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Arrested Development

136 Comments

Finally, we have some unintentional truth being spoken on Facebook. Apparently, fundamentalist adults have all the wisdom, discernment, emotional maturity, and spiritual fortitude of a small child. Anything not rated G is just too much for them to handle.

One has to wonder if they’ve ever read the Old Testament.

136 thoughts on “Arrested Development”

    1. Looking at the time stamps, I’d say it was a 4 way tie. But I’m still claiming top billing 🙂 That being said, I hate when my kid (she’s three) asks questions about tampon commercials. I tell her to wait til she gets to her mom’s house and ask her. I wonder why they play tampon commercials on cartoon network. Moms don’t watch tv with their kids. That’s the point of the one-eyed monster, amen?

  5. One has to wonder exactly how far they’re willing to take this analogy.

    “Eight year olds shouldn’t be allowed to vote ergo nobody should vote.”

    “Kids in middle school shouldn’t be allowed to drive, ergo, nobody should be allowed to drive.”

    “Twelve year old kids should not be having sex ergo…”

    1. “Twelve year old kids should not be having sex ergo…”

      Well, this one’s pretty much true, isn’t it? 😳

    2. I’d be thrilled if most Baptist adults (especially our favorite nutjobs) followed those guidelines! 🙂

      I’d like to suggest they all start eating baby food too! If it’s a sin, it’s a sin!

  6. yep, this applied to our family growing up. Also the reason we weren’t allowed to read the newspaper (even as teenagers). We snuck around on the internet, though, including chat rooms, because my parents were dumb about certain things (like technology).

    1. Not allowed to read the newspaper? Wow.

      We were always aloud to read whatever newspapers or magazines were around…once my mom was done censoring them with a permanent marker, that is.

        1. It definitely taught me how to be sneakier. I’m not sure if that’s a net benefit or not.

        2. I guess why I mean is this for example: you can censor out all the “bad” words that you want as much as you want but it only takes one trip to Wal-Mart for a kid to hear s–t, d–n, h-ll, f–k, etc. Then what good has your censorship done but to put an onerous burden on yourself, your kids, and everyone else.

        3. Several things, which you may already be aware of 🙂

          1. Some of the books in the HAC library are gone thru ahead of time and a black magic marker marks out any questionalble word, sentence, phrase. They’ve also removed entire PAGES from books.
          2. It’s rare though that a book OTHER than what they’ve published even makes it to the shelf! lol
          3. You can’t check books out…at least when I was there.
          4. The books were not in plain view…you had to go to a window like at a post office and request a book. You had access to the book while you were in the library, because you can’t check them out.

          Rules may have changed over the years, but generally places like that TIGHTEN the rules instead of relaxing them.

          You asked what’s the benefit of the censorship?

          I don’t know if there’s a real BENEFIT, but it DOES empower those that have the black magic marker in hand 🙂

          The problem with that of course, is it provides a FaLSE sense of control and in THEIR minds, they still remain in charge.

        4. “It definitely taught me how to be sneakier. I’m not sure if that’s a net benefit or not.” — Now you have mad ninja skillz, Darrell.

          It’s definitely a sign from gid that this post showed up on the random feed. A sign of what, I don’t know. But 4 August 2011 and 4 August 2015!

          This post brought to you courtesy of not enough sleep.

      3. My cousins were not allowed to read Reader’s Digest until their mother went through it and ripped out/blacked out all the inappropriate content. I was rather surprised when I discovered this, as I’d figured their parents were about like mine, who let us read pretty much whatever we felt like Reader’s Digest, and the newspaper, for that matter.

        In retrospect, there’s a few times when I was very young when perhaps my parents could’ve been a little more careful about what exactly some of the columns and whatnot were discussing in both publications… 😉

        1. Readers’ Digest was very much enjoyed in our house, but the National Geographics for which grandma had bought us a subscription had to be censored first. Only if there was a check mark in the upper right corner of the cover – which meant all the naked ladies were cut out or covered over – were we allowed to read it. (And I had no brothers – we were all girls!)

        2. That’s so funny. I loved reading the James Herriot books when I was a teen. But there is a lot of swearing in them. I’d do the family a favor and black out all the bad words. I totally ate up the holier than thou lifestyle.

        3. My mom likes true stories so when I find an interesting one I buy it for her, but if it’s not Christian, when I read it, I’ll black out all the bad words. She probably wouldn’t read it if she saw bad words. (I have all the Herriot books – I haven’t blacked those out! LOL)

      4. Yeah. We got the National Geographic at our house. And mom went through it with a Sharpie first. Also, my grandmother gave us a pile of Reader’s Digest hardcover books. Mom went through that with a Sharpie and a penknife – she cut out the stories she thought were inappropriate – AFTER she read them herself. 😕

        1. I never cared about the local news @ PCC till the Campus Book store stopped carrying the New Journal. Turns out it was something about them reporting on the tax evasion case against PCC, I think (or something like that). I started buying Sunday copies every week after that and just leave it laying around the room all week, just cause PCC didn’t want you to have it, but couldn’t ban it (or wasn’t willing to try banning it).

    2. Talking of reading newspapers …. To the day he died my father 9who was a good Godly man, and very reasonable in most respects) never read a newpaper on a Sunday – when he was growing up the number of things Christians were permitted to do on the Sabbath, outside of Church activities, were extremely limited and watching TV, reading newspapers and playing any sort of organised game were definitiely sinful. He mellowed a bit as he got older but i would have been in my late teens before I or even my older siblings were allowed to watch TV on a Sunday. But he always stuck to his rule of not reading a sunday newspaper – after all, he had to maintain some sort of Christian Standard?

    3. This was my house at times, though not with commercials. We were highly censored as to what t.v. shows and movies we could watch. That’s not all bad, I don’t think, but when it got to where we couldn’t watch something like Are You Afraid of the Dark on Nickelodeon because it was about scary stories or monsters or other macabre things, I wonder about that.

      I was mainly censored on music. If it was “negative” sounding or had cussing in it, it was not allowed. I brought home a cd of Linkin Park’s first cd and started playing the song Crawling, and my parents said that, though it didn’t have cussing in it, it was very negative and depressing, so I was forced to return the copy back to my friend (who had burned it for me).

      1. If I were your parents, I’d be more worried about your theft of copyrighted music than about your listening to “negative” music.
        But I’m not your parents …

        1. If those parents were like my parents, they wouldn’t actually understand what copyright violations are!

          Actually, my dad gets it a whole lot better than my mom (which is somewhat surprising, as my mom is typically better with technology than him), but I did have to explain to them a few months back that just because it’s on Youtube doesn’t mean it’s officially sanctioned (or, for that matter, the other way around–not all music/movies/whatever online are copyright violations!).

        2. Is burning a cd nowadays any worse than when we copied cassette tapes among fiends. I think Napster just got the music business a little uptight and paranoid.

      2. Wow, if my parents even knew I knew what a Linkin Park cd WAS when I was growing up, my salvation would have pretty much been called into question! I was only allowed to listen to classical music and hymns, basically. My parents saw zero distinction between styles/content of music with a beat. It was all considered evil.

        1. My parents were not quite as strict about music, but I completely understand the thing about getting in trouble for merely knowing about something. I did get in trouble for knowing what certain swear words meant… 😳

  7. Bah, my parents threw our TV out and I grew up without one. Clearly I’m far more spiritual than the person who actually has one and just turns off the commercials . . .

    2. I grew up watching TV, but now I don’t have one, by choice. It’s not for some kind of spiritual purity reasons; it’s because when there’s a TV around, I waste all my time watching TV.

      2. Another spiritual giant here. Obviously due to having a TV-free childhood. 🙄 It’s a good thing my Mom scratched out “Is There Any Sin In Being Sincere” on our record of the Music Man soundtrack, or I would have been totally corrupted. 😯

        I just got rid of my TV. I hadn’t turned it on in 6 months and it was in the way of a new bookcase. :mrgreen:

  8. We mute the commercials but that’s only because we find commercials annoying.

    Not surprised at the censoring. Its silly. You can make adjustments for age appropriateness of course but I find that most children can handle just about anything if it is handled honestly and if the parents don’t make a big production about it.

    A tampon? Oh that’s just something grown up ladies use. You’ll find out more about it later. You want to go to the movies or the park today?

    1. I miss my DVR. I’d just pause the show for a few minutes, then watch it straight through skipping over all the commercials. Loved it.

  9. I had this one said to my face once. “Well if you won’t let your kids watch it…” from a person with no children of course. How do you explain age appropriateness to someone whose statement makes it clear they will just stare at you blankly if you try. Unfortunately I write people off like that and just stop trying. Maybe its for the best, and also how I have managed to stay friends with some fundys, picking my battles. Unless they are polluting others or my children with their filthy talk, I just let it roll off my back.

    “Break the wrist, walk away” -Rex

  10. Interesting. I have a DVR. I pause live TV and fast forward through all commercials. I, for one, do not wish to explain ED to my daughters and I don’t want my son to see the Victoria’s secret commercials. Apart from an annoyance that ALL commercials are. I choose just to not watch any of them….That’s why there’s netflix. No commercials at all. My personal opinion is that a lot of the commercials are worse than the programs.

  11. I must admit I hate commercials because they make my kids think they need all the latest toys. 🙄

    But for content, I’d rather have the chance to talk them though stuff as they are ready for it than have them experience everything at once when thry leave home as an adult. It’s kinda like parents who keep their kids out of the nursery and other kids for fear thry might get sick. The poor kids have little immunity to normal colds, etc and then they get sick all the time when they finally are exposed to the outside world.

  12. Makes me think of the old remark that censorship means adults have to eat strained beets because babies can’t digest steak. 🙄

  13. I actually remember some of my friends thinking this same thing. And I think I even remember it being hinted at in sermons. The idea was that why would you censor your kids if you don’t censor yourself. But what all of this misses is the fact that adults and kids are different. As Darrell pointed out adults have matured and adults can handle things that children simply can’t. That is just part of life. That doesn’t mean that what I watch, but don’t allow my children to watch, is therefore bad. Unfortunately that is lost on most fundies.

    1. It’s because they see no gray. They think gray is compromise; everything must be black or white. Thus if something is bad for kids, it’s bad for me.

      I wonder though if they wash their own hair with baby shampoo and clean their own laundry with that special “newborn” laundry detergent. Do they call everybody “Mr. Smith” just because they expect their children to do so, or do they actually have some peers that they call “Joe” even though he is a grownup? Do they have the same bedtime as their children?

      1. I don’t want a five-year-old operating a bulldozer or a chainsaw, or doing surgery, but that doesn’t mean nobody should do those things.

      2. My mom used to lament that even the adults in our church called her Mrs. ____ because that was what their kids called her. She wanted to be known by her first name, but it was not to be.

      3. My mother calls the cult leader’s wife “Miss ______” Why Miss? Because it some kind of southern buggery nonsense and the lady is southern. She’s also about 15 years YOUNGER than my mother. Sickening to see and hear that growing up.

    2. A lot of National Geographic and Discovery Channel programs show small, fuzzy and adorable creatures being ripped apart by scaly, toothy creatures. They might not be appropriate for a toddler but that doesn’t mean they are inappropriate for everyone.

    3. I seem to recall the infamous Dr. Laura saying something along these lines, that if you would not let a small child watch a particular program (or the equivalent), then you, even as an adult, have no business watching it either.

      1. That’s a lot like saying that babies can’t eat solid food, so no one else should, either.

  14. This kinda thing always reminds me of when my fundy pastor’s daughter (15ish years my senior) was telling me about how her mom would mute the TV when the intro music was playing to Scooby Doo (you know, the actual REAL cartoon – not the movie).

    OK, so if you have to do THAT much work to control content – you might as well just not allow anyone to watch TV. I wouldn’t even enjoy TV (or for that matter, anything else) if I had to worry about what was going to flash on the screen in the next few seconds.

    1. Isn’t that kind of straining at gnats? She can get past what the show Scooby Do is all about but the music is going too far??

  15. i had someone come to my house a few months ago and talk about this breifly… only it was related to hbo and showtime. he went on and on about the immorality of the shows and such. meanwhile his sole purpose in life is to be as big of a backsliding, rude, immature, pompus ass as possible. Like a demon peacock! (lol)if there was a show about himself, i dont think he would watch it!! 😈

  16. My kids have been taught, from an early age, that some programs are adult-only, as well as some beverages, some activities, etc. I’m not going to least-common-denominator my life just because I have kids. They can learn to respect MY house and MY boundaries and get out of the room when the show isn’t age appropriate.

  17. We went a few years without a TV growing up, and for the most part, never missed it. We didn’t watch much as it was, and my Dad decided there were better ways for us to spend our time. And really, he was right. There are.

    That being said, we mute a lot of commercials for the same reason most of you do–they are annoying. They insult the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over moron level, and I don’t care what ???????? you use for ?????? problems. That should stay between you, your spouse, and your doctor.

    My siblings and I went to a Fundy school (late ’70s for me) whose sponsoring pastor preached a sermon at their church every September from the TV Guide. He told what shows were okay to watch and what were not. The two that stand out that my friends told me about were “Sesame Street” and “Electric Company”. They were evil because of the music. All I can figure it’s because Ernie was in the tub when he sang “Rubber Ducky”.

    1. Woah…you mean I wasn’t the only kid who couldn’t watch Sesame Street and Electric Company?! WOW! I was, however, allowed to watch Mr. Rogers. 🙂

    2. “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company” had a lot of songs with rock or jazz beats (songs about, you know, letters and numbers and spelling and stuff). If your pastor belonged to the “Jungle Music Is Evil” school, that’s probably why he banned those shows.

      But yeah, Ernie sang in the tub, and Kermit went around naked except for a collar, so that might have been it, too.

      1. I think it was the rhythm and syncopation in the songs too. And I know today they’ll take regular pop songs and just change the words. I’ve found myself singing, “One, two, three, four, monsters walking cross the floor.” It’s very cute and catchy but is actually a rewording of a real song (which I didn’t know at first!) LOL

        Lots of cartoon animals are only partially clothed and no one seems to worry about it. It’s like a talking stuffed animal.

    4. When we did have a TV, kids PBS was allowed in our house. Dad sent us to the school, but didn’t subscribe to all of the “rules” set forth buy the sponsoring church. By the time we were in this school, I was “too old” for Sesame Street. Fortunately, I could watch it under cover of younger brothers. (six of them)

      1. BTW–Mike should not have been the name on the TV/Sesame Street post. There are lots of Mike’s, but only one UncleWilver that I know of. My pseudonym should have shown up. I blame the computer. It has fundamental problems.

    5. My husband wasn’t allowed to watch that immoral show, “The Muppet Show” when he was a child.

  18. On facebook, I’m friends with the person who created this and actually added me to it. Although I’m seriously considering wacking her from my friends list! 🙂 I had to remove myself because I was getting angry at all the incredibly immature, ignorant and foolish wall posts. 👿 So what Darrell posted above is just a small taste of the idiocy of this page. I will say though there are a few golden nugget comments.

    As for these comments…This is pure IFB cult behavior that’s for sure. It reminds me of when I began going to a fundy church and then a fundy college…I shudder every time I hear the name “Sexton” and/or “Crown”…and how foolish my family on the outside thought it was …I’m so glad my I brought my wife and kids out of it and we’re able to be normal 😆

      1. Haha….”fellow crownie”?? …I cringe at that…I’d rather ya cuss me out! 🙂 Plus you know when I left I was advised to move out of town rather than talk …so I guess I shouldn’t tell people I went there! 😆

    3. Yeah, I perused the page after seeing this blog article and found that they have seen this post and linked it on their page bragging about “making Stuff Fundies Like” I’m excited to read the comments. 😉

      1. Here’s something interesting: a blog entry by the author of the group. As she states on her blog, these are the views of Gipp and not necessarily hers.

        http://growup318.com/2011/08/02/theansweritalicizedwords/#more-3098

        Gipp seems to be saying that the NT quotes of OT passages prove a KJV-style quote. I know, its convoluted.

        I think the reason that one side of the quote pairs don’t have italics is because they italics were added to the 2nd so they matched. Seems much more logical than saying the OT writers wrote in KJV.

  19. God protects us from more that we can handle, we protect ourselves from things we can handle. I do that for my children as well. It seems that these parents may be teaching the children to isolate themselves as opposed to helping the children learn to protect themselves. There is a time to protect. There is a time to teach. There is a time to let life happen.

  20. My piano teacher at BJU had me work on a song. I can’t remember what it was called but she let me borrow her piano book. The lady on the front playing the piano had a dress with a v-neck. She colored in a modesty panel. Haha! I loved that piano teacher. She was awesome.

  21. Interesting comments about the National Geographic center-folds. Our high school librarian kept a sharp eye on the issues that included partial nudity as the boys would grab that issue and head for the darkest portion of the stacks.

    One must also be very careful with the cartoon characters. As the late Reverend Falwell would remind us that one of them was gay. (Not sure how his radar detected that, but who am I to question a MOG?)

    1. I’d imagine it was because Tiggy was purple, had a triangle on his head, and carried a pink purse—all apparently signs of Teh Ghey. I was more worried about the teletubbies picking up and acting on TV signals from weird alien infants.

  22. This reminds me of playing the game Tribond in the BJU dating parlour with my ex. The game is dependent on the cards having the names of three different things/people/places/whatever on them, and you have to guess the common link between them. But at times, one, two, or even THREE (saw it with my own eyes) of them were blacked out with a marker, presumably if they had any pop culture relevance whatsoever, thus rendering the game really hard to play!

    1. Oh that’s funny. Why not pull the game as inappropriate? Wouldn’t checkers be a safer game for the dating parlor?

    2. Haha, yes! Or Trivial Pursuit, or Catchphrase … the thing was, if you held the card to the light you could still read it. It was usually just some pop cultural reference, like Alanis Morissette or something. You’d think it was a cuss word the way it was blacked out. I always found the “no pop culture references” thing baffling, and my poor husband (boyfriend at the time) was understandably floored by it when he’d come visit me at BJU.

  24. Yeah, the whole commercials thing – except we are moving to place in media tech where user directed and even generated content is becoming the norm rather than the exception. As several commenters pointed, censorship doesn’t work when your kiddo decides to seek out and generate banned content. By the way, we haven’t got a tv. The cost of getting channels we would actually watch is ridiculous, and neither of us actually have time to watch TV.

  25. There is such a thing as being way too sheltered for your own good. We haven’t really tried to shelter our kids too much, but since they both have Asperger’s there’s a lot of stuff they just naturally don’t pick up on. Last school year some of the kids in my son’s school tricked him into saying someone was a “—itch” because he didn’t know it was a bad word. Naturally, he was the only one who got in trouble.

  26. When I was at PCC, I noticed that the college took permanent markers to the news magazines (Time, Newsweek, etc.) covering the Olympic Games and such, to draw little black skirts/shirts on the little athletes. Even on the covers. I don’t know if they still do, and I don’t know if it was administrative policy or just the initiative of a far-out librarian, but seeing those censored magazines on the display racks of a COLLEGE LIBRARY was cringe-worthy.

  27. Dear All:
    My parents were “holier” than all of yours. Give it up. When I was 12, Dad threw away the TV’s (try being a kid who already had trouble making friends, and then your parents take away the one thing you might have had in common with other kids). It’s not like I was failing in school, or either of us had behavior problems. He just decided to “punish” us, but not tell us what for. After I married and moved out, they got a new one. They now turn the channel when a commercial comes on (or if someone with an annoying voice comes on). Ever try watching any show like that? It just irritates. And they wonder why I stay in a hotel when I go back to SC…

    1. And that Old Testament…just a regular hotbed of licentiousness! There were several passages we skipped during family devotions. Good thing there was a fast forward on the tape player (which was only to be used for the blessed KJV Alexander Scourby tapes).

    2. We probably don’t want to start the my parents were holier than your parents. There’s a lot of junk in that closet.

      1. Every visit to the parentals blows the little louvered accordion doors open. There was a recent visit (I to them), so I’m still trying to get the doors back on their little track and shut them.

  28. Has anyone else realized that any fundy friend you have on facebook lists their favorite TV show as “Monk”. Does anyone know why?

    2. I’ve noticed that too! It must be a really tame show. Well let’s just hope that when they find out Tony Shalhoub is a liberal who recently joined Jesse Jackson and Susan Sarandon to rally the protesters in Madison, they’ll stop watching it.

    4. Yeah, but Monk was pretty tame. 30 Rock, on the other hand, now that surprises me. But tons of fundy-lite ppl I know LOVE the office, so I guess it makes sense.

      1. I’ve never seen Monk. I wouldn’t know if it’s tame or not, but I assumed since it was a fundy favorite. I have seen 30rock and The Office, and can’t see those as fundy-friendly.

        I was only wondering if others saw the connection with fundies and Monk.

        Also, what’s with all the Celtic music obsession?

        2. The problem with Monk (if there is one and as I would guess?), is his 1st partner has HUGE breasts and wears SHORT skirts, and BOTH items of clothing are worn in a few sizes too small.

  29. My dad also ritually tore out pages from Reader’s Digest and Newsweek. But he was tearing out ads because he hates ads.

  30. Arrested Development – One of the best TV shows ever, extremely fundy un-friendly.

    Growing up lots of things were censored at different times. Nothing was consistant. We had a year or two where toy guns were bad. Another time Disney was off limits. Several times we got rid of our TV.

    As far as reading material, if there was something extra inflamitory in a readers digest or something, it ended up in my parents bathroom where us kids weren’t allowed. I can’t believe they didn’t move the Encyclopedias though. The good ole’ World Book gave me alot of needed education that my parents were to afraid to give.

  31. True stories: I got in trouble before I was considered old enough to change the channel. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came on, and when Mom came in the room, I found myself not watching TV anymore…

    Mom always read books before we got to read them. Just in case there was something she didn’t want us to read 😕 I got a hold of some of those censored books much later – apparently the mildest flirtation or even the idea that men like women set off alarm bells. This review process she did extended to recorded TV shows and movies from the 1950s and earlier (we never watched much else), amazing how many I Love Lucy episodes are unfit to watch… I was fascinated when I got a hold of a radio and started hearing all kinds of new stuff on the airwaves 😈

    Back when I was learning to write code, I wanted to get on the internet, but we only had email (Juno of course), with only one address for the family (no privacy). I figured out how to get online for free and set up my own email address. Hell to pay when the ‘rents found out I’d been ONLINE. I think that was when the light finally clicked on for me – this isn’t normal…

  32. My first year at BJU I got called to the Dean of Women’s office. My mother had forwarded me an art magazine I had a subscription to, and BJU had confiscated it. She told me that magazine does not check because of nudity. She went through it page by page, picked out which pages needed to be ripped out, then gave it to me to rip them out. Then she took those and ripped them into small pieces.

    The books we had to purchase at full price for art classes were torn up in a lot of places and other parts censored with a black marker.

    1. Whew, good thing you have an adult looking out for you like that. I’ve suprised she gave it back and with no demerits attached! That’s a win.

    2. Interesting how she had to make you rip them out (since it was your property, I guess). Didn’t that kind of negate the point?

      1. yeah, I had the pleasure of looking at some nudey sculptures before ripping them out. Maybe if I was a guy I wouldn’t be allowed to see them. That stuff is tempting to the men you know.

    3. Did you catch her admiring the Statue of David, Centerfold photo?
      “Yes, dearie, just tear out that whole thing and give that one to me and I’ll tear it up myself…later. ummmm! oh yes, I’ll tear it up! oh and I’ll take that one of “the Thinker” as well. Could you hand me my electric ear cleaner? You’re such a dear.” 😯

    4. While at BJU, I went on a study tour to Europe with Dr. Panosian; part of the tour did include Michelangelo’s David. My mom was very shocked later when looking at my pictures.

    5. What kind of college reads students’ mail and tells them what they can and can’t read or look at?

      (That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Or rather, one that Jenn already answered.)

      1. They technically don’t read *your* mail. They have flagged publications, and if one arrives they either go get a copy to peruse to know what is wrong with it, (or more likely lie & say they did), so they can tell you why it’s dangerous and needs to be either withheld (as is the PCC case) or apparently what needs to be ripped out. Amusingly you can at the very least tell them to just hold it for you till the end of the semester and get it in undamaged condition. They don’t tell you that’s an option, but if they want to have PO boxes on campus they have to allow that. Also you can demand to have it immediately but they can somehow give you demerits for it. It does seem like could be an interesting court case if someone sued them over that much monitoring if your mail.

  33. these “you know you’re xx when…” groups have been exploding on fb that last few days. What’s up with that? My husband spent hours laughing at the “You know you go to PCC when…”

  35. I, personally, love how the issue of your child seeing something not appropriate for them immediately is thrown onto the sin issue bandwagon. How can anyone keep up with all the sin issues? Sheesh.

    1. I don’t think they understand this: “Nothing outside a man can make him ‘unclean’ by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him ‘unclean.’” Jesus said that in Mk.7.
      They think they can protect their children by keeping anything possibly evil away from them, while evil resides in our hearts. It’s as futile to hide from it as it was for the noblemen to hide from the plague in Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”

      Interestingly in the same chapter, Jesus also said, “They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”

        1. You caught me being careless in my writing – death for an English major! By “same chapter” I meant Mk. 7 not the Poe tale! 🙂

  36. Because Billy Sunday taught our Grandparents who taught our parents who taught us that “SIN” is something we battle with externally… all our lives are one long continuous battle with sin on the outside.

    Censorship does NOTHING for the battle in our hearts. But so long as we are engaged with the external battles, Screwtape can sit back and relax, knowing he has already won the real battle.

    1. You’re right, Don. Like Paul said in Col. 2:20-23 “20 Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.”
      it is interesting how the IFB’s are the ones who are carnally minded.

  37. It seems to me like the group would be better named “you know you’re a Bapist if”, not “when”. It seems like it makes more logical sense even if it isn’t really a grammatical error. I can’t think of a grammar rules it’s breaking, but most of the posts would be better starting “if” than “when”, IMO.

  39. This type of censoring behavior is Taliban-ish – just with a C instead of an I. 😯

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