Posts by carrie317

I tend to assume people aren't Christian until I'm told otherwise.  That's probably partly because I'm at a pretty liberal university.  But when people tell me they are Christian, I sometimes tend to disbelieve them at first...my thoughts are usually like this: Really?  You mean your parents make you go to church on Christmas and Easter, or what? 

But yeah.  I have a lot of friends who aren't Christians.  I may be different than some because I didn't grow up in the church (I didn't become a Christian until high school), so maybe that's why I can identify with non-Christians better.  Actually one of my best friends is a die-hard atheist, lol.  I just tend to think that others are the norm, and I'm the odd one :P.

I don't want to sound judgmental, but it seems to me that Christians who are uncomfortable around non-Christians have some maturing to do.  I mean, Jesus hung out with non-Christians all the time.  Just sayin'. :)

Original Post by kathygator:

Original Post by dnrothx:

This is simple:

Women have all this equipment that guys don't have that cause women to go a little crazy in the head since their fluids get all out of whack on a monthly basis, during pregnancy, or during menopause.  Their craziness leads men to go crazy.

So, in essence, everyone is crazy, and it is all the fault of mothers since they continue to manufacture babies.

 Really? The 'poor engineering' card, again???

Lol I just assumed he was joking.  It reminded me of something we'd study in my feminism class about the attitudes toward women in the 19th century.  "Hysteria" and a whole host of other psychological problems were thought to be caused by physical problems with our reproductive organs.  That was because in the 19th century, women were treated by male doctors who didn't know anything about women and didn't give a crap either.

Original Post by santonacci:

Original Post by carrie317:

If you decide to go on a killing spree before turning your life over to God, then yes, by accepting Jesus' sacrifice you're "off the hook."  

As an atheist, I'm just spit balling here, but shouldn't any deity worthy of being called omniscient be able see through a "I can do anything I want as long as I pray to Jesus afterwards" salvation ploy?

Yes!  Because anyone who has that attitude isn't truly saved.  God's not concerned with the words that you say, he's concerned with the attitude of your heart.  There's no "magic prayer" that you can say.  When you make the decision to follow Jesus, you're accepting his sacrifice to pay for your sins, but you're also accepting him as Lord of your life, and that means basically doing what he says.  You can't have the savior part without the lord part.

Original Post by floggingsully:

Original Post by carrie317:

That means that if you ask Jesus to be your Savior and Lord of your life, all of your sins are forgiven, past, present, and future! 

 So, if I want to go on a killing spree, all I have to do is ask Jesus to be my Savior and I'm off the hook?

If you decide to go on a killing spree before turning your life over to God, then yes, by accepting Jesus' sacrifice you're "off the hook."  The Bible doesn't really make distinctions between sins...since God is holy and perfect, it doesn't matter how minor or major the sin is, even the most minor sin is enough to separate us from God. 

But if you do accept Jesus, and then decide to go on a killing spree, and then live the rest of your life apart from God, chances are you didn't mean or believe what you said/prayed, and that you were never really saved in the first place.  Faith in no way requires good deeds, but a person who claims to have faith but who never in their life does any good deed...I don't know.  I don't know anyone's heart, but I would question if that person actually meant/understood the decision that they claim to have made.

Original Post by se1289:

Another example. If GOd is a FORGIVING God..why does (and this is only 2 examples) he

1. Want to immediatly kill the isrealities for the Golden Calf incident, but later decide to just plauge them and scratch their name from the book

2. Have all these horrible things happen to David with the whole David and Bashiba incident ( raping of his daugther, baby dying, son being killed, ect)

Okay, I'll try and tackle this one too.  God is a forgiving God, but he is also a holy God.  Because every human being is sinful (no one's perfect, right?), and God, being a perfect and holy God, is not capable of being in the presence of sin, someone has to pay for that sin.  If God just "forgave" everyone's sin, that wouldn't be very just, now would it?  If someone commits a crime and goes to court, and the judge just forgives that person, that isn't very just, right? 

So, this is the problem.  God loves us and wants to have a personal relationship with us.  But he is holy, and we are sinful, and our sin separates us from God.  In Romans it says that the wages of sin is death, and someone has to pay that death penalty.  That's why God sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to pay the death penalty that we earned.  That's how He demonstrated His incredible love for us.

Edited to add:  I realized that I kind of left out the end of the story here.  So Jesus died on the cross to pay the death penalty that we all earned for our sins, but you have to accept Him as your Savior and Lord in order for that sacrifice to cover you.  It's like God's holding out this free gift of grace, but as with any gift, you have to accept it before it belongs to you, right?  God gives us free will, so He's not going to force us to accept His gift of salvation.  I don't know your spiritual background, and this may all be old news to you, but if it's not and you have more questions or want more info, please feel free to message me :).

Gooooood morning everybody :).

Name: Carrie
Age: 20
Height: 5'6"
Start Weight in May: 156
Goal Weight  (by May 31): 151

May 3: 156
May 10:
May 17:
may 24:
Final Weigh In – May 31:

Total weight loss:

I'm in!! :)

Name: Carrie
Age: 20
Height: 5'6"
Start Weight in May: 156
Goal Weight  (by May 31): 151

May 3:
May 10:
May 17:
may 24:
Final Weigh In – May 31:

Total weight loss:

Yeah, counting just has not been working for me lately...I just can't make myself stick to it.  So what I decided to do is just to give up sweets completely, since moderation does not seem to be a word that I understand, but to eat as much healthy stuff as I want (snacking on grapes right now, mmm), and to keep running!

Forgot to weigh in this morning; will do tomorrow! Congratulations on the losses everyone!! :)

I realized that although I got out of shape pretty fast when I stopped running for a few weeks, I've started getting back in shape faster than when I first started running over the summer!  I've only ran about 5 times since spring break, and I'm already back to running 25 minutes without stopping (the most I ever did was about 40).

Oh, and I also decided to stop counting calories, and just to try to eat healthy!  I haven't been very good about staying within my calories, so I figured what's the point in stressing if I'm not going to stick with it?  So I'm just going to try to eat healthy, and run as much as possible!  I'm really interested in clean eating, although eating in the dining hall every day makes that pretty much impossible.

I've heard bad things about the lamb, lol.  And I can't usually stand fish, although I wish I could!  Thanks for your help :)!!

The hummus is Cedar's sundried tomato basil, and I got it from Whole Foods :).

From what I understand, alcohol slows down  your metabolism because your body will burn it preferentially to fat.  So when you consume alcohol, your body burns that first.  

I agree with everyone else - I don't think the small amount that's in vanilla extract should have any real effect.

Yay, brunch was great!  The omelette was just whites, and not too oily, and I got it without cheese!  And I got fruit instead of potatoes!! :)

I was just curious to see what worked for other people, to see if I could find something that might help me too.  The white thing is a good idea; I've heard that a lot.

Oh, but does that mean you stay away from things that were made with those items?  Like, should I avoid cookies that were made with white sugar and white flour (I mean, I know I shouldn't be eating cookies all the time anyway :P).

Woot!  Just got back from a fantastic night run, and had a delicious snack of pita and hummus...although I'm not feeling as snacky as I usually do at this time of night.  I think the run helped.  I went to Whole Foods today and got celery, baby carrots, mini pita bread, and hummus which is 35 calories for 2 tbsp...I figure I can pig out on veggies and hummus and not do myself too much harm, lol!!