A hero is.

Come let us reason together Timberly.

"She was a true Christian whose love for me never turned judgmental even after I quit attending church."

So any Christian that says you should attend church is not a "true Christian"? I'm confused with that line of reasoning. It seems for you to say that might be viewed as judgemental on your part. What say ye?

Greene County Patriot and Mr F,

Without getting into the debate about the quality of Ms. Ferree's choices for heroes, I have a couple of questions for you two.

Heroes are a personal choice about who we privately choose to look up to. Why not allow Ms. Ferree the RIGHT to look up to whomever she wishes? Since this is PERSONAL, it's not really open to debate.

Secondly, since this is primarily an article honoring her grandmother, why do you have to be hateful? Can't you give it a rest and just allow the beauty of the sentiment to speak for itself? She wasn't asking for your opinion here.

You're so busy negating the christianity of Martin Luther King, Jr. that you fail to behave as a christian yourself. The fruitages of the holy spirit are love, joy, peace, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, faith,SELF CONTROL, and MILDNESS. Where did you show kindness? Where did you show goodness? Where did you show self control? Where did you show mildness?

However, the works of the flesh are fornication, uncleaness, loose conduct, idolatry, practice of spiritism, ENMITIES, STRIFE, jealousy, fits of anger, CONTENTIONS, DIVISIONS, sects, envies, drunken bouts, revelries, and things like these.

I see in your paragraphs where you have shown enmities, strife, contentions, and divisions.

So perhaps you need to practice christianity yourself before judging others' form of worship.

Matthew 7:1-5 (New International Version)

Matthew 7

Judging Others

1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Queeie

With all due respect Minefan, I seen no bigotry in what GCP said. He did nothing more than list a series of facts. It's too bad some people such as youself have to resort to name calling when facing the truth. Just one note about John Lennon, while a brilliant musician, he is certainly not my hero. It has been well documented that he was womanizing and abusive towards the many of the women in his life. Yet another person who talked about loving humanity in an abstract sense, but was unable to do so face to face.

Maybe Timberly should consider how her rememberance of her Grandmother might change if she had not been a church-going true Christian, and reflect upon how (what by appearances seems to have been a positive) a strong Christian influence on her Grandmother's life and the lives of those around her might also be a positive in Timberly's life and those around her.

Greene County Patriot,

Your logic is flawed, my dear. I don't recall using scripture to defend anyone's sins, so what's your point?

I was however trying, albeit in vain, to point out to you that you have a rafter in your eye that needs to be removed before you can see to remove the speck of dust from anyone else's eye. Not just you, but all of us. We ALL are imperfect and therefore have NO right to judge others. Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Evidently since you are casting a wide swath of boulders, you must feel quite confident in your degree of perfection, or alternatively, have no fear of vengeance from God.

My list of fruitages of the spirit were for YOUR edification, not a comment on MLK's behaviour as a husband, father, son, brother, et cetra. The Bible says the wages sin pays is death, so Mr. King has paid his debt for whatever sins he was guilty of. However, the positive that he contributed to society has lived long after his demise and should not be dismissed lightly, for whatever reason.

You claim to look at various people "objectively", but your point of view seems negative and hurtful in the extreme. How is that balanced? Would it not be more balanced to say, "Although MLK, Jr. was sinful and made mistakes, he contributed much to society and inspired millions to reach higher and to rise above the previous' generations stations in life"?

It's not wrong to note that men are sinful, but it is wrong to negate their good to further a negative view.

Queenie

Minerfan,

Blaming your decision to not attend church on GCP is a logical falacy at best and possibly an ad hominem argument at the worst. In short you're missing the point by arguing the person instead of the point. My original post questioned TF's point in her next to last paragraph concerning what makes a "true Christian"; highly offensive territory to someone who tries hard to follow the teachings of Jesus at all. You might consider not going to Walmart as well as there might be people there who are "judgemental".

GCP,

I apologize as I must've confused you with another Greene County Patriot who used to comment around these parts.

Please send my holiday wishes to Fred and the rest of Westboro Baptist Church.

I kid. Mostly.

Now, where's that eggnog?

Ok, You made me laugh. Good one. Nice to end on a good note.

Queenie

Some people try in some way to emulate their heroes. If the point of this blog was actually to honor a loving grandmother as the writer's personal hero, then there is a message of hope here.

But I wonder why the writer feels a need to put an adjective before the word "Christian?" One either IS a Christian or IS NOT. Is an adjective even necessary? Can there be such a thing as a dishonorable Christian? I mean, if we interpret Christian to mean what it is really supposed to mean, isn't "dishonorable Christian" an oxymoron?

I wonder where the writer imagines her grandmother is today, and what she might be up to.

In remembrance of your grandmother, and in hopes that you don't mind, I will pray on your behalf, dear blog writer.

I'm fairly certain that some people on here would bash Timberly if she simply started writing out of the dictionary word for word...I mean some communist or socialist must have wrote it.

I did have a red flag go up when she mentioned her grandma was non-judgmental about her choice to leave the church(she probably had a very strong opinion, but hoped she would find her way back to church). It seems quite a few people like to take the bible out of context. Judging is for god..not sure how that is out of context, but it is frustrating to hear people use judging as their reasoning for not being active in church or a christian...That won't be a viable excuse.

I think many "heros" are looked at through rose tinted glasses. How else could you put a person you don't know personally on such a pedestal. Wasn't that part of the point(which seems to be lost on some). It seems Timberly was enforcing that idea...people within your life are also heros(and probably better).

As for ML King and others, I would argue many "heroes" fail to live up to their reputation. They are human. The question would be...what is their legacy(which has nothing to do with their spot in Heaven, which is a whole other argument). Lets remember she pointed out that her grandma was a bigger hero!

Historically many movements on the outside of the social norms for the time received help from other movements outside of the social norm. Not sure if that means racial equality is directly related to communism. Eugene Debs was a socialist that helped make working conditions better. He did things that helped millions regardless of his political views. Some would call him a saint, while others would call him things far worse.

Claiming homosexuality is a product of Civil Rights is as ignorant as blaming the 2nd amendment for gun crime. Both are flawed biased and incorrect assumptions. We all know what happens we you ASSUME.

Martin Luther??? Try reading about him(then again..he may have had some skeletons). He actually tried to reform the Catholic church from within...The church excommunicated him. Ironically, the Catholic church did reform on some of his points. One of his complaints was the rich buying their way into heaven.

GCP,

You need to read your Bible and history books. To say, "The Catholic church was started by Constantine in Rome in 313 A.D." isn't based on facts.

GCC,

Thank you! You hit the nail on the head. Yes, there were many problems in the Church during that time ... too much power for certain people.

P.S. Timberly, your grandmother would be a heroine to you.

I am not one to argue belief systems.

Whatever works for you is fine with me. However, your King James "version" does reference( I'm sure you know the chapter and verse) that Christ changed Paul's name to Peter, or Petra (rock) and said that on him, Peter, he would build his church. Given that for the first 1,500 years after the death of Christ there was no other Christian church on Earth but the Catholic, or "Universal" church, one should reasonably consider that the Majesterium, or leadership, of the church, just might have a better understanding than you that St. Peter was their first Pope. But don't take my word for it. A few google searches will get you there. To argue that the Catholic church does not consider Peter their first Pope is, well, nonsense.

And, by the way, with all due respect, I would suggest that the King James "version" has it's fair share of translation errors.

Lastly, Queenie, Paul's name was changed to Paul from Saul. Peter is Simon Peter and could never have been the first Pope due to him having a Mother-in law...thus he was married. Priests are to be unmarried according to Catholicism

Greene County Patriot: I don't recall commenting on any of the above at all. Of course Paul's name was changed from Saul for his own protection.

I don't hold with Catholocism at all.

Examples of errors in KJ version:

Replacement of God's name:

In the Hebrew Scriptures, YHWH (the tetragrammaton) is given as the consonants of God's personal name. The KJ purposely deletes God's Holy name and substitutes Lord instead.

LXX from "The Aleppo Codex, edited by Moshe H. Goshe-Gottstein (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1976). Copyright by Hebrew University Bible Project first century B.C.E., retained the divine name YHWH in the Greek translation in De 32: 3,6.

John 1:1 KJ declared Jesus was God.

Corrected according to the greek codexes:

Jesus was a god.

Reason for discrepancy: KJ left out the definate article "a" and capitalized the G in god to convey the wishes of the Church of England namely that churchgoers believe that Jesus is God instead of the son of God.

Proper translations use such words as "a god", "divine", or "godlike" because the Greek word 'theos'. This is an anarthrous theos. The god with word, or Logos was originally is designated here by the Greek expression Theos is preceeded by the definate article Ho. That is an articular construction of the noun points to an identity, a personality, whereas a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceeding the verb points to a quality about a person. Therefore, John's statement that the Word or Logos was "a god" or "divine" or godlike" does not mean that he was the God with whom he was. It merely expresses a certain quality about teh Word or Logos, but it does not identify him as one and the same as God himself.

In the Greek text there are many cases of a singular anarthrous prediate noun preceding the verb, such as in Mr 6:49; 11:32; Joh 4:19, etc.

See "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1" published in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 92 Philadelfphia 1973 p. 85 and 87.

If you would like more examples like this, indicate that you would like my email address and I'll resume privately.

Queenie

Quite interesting where/how this topic has gone.

Like many apparantly, I'm not real big on Timberly's writings in general, but she can really inspire some interesting discussions.

For that I say, way to go girl!

GCP, priests were married until the Middle Ages. There is reference in I Timothy about a married bishop. The reason you may also claim there is no reference to a Pope may be that the Pope is actually the Bishop of Rome. There are only three levels of Holy Orders within the Roman Catholic Church: deacon, priest, bishop. Within the level of bishop, there are various titles & offices, not to be confused with sacramental orders, such as archbishop, cardinal, & Pope.