Coronavirus news

[Donald_Kirchner]

Mr Garner,

We should have held out. Now Joe wants us to get paid to vaccinate! MJ and I, $200, a decent dinner.  😉

[J. Thomas Shelley]

Mr Garner,

We should have held out. Now Joe wants us to get paid to vaccinate! MJ and I, $200, a decent dinner.  😉

I took the final dose in February and all I got was a headache, nausea, chills, and hot flashes.

Where's my payout?

[Brian Stoffregen]

Sounds like what we preachers do every Sunday. Sermons are propaganda. They are designed to get people to think and act in a particular way.

I sure hope that you and other pastors are not lying to us.  That's a big difference.

The content of propaganda speeches can be true of false. Sometimes illustrations I used in sermons were a compilation of different people that I combined into one person. Sometimes my report of an event changed the sex of the person so that I wasn't betraying a confidence. (Never at a congregation or a town where the real person lived.) By changing such details to protect confidences, am I lying to you?


When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

[David Garner]

Mr Garner,

We should have held out. Now Joe wants us to get paid to vaccinate! MJ and I, $200, a decent dinner.  😉

I always miss out.

[Michael Slusser]

Mr Garner,

We should have held out. Now Joe wants us to get paid to vaccinate! MJ and I, $200, a decent dinner.  😉

I took the final dose in February and all I got was a headache, nausea, chills, and hot flashes.

Where's my payout?

Seven months of free immunity?

Peace,
Michael

[James S. Rustad]

Focus, Pastor Kirchner. Focus!
Those words of mine are in the thread about Finland.

Own it, Pastor Austin.  You said it, now own it.

[Donald_Kirchner]

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

Typical Stoffregen illogic

[Jim Butler]

Here I am, Pastor Bohler, an old-fashioned and anti-establishment liberal,

Aren't you the dude who keeps carping about wanting the government to issue mandates for COVID vaccination? Isn't that...rather establishment?

Didn't you make this remark while defending the CDC's back dating of its change of an article from rejected to revised? Can you get more establishment than the CDC?

Didn't you work for the New York Times and in the LCA HQ?

Are you sure you're anti-establishment? Because I don't think you know what the word means.

Speaking of what words mean, Charles, you never did explain the difference between calling someone an "idiot" and saying he/she is "Bad, not smart, unreasonable, and lacking concern for others." I'd still like to know.

[Brian Stoffregen]

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

Typical Stoffregen illogic

Typical Kirchner (non-)response.

[Donald_Kirchner]

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

Typical Stoffregen illogic

Typical Kirchner (non-)response.

It's an invalid premise, Brian.  Why don't' you get this stuff?

[Brian Stoffregen]

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

Typical Stoffregen illogic

Typical Kirchner (non-)response.

It's an invalid premise, Brian.  Why don't' you get this stuff?

No, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "lie". I would guess that many sermons and biblical stories, e.g., parables, include things that are not historical or factual. My question: are they lies?

[D. Engebretson]

Every day I hear updates on the "Delta Variant."  Every day the news sounds more dire.  Its ability to infect is greater.  Vaccinated people can be carriers. Breakthrough infections in the vaccinated are more likely. Hospitalizations are up.

And we are about to head into the fall season.  School. Masks are again the hot topic. And divisive as ever.  Yet on the outside it seems like we have largely to returned to life as normal.  Or as close to normal as we could get. The remote life we experienced last year this time will probably not be the norm.  We have seen that remote learning did not do so well in the majority of our schools. Businesses have changed and remote working is more the norm, but many are being recalled back to the office.  My son was one of them. 

It feels like we are in a kind of COVID Twilight Zone.  In a pandemic, but not, or sort of.  Vaccines are being pushed harder than ever. They are the gold standard for beating this thing, we are told. The Federal government is contemplating mandates of its employees.  Businesses are contemplating the same.  Yet my Pfizer vaccine is now rated at only 88% effective. It takes a hit with each variant.  Not bad, but not nearly as good as the day I got it.  And the company is saying some of us may need a booster.  But the CDC isn't quite on board. 

Our churches have largely relaxed many of their COVID protocols.  But come fall will we be encouraged to put many of them back?  My hymnals are back in the racks.  Tape is gone off the pews.  No one wears masks, with the one exception of the pastor and elder at the Sacrament (which is largely for optics at this point).  We are talking about resuming Sunday School after a 19 month hiatus.  We just had a voters meeting and decided that it was still too soon for the annual Harvest Dinner, especially with this nasty variant on the loose.  I sense that if cases tick upwards in my area life may shift back to where it was just months ago. 

A year ago it was tough.  But now the uncertainty and the vagueness may be just as difficult to handle.   

[Donald_Kirchner]

No, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "lie".

Well, to begin, I did not use the term "lie." You did:

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

I deny the premise, i.e., that one or the other must be lying.

Now you've changed thi8ngs:

I would guess that many sermons and biblical stories, e.g., parables, include things that are not historical or factual. My question: are they lies?

No. In your scenarios, "sermons and biblical stories, e.g., parables." I see no intent to deceive.

[David Garner]

No, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "lie".

Well, to begin, I did not use the term "lie." You did:

When a pastor proclaims that the walls of Jericho fell just as Joshua records it; but archeologist tell us that the walls fell 1000 years before Joshua came through the area and the city was unoccupied during Joshua's time; who is lying?

I deny the premise, i.e., that one or the other must be lying.

Now you've changed thi8ngs:

I would guess that many sermons and biblical stories, e.g., parables, include things that are not historical or factual. My question: are they lies?

No. In your scenarios, "sermons and biblical stories, e.g., parables." I see no intent to deceive.

This is exactly the point.  Dr. Faucci did not tell a parable or a moral fable.  He said the general public should not wear masks.  Not because he thought masks were actually ineffective against the spread of the virus (which is what he told us), but because he didn't want healthcare workers to run out of masks.  He said we needed 80% to 85% of the public vaccinated to get to herd immunity, when he really believed the number was 70%.  He lied to try to convince people to get vaccinated.  Which didn't work, and also damaged his credibility when he admitted to having lied.

[Coach-Rev]

Jeff simply notes that this thread has now taken on pages upon pages of political discourse, couched in the language of covid and having nothing to do with the church.  I thought this was the very thing the 2021 forum rules were wanting to avoid...