Bad Rumor

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>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Bassett <mbasset@iconn.net> writes:

    Mark> On Fri, 13 Sep 1996 11:50:04 -0400, you wrote:
    >> I haven't heard the rumor, but it wouldn't surprise me. The sad
    >> thing is that reading about something and drawing a conclusion
    >> without ever actually experiencing it doesn't lead to accurate
    >> conclusions.  The data they are using has been filtered and
    >> processed.  I hope our internet using ministers speak up to
    >> balance the argument.

    Mark> Im an internet using minister who MAY speak against my own
    Mark> practice.  Im not sure, and am praying these decisions will
    Mark> be put off until we have a clearer impression of the will of
    Mark> God.

    Mark> -mwb

I am an internet using minister who did not set up my machine to be an
internet server just so I could subscribe to (and archive)
Higher-Fire.  I set up a server on the net for professional business
reasons.  Take me off the net, and you take me out of business!  

I used to live in Kentucky.  They grow a lot of tobacco down ther.  A
lot of saints in the church grow the stuff.  The tax laws are such
that if your property has a tobacco base allocated to it, and you do
not grow that amunt of tobacco, then you loose that base.  Having a
tobacco base increases the property value significantly, so people do
not want to loose the property value, even if the do not want to grow
tobacco.  They lease a peoce of the land and get paid to let somebody
else actually grow and harvest the crop.

I have never heard any pastor in Kentucky preach out against such
practice.  There has never to my knowledge been any resolution to
prevent a UPC minister from owning property with a tobacco base and
keeping that base active.

I find the raising of a crop whose sole market is smoking (or chewing,
or snuff, etc.), a practice know to cause deadly diseases, and a
practice that our organization does have a stance against, to be
inconsistent with that stance.

The internet is a means of communication.  So is the telephone.  I
suspect that there was resistance to the telephone at one time too.
So, for that matter, is the postal service.  Is that ungodly?  You can
certainly get the same smut throught the snail-mail as through the
email, and the resolution of the pictures is certainly going to be
better. 

The time is almost at hand when the telephone, the television, and the
computer will all be merged into a single appliance.  TV is bad, the
phone is OK, and the computer is questionable.  How many preachers are
going to give up their telephone just because it has a TV or a
computer in it?

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
Robert Jay Brown III  rj@eli.wariat.org  http://eli.wariat.org  1 847 705-0424
Elijah Laboratories Inc.;  37 South Greenwood Avenue;  Palatine, IL 60067-6328
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