You can't sit in Washington and design a welfare program that works in New York City and in East Texas. What works in Hawaii may not work at all in Alaska. Central planning, the hallmark big idea of the liberal ethos says that a small group of smart people can some how figure out how to make everyone safe, healthy and happy. Jesus knew that wasn't true 2000 years ago when he said, "The poor you will always have with you." So long as man is a sinful creature, utopia is not possible. If you create large power structures they WILL be misused by people who love power. And, no, I'm not saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Some people in Earth's history have handled power well and stepped aside gracefully when their job was done. I think of George Washington. More precisely, "Power attracts the corruptible." That's why I want my president limited to 2 terms. That's why I want someone who is dragged to it reluctantly. I don't want someone with a fire in his belly to be the leader of the free world. With those people in command, it won't be the free world for long. I'm sure there is a lot of overlap in values between liberals and conservatives. We all see the same woes in this sad old world. Unfortunately, what seems to be the best solution differs dramatically between the mainstream left and mainstream right. Instead of sniping at the radicalized fringe of our two philosophies, we ought to be learning to focus on what we do agree on and coming up with solutions to fix it. In my time as a conservative community organizer working with both conservatives and liberals, I learned that we can work together if we are willing to look honestly at the problems and pick the best solutions rather than the ones that fit our ideology. Just sayin' Tom

I'm right out there...picture and name. But, I sure do understand why one would want to be careful on a computer.

My real name is Mark Orman.

Me, too

Confession Time: The photo is me and the name is mine.

Bees Joke Q: Why do bees have sticky hair? A: Because they have honeycombs