We have a mosque near us that has a stoplight installed at the nearby corner. They must still hire cops on Friday afternoon/evenings, because of the traffic load. I'm not complaining about it. It's annoying, but it's also a highly consistent and predictable traffic pattern - something anyone with half a brain can plan around. I bring it up to say that this megachurch is probably fooling itself if it thinks a stoplight is going to remove the cost of them hiring traffic cops for Sunday mornings.
Back in the Pleistocene I also worked for the cops as a traffic aide. Stepping out in front of commuters with a handheld 'stop' sign to help regulate rush hour traffic, because you get a lot more people ignoring the law, the lights, and the posted signage when they are frustrated and want to get home. I would never do that now - too much road rage. Someone would hit me. But the point being, if people are getting wound up and fighting about the traffic this church creates, a light isn't necessarily going to stop them from behaving badly.
I'm frankly almost more incensed about this. Nothing illegal going on here, but it reveals just how insincere they are. Can't be bothered to even write your own apology? Then it's not really your apology.
Same with one school at some pre defined hours, a city employee directs traffic at the stoplight because people, not necessarily drivers though, don't respect it.
People around here tend to respect school crossing guards. Although like a lot of other places, we're having to install cameras on the school buses to snap pictures of drivers who drive by them when the stop sign is up. Crazy.
It's at the times the kids come to and leave the school who partially overlap with rush hours. We don't have school bus except for countryside where parents jobs prevent them to bring their children to school.
So how old do the children have to be before parents start making them walk? I started at 13, 1.5 miles. Right through a 7-eleven parking lot back when they used to offer 50 cent Super Big Gulps every 2-3 months. Last me half a mile.
Mine was part of a deal with my mother not to ride the bus to the other Jr. High in town that had a reputation. I had already spent a year in this one and my friends were there, so I really didn't want to go to the other one. (Due to issues with desegregation, buses often don't take students to the nearest school)
Depends on the kid, and the walk, and the accompanyment. For elementary school, our walk is pretty tame. Half mile (that's 1 km to the rest of the world), no stoplights. My kid did some 'group walks' with a bunch of kids to it as early as 8 y.o., and by 10-11 he was walking on his own. The younger one, however, is a social butterfly and a bit more free spirited. He may not ever get that privilege, because he'd stop and pet every dog, talk to every neighbor along the way, and arrive 20 minutes late, I guar-an-tee. You gotta know your kid's abilities.
Also, we have no lights or large roads between us and the school. If we did, the older one would simply not have gotten the privilege. For that situation it's no longer just about them or your estimation of their ability to be responsible, it's about the idiots on the road who are texting and not looking during morning rush hour.
I started walking to school "alone" when I was 7...but in reality, my mom was tailing me and hiding behind trees to make sure I got there on most days. So realistically "some time before 9 years, but unclear when". Which is maybe a little earlier than today's generations...but when you factor in higher population density, more cars, and more driver distractions, I don't think the age creep signifies less trust or infantilization of our kids. More just a change in the environment in which they walk.
It's telling, isn't it? A corrupt subculture that gives itself permission to cheat for an ephemeral 'greater good'. Becuz, you know, 'our grift is special'.
Yep, churches are bad enough because they will lie cheat and steal for their own benefit, but think how bad the CIA is. They think killing people is for the greater good.
Once people delude themselves into believing they're operating under divine sanction they can excuse just about any behavior on their part. The herd instinct runs deep in the human species, and I suspect it was part of our survival strategy. Puny little humans survived in a hostile world by banding together for the common good. Unfortunately, in today's world that need to belong often acts like a millstone around the neck of humanity. The influence wielded by organized religion is in decline in most places, but it isn't declining fast enough.
Good grief, Agnes! How utterly childish can you get? [Answer: pretty childish!] To try to manipulate a traffic study in order to get a desired traffic light installed, then build up a bullshit story to try to deny what they had done when it was clear that the whole story WAS going to come out...
There's stupid and there's STUPID ... and then there's the twits at the Lakepointe Church. [smh]
Hilarity ensues! We make bad jokes! We plagiarize! We lie! We throw others under the bus rather than admit we fucked up! Really, who needs to wonder why church attendance sucks with these kinds of shenanigans and worse (much much worse).
A lot of what the MAGAts do they learned from their religion. Cheating for a greater cause is OK. Don’t want Democrats in Congress - just gerrymander the districts. Don’t like educating kids? Get ultra-faithful MAGAts on the school boards. It is OK to make the wheels of government run backwards in the name of the cause. And of course, it is A-OK to force your Christian worldview on the whole population.
I'm going to point out here that this is a Christian church, and from my experiences with those, lying is what they do whenever the truth doesn't suit them for whatever reason. They'll even do it when the truth does suit them if said truth isn't attention grabbing or narrative enhancing enough. After all, what matters the tiny little evil of lying to someone when you're out to accomplish the greater good of saving their immortal soul? Surely Jesus would approve, right?
File this one under 'Why Churches are Losing Membership" and call it a day, I think.
As Lakepointe Church communication director, I want to say that we are deeply embarrassed by this scandal, which is the worst thing that the church has ever done. I mean the absolute worst thing. It is so bad that you don't even have to look into our senior pastor's behavior or or church finances, because cheating on a traffic study is the absolute worst thing you can find if you dig up our past. I telling you, why waste your time investigating our church when the Creme de la Creme of scandals is sitting right there. Just look at that, we're sooo embarrassed. Don't look at anything else. Seriously, don't look.
This was *almost wholesome corruption, lol. And so blatantly obvious I have to assume they didn't consider any church members having a problem with lying for stoplight Jesus. I'm so glad someone did find it hypocritical and unacceptable.
It doesn't seem like they grew a conscience so much as literally owned themselves, and they didn't even come clean about it. Still blaming some* overzealous staffer. 🙄
If they wanted a traffic light, why didn't they do what Jesus told his followers to do: Pray for it. Jesus said that where 2 or 3 are gathered together in his name, whatever they ask of his father will be given to them. Simple, is it not?
You DO believe what Jesus said, don't you? Then by all means, pray away for that traffic light to be delivered and hooked up to the power grid. But make sure to alert the press before you go into action, Let them witness a miracle firsthand.
Yesterday and it's happened already this morning, likes take a minute or so to show up. Replies don't display for a couple of minutes after you hit post, they just seem to disappear to reappear 5 minutes or so later.
No 'reload' option available to me. I have to refresh the page completely to see the comments and Likes that don't appear immediately (which is most of them).
Remind me again how Christians are morally superior to non-Christians?
It doesn't matter if the stakes are high or petty. It doesn't matter if it's about stealing millions of dollars or petty cash, if it's about rape or peeping, if it's about massive fraud or gaming the system.
Lying is lying. Cheating is cheating. Deceit is deceit. Abuse is abuse.
If you constantly strut and posture yourself as the paragon of virtue and the sole possessor of the One True Morality, then you had better live up to it. Using your God's Forgiveness Get Out of Trouble Free Card is just a cop-out. There was a popular slogan a while back, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." Well, forgiveness does not mean you can just keep on being a dishonest, abusive asshole.
Your morals are in what you actually DO, not thoughts and beliefs that bounce around in your head, and certainly not in what superstitious club you belong to.
I read your third sentence as: "It doesn't matter if it's about stealing millions of dollars or petty cash, if it's about rape or 𝘱𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨, if it's about massive fraud or gaming the system."
"Well, forgiveness does not mean you can just keep being a dishonest, abusive asshole."
Here's what the bible says about believers who backslide into their old ways
"And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than know it and then to reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: 'A dog returns to its vomit.' And another says, 'A washed pig returns to the mud.' "
"Since it’s clearly for the benefit of the church, not the city, the church was planning to pay for the entire thing."
Paying for the installation is not the same thing as paying for the stoplight ad vitam aeternam, words have meaning and contracts have loopholes.
This church want this stoplight so badly ? Then they pay for the maintenance and the electricity too, either by paying this thing called local taxes or by footing the bills themselves.
"Church leaders told Religion News Service that the sign-up was an “unfortunate decision” made by a staff member."
I thought the making of a scapegoat was a Jewish tradition and shouldn't be used by good christians. How silly of me.
Yes, an unfortunate decision made by a staff member. A senior staff member, in consultation with other senior staff members no doubt, and with informal messaging accompanying it so that all the other senior staff members could sign up for the service within 10 minutes of it being posted.
Maybe we need a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in churches instead of schools.
We have a mosque near us that has a stoplight installed at the nearby corner. They must still hire cops on Friday afternoon/evenings, because of the traffic load. I'm not complaining about it. It's annoying, but it's also a highly consistent and predictable traffic pattern - something anyone with half a brain can plan around. I bring it up to say that this megachurch is probably fooling itself if it thinks a stoplight is going to remove the cost of them hiring traffic cops for Sunday mornings.
Back in the Pleistocene I also worked for the cops as a traffic aide. Stepping out in front of commuters with a handheld 'stop' sign to help regulate rush hour traffic, because you get a lot more people ignoring the law, the lights, and the posted signage when they are frustrated and want to get home. I would never do that now - too much road rage. Someone would hit me. But the point being, if people are getting wound up and fighting about the traffic this church creates, a light isn't necessarily going to stop them from behaving badly.
𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡 “𝑗𝑜𝑘𝑒” 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑏𝑎𝑑 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦, 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦, 𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑-𝑓𝑜𝑟-𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑, 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟. (𝐻𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑜 𝑖𝑡.)
I'm frankly almost more incensed about this. Nothing illegal going on here, but it reveals just how insincere they are. Can't be bothered to even write your own apology? Then it's not really your apology.
Same with one school at some pre defined hours, a city employee directs traffic at the stoplight because people, not necessarily drivers though, don't respect it.
People around here tend to respect school crossing guards. Although like a lot of other places, we're having to install cameras on the school buses to snap pictures of drivers who drive by them when the stop sign is up. Crazy.
It's at the times the kids come to and leave the school who partially overlap with rush hours. We don't have school bus except for countryside where parents jobs prevent them to bring their children to school.
So how old do the children have to be before parents start making them walk? I started at 13, 1.5 miles. Right through a 7-eleven parking lot back when they used to offer 50 cent Super Big Gulps every 2-3 months. Last me half a mile.
It's kindergarten to 5th grade. So 3 to 10/11.
Mine was part of a deal with my mother not to ride the bus to the other Jr. High in town that had a reputation. I had already spent a year in this one and my friends were there, so I really didn't want to go to the other one. (Due to issues with desegregation, buses often don't take students to the nearest school)
Depends on the kid, and the walk, and the accompanyment. For elementary school, our walk is pretty tame. Half mile (that's 1 km to the rest of the world), no stoplights. My kid did some 'group walks' with a bunch of kids to it as early as 8 y.o., and by 10-11 he was walking on his own. The younger one, however, is a social butterfly and a bit more free spirited. He may not ever get that privilege, because he'd stop and pet every dog, talk to every neighbor along the way, and arrive 20 minutes late, I guar-an-tee. You gotta know your kid's abilities.
Also, we have no lights or large roads between us and the school. If we did, the older one would simply not have gotten the privilege. For that situation it's no longer just about them or your estimation of their ability to be responsible, it's about the idiots on the road who are texting and not looking during morning rush hour.
I started walking to school "alone" when I was 7...but in reality, my mom was tailing me and hiding behind trees to make sure I got there on most days. So realistically "some time before 9 years, but unclear when". Which is maybe a little earlier than today's generations...but when you factor in higher population density, more cars, and more driver distractions, I don't think the age creep signifies less trust or infantilization of our kids. More just a change in the environment in which they walk.
Pull out the stock apology because he doesn’t really feel sorry. He believes women should obey their man as god intended.
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐭. 𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐦, 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐲
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/stabbed-man-who-sought-help-at-st-petersburg-school-was-road-rage-victim-police-say/ar-BB1mos99
It's telling, isn't it? A corrupt subculture that gives itself permission to cheat for an ephemeral 'greater good'. Becuz, you know, 'our grift is special'.
And they try to tell us that they are morally better than everybody else. It's amazing.
Yep, churches are bad enough because they will lie cheat and steal for their own benefit, but think how bad the CIA is. They think killing people is for the greater good.
Once people delude themselves into believing they're operating under divine sanction they can excuse just about any behavior on their part. The herd instinct runs deep in the human species, and I suspect it was part of our survival strategy. Puny little humans survived in a hostile world by banding together for the common good. Unfortunately, in today's world that need to belong often acts like a millstone around the neck of humanity. The influence wielded by organized religion is in decline in most places, but it isn't declining fast enough.
Good grief, Agnes! How utterly childish can you get? [Answer: pretty childish!] To try to manipulate a traffic study in order to get a desired traffic light installed, then build up a bullshit story to try to deny what they had done when it was clear that the whole story WAS going to come out...
There's stupid and there's STUPID ... and then there's the twits at the Lakepointe Church. [smh]
Hilarity ensues! We make bad jokes! We plagiarize! We lie! We throw others under the bus rather than admit we fucked up! Really, who needs to wonder why church attendance sucks with these kinds of shenanigans and worse (much much worse).
A lot of what the MAGAts do they learned from their religion. Cheating for a greater cause is OK. Don’t want Democrats in Congress - just gerrymander the districts. Don’t like educating kids? Get ultra-faithful MAGAts on the school boards. It is OK to make the wheels of government run backwards in the name of the cause. And of course, it is A-OK to force your Christian worldview on the whole population.
And these are the people who will complain about the price of a gallon of gas.
I'm going to point out here that this is a Christian church, and from my experiences with those, lying is what they do whenever the truth doesn't suit them for whatever reason. They'll even do it when the truth does suit them if said truth isn't attention grabbing or narrative enhancing enough. After all, what matters the tiny little evil of lying to someone when you're out to accomplish the greater good of saving their immortal soul? Surely Jesus would approve, right?
File this one under 'Why Churches are Losing Membership" and call it a day, I think.
As Lakepointe Church communication director, I want to say that we are deeply embarrassed by this scandal, which is the worst thing that the church has ever done. I mean the absolute worst thing. It is so bad that you don't even have to look into our senior pastor's behavior or or church finances, because cheating on a traffic study is the absolute worst thing you can find if you dig up our past. I telling you, why waste your time investigating our church when the Creme de la Creme of scandals is sitting right there. Just look at that, we're sooo embarrassed. Don't look at anything else. Seriously, don't look.
This was *almost wholesome corruption, lol. And so blatantly obvious I have to assume they didn't consider any church members having a problem with lying for stoplight Jesus. I'm so glad someone did find it hypocritical and unacceptable.
Considering they never had a problem lying for literally everything, I don’t see why they’re going to start having a conscience now.
It doesn't seem like they grew a conscience so much as literally owned themselves, and they didn't even come clean about it. Still blaming some* overzealous staffer. 🙄
If they wanted a traffic light, why didn't they do what Jesus told his followers to do: Pray for it. Jesus said that where 2 or 3 are gathered together in his name, whatever they ask of his father will be given to them. Simple, is it not?
You DO believe what Jesus said, don't you? Then by all means, pray away for that traffic light to be delivered and hooked up to the power grid. But make sure to alert the press before you go into action, Let them witness a miracle firsthand.
Jesus will have to do a traffic study first. I envision him sitting on the corner, in a lawn chair, counting cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clxtg2pFTQM
https://www.zentaur.org/memes/but_that_trick_never_works.jpg
I see Substack is still having a 'day' for a second day in a row.
Clicking "LIKE" works ... except when it doesn't.
Once out of every ten times, approximately, for me.
Can't get LIKE to work at all now.
Clicking "LIKE" works ... except LIKE, when it doesn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I
Hæh? What do you mean? I haven't noticed anything strange.
Yesterday and it's happened already this morning, likes take a minute or so to show up. Replies don't display for a couple of minutes after you hit post, they just seem to disappear to reappear 5 minutes or so later.
I just thought it was a glitch in the matrix, and then I forgot about it.
Hit "reload" and you see them instantly. AFAICT the data is getting there, it's the refresh rate that is having problems.
The problem with that is reload completely reorders the comments and removes the new reply notification.
No 'reload' option available to me. I have to refresh the page completely to see the comments and Likes that don't appear immediately (which is most of them).
It's the same thing :)
Ah! Didn't know. Thought there was a RELOAD icon to click on that I didn't have. :D
Remind me again how Christians are morally superior to non-Christians?
It doesn't matter if the stakes are high or petty. It doesn't matter if it's about stealing millions of dollars or petty cash, if it's about rape or peeping, if it's about massive fraud or gaming the system.
Lying is lying. Cheating is cheating. Deceit is deceit. Abuse is abuse.
If you constantly strut and posture yourself as the paragon of virtue and the sole possessor of the One True Morality, then you had better live up to it. Using your God's Forgiveness Get Out of Trouble Free Card is just a cop-out. There was a popular slogan a while back, "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." Well, forgiveness does not mean you can just keep on being a dishonest, abusive asshole.
Your morals are in what you actually DO, not thoughts and beliefs that bounce around in your head, and certainly not in what superstitious club you belong to.
“Lying is lying. Cheating is cheating. Deceit is deceit. Abuse is abuse.”
Unless, of course, you’re doing it for Jesus. Then it’s not only A-OK, it’s pretty much mandatory.
I read your third sentence as: "It doesn't matter if it's about stealing millions of dollars or petty cash, if it's about rape or 𝘱𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨, if it's about massive fraud or gaming the system."
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/389cd49ddff25addeeedb8b72bbfb596eff65382d83da041f56d4de2fa3a06b3.jpg
"Well, forgiveness does not mean you can just keep being a dishonest, abusive asshole."
Here's what the bible says about believers who backslide into their old ways
"And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than know it and then to reject the command they were given to live a holy life. They prove the truth of this proverb: 'A dog returns to its vomit.' And another says, 'A washed pig returns to the mud.' "
-- 2 Peter 2:20-22
Not old English enough for the true bible. :)
The bible doesn't say anything about manipulating traffic data.
"Since it’s clearly for the benefit of the church, not the city, the church was planning to pay for the entire thing."
Paying for the installation is not the same thing as paying for the stoplight ad vitam aeternam, words have meaning and contracts have loopholes.
This church want this stoplight so badly ? Then they pay for the maintenance and the electricity too, either by paying this thing called local taxes or by footing the bills themselves.
"Church leaders told Religion News Service that the sign-up was an “unfortunate decision” made by a staff member."
I thought the making of a scapegoat was a Jewish tradition and shouldn't be used by good christians. How silly of me.
Yes, an unfortunate decision made by a staff member. A senior staff member, in consultation with other senior staff members no doubt, and with informal messaging accompanying it so that all the other senior staff members could sign up for the service within 10 minutes of it being posted.