Churchhoney

Mrs. Reber is desperately praying that it doesn't. 😁

I kind of have a feeling that the version of the course Joe took may have only been one semester long. But in any case it was, literally, a course to improve your godbothering. It was a course offered to anybody who wanted it and it taught them how best to proselytize people. I don't think it was a course that gave out grades or anything remotely like that, so there was probably really nothing to hear about when he was done. There might have been a cheap "certificate of attendance" of some sort. But the course was in no way intended to be any kind of credential for anything at all, at least when he took it. As the school was seeking more credibility at the time, they surrounded it with a whole lot of statements about how the course was in no way shape or form connected even a tiny bit to any of the courses they offered for credit. Did everything they could to distance it from all their departments and their allegedly more respectable offerings. 😁

These are the same people who think that Laura, Jana and the other Duggar sisters always wear beautiful clothes and look gorgeous. And who think the sayingsoftoddlersxyz are both wise and hilarious. They really do have fervent fans.

I find it quite grating on this shilling post. But in his sermons -- at least the ones I've listened to -- he doesn't seem to have the same voice. He hasn't come across as shouty at all, and I didn't notice any of that kind of edge to his voice that's in this. In the sermons, his voice just came across as low key, fairly pleasantly modulated and conversational, to me at least. Odd. Although I suppose he's trying for something different in the two venues. Here he's trying to be like a late-night tv ad for the local used-car place. .... He shouldn't try for that.

...and this despite being one of the most vapid, boring, shallow, dull, inconsequential people imaginable.... Go figure.

And he's not just in a class. He's in a freaking seminary class, studying to be a pastor. Yet he doesn't even pretend that he's not the most superficial, materialistic, thoughtless, unstudious, unserious ass on the planet. He has zero concept of what that career he's supposedly studying for should mean. Nauseating. Not to mention idiotic.

Hey, Pastor Daniel Anderson and Amy (who just arrived at this church in June after the previous pastor retired), you're posing with big smiles with a couple of vicious child abusers and neglecters. Howja feel about that, eh? Because to those of us who've seen what this hideous woman does to her children, it's a bad bad look for somebody pretending to be a "pastor." (I'd say that smiling broadly as you pose with her, given her constantly shouted bigotry and other such crap, is also a bad look for you. But unfortunately I know that a lot of churches are currently hotbeds of such stuff, so maybe yours is, too. In any case, though, her treatment of her own children is and always has been heinous. And hopefully you might care a bit about that?)

He's going to become quite poor quickly if he's still a churchgoer as an adult. I kinda love the concept of giving Jesus a tenth of everything you own every Sunday. After a few months you're gonna be close to owning nothing, but thanks to Zeno's paradox, you're never really going to get there. So Jesus will almost bankrupt you in short order -- but he'll never quite bankrupt you completely. Proves he's a loving God, I guess. I wonder if Spurge will ever get any actual math lessons......Unfortunately, I doubt he'll ever get any interesting or engaging ones. Sickening to think that this generation seems likely to have whatever potential they've got pretty well snuffed out, too. And I wish Bin'd stop reading the stuff about original sin to tiny children over and over and over. Are they anxious to produce the earliest-ever fundie-child revelation about being a hopeless miserable sinner who deserves to burn alive for eternity? The current record seems to be about age 3. What with the college football and bible reading obsessions apparently all that's on the menu, seems to me a super-oppressive air of boredom must hang about that house all the time.

Yeah, that must be it. Good deduction. Well, turns out Henry has a saying after all. I guess I'm relieved.....😁 Poor Henry.

....Two of the others have the comments and shares stuff in Dutch as well. I do Facebook so little that I'm baffled by all the Dutch. Is Jessa a Dutch-speaking Facebook member or what? Or do random languages pop up on everybody's posts? Totally confused here.

Yeah, but think of all the divorces they haven't caused.....and all the energy they've saved for fundie girls and women who haven't been forced to yell NIKE!! to turn eyes away from the Duggarlings' curves.

Thanks! ..... I suppose he doesn't have 20 others, though.....😁

Thanks! .... I seldom go near Facebook.....😁 So he's had that franchise for quite some time.,,,I guess you can be pretty successful fixing auto glass and that Bin really did just quit and move on to other things.

Okay. My bad, Jessa. Guess I didn't scroll far enough.

His dad had bought into a home-business, auto-glass-repair franchise for a while and Bin worked with him. I don't think his dad had that for very long, but maybe he did and Bin just quit. Strangely, I've never heard what else his dad ever did or now does for a living. Although I think at the time he did the auto-glass it probably wasn't the only thing he had going. Anybody know what Mike Seewald's vocations/ehterprises were or are?

"and we finally got one!" "As a brand, gifting your product to Instagram influencers is a great strategy to build brand awareness on Instagram and grow your following. "A lot of people assume that if no money is exchanging hands, it doesn’t qualify as a partnership or sponsored Instagram post. But this assumption is actually incorrect. "According to the FTC, if a business gives you a free product with the expectation that you’ll promote or discuss the product on Instagram, you have to disclose it." Just sayin, Jessa, Jingle and Eufy.

Unfortunately, the most apt Duggar-and-adjacent theme song could probably be "To know know know them is to hate hate hate them."

I wonder how they can possibly miss the apparent implications of the body language there. They must be that dim-witted. Or maybe they're just that inexperienced?

Unfortunately so. And if he holds out for trial it'll also show another even worse characteristic, I think -- no concern at all for consequences that affect other people, even his own children. Even some super self-indulgent, impulsive people who don't give a fig about strangers will think twice about a decision that could have serious negative effects on their own DNA carriers --And I'm pretty sure having this go to trial could hurt his family in multiple ways, including through the media attention it'll get. I think I heard it was Oct. 18th. Here's hoping that ends it.

Amen to everything you said. ..... But I have to say that the one thing I find particularly odd about Jeremy ... is that he really doesn't even have much flash. I mean, compared to pastors and the like who have various kinds of flash (with or without accompanying substance) -- such as Macarthur and Carl Lentz and John Piper and others of many varieties -- Jer, to me, falls way short. He certainly tries to have the things that give other people flash -- like eloquence, cleverness, charisma, humor, looks, charm, style, an ability to project power or warmth or dominance or class or coolness, etc -- and he may imagine that he has some of those things. But to my eye he has very little of any of them. So all I can figure is that he's a wannabe suckup -- who strives to be like those flashy people he sucks up to but who they know won't ever get there because he doesn't have the right stuff...... And maybe the objects of his sucking up reward him because they like to have deluded suckups around? Because they can get their narcissistic supply from them while also feeling sure that the suckups are no threats to their own position? I feel as if I've seen this in some organizations I've worked in, where flashy leaders surround themselves with delusional wannabe suckups who are mediocre while keeping anybody who might be a real threat to their power at arm's length. But maybe I just think this because I don't think Jer deserves it so I don't want him to get a bunch of what look to me like unmerited rewards or arrive at the top of a heap -- even a heap I don't respect, like the all-flash-no-substance heap? .....

In the district they're in, all the sentences I've seen for the charges Josh faces have run from about 5 and a half years to about 11, with most being between about 6 and 8. .... One thing that suggests Josh will go nearer the low end is that he has zero convictions of any kind for anything. Your prior record of convictions for any and all kinds of illegal activity, not just sex crimes, seems to matter a lot in the sentencing. And Josh has no prior convictions for any behavior.

And in the infamous cat incident, the Duggar females were, if anything, even more rabidly mean than the males. They were taunting the two pledges in tones that unmistakably said, Unless you try hard to run that cat down, you're not MEN!!!! And we only want MEN!!!! The prolonged gleeful-in-the-hope-of-bloodshed female screeching and egging on of "Git eeem! Git eeem!" was sickening. Mean-spiritedness, thy name is Duggar -- and associates -- overall, looks like to me. So I guess the correct Jesus really loves meanness a lot, huh? I suppose they need to be mean to fight adequately for Jesus in all those final battles they're going to be in for him.

Well, TPTB at the MacArthur institutions may have an odd view of things. In an article I posted awhile ago that commented on the climate at that church in recent years, there was a quote from some document that described the community-service/charitable actions/contributions MacArthur's church has made in the past year. And it was a very weird list. There wasn't much on it, in the first place. And that included some tings I've ever heard of a church doing. One item was that they had donated orchid plants to several LA County police precincts.....A WTF moment in charitable giving if I ever heard one. Has anyone at a police precinct, ever, said, "Boy, you know what we really need around here? Orchids!" All I can figure is that at a giving-committee meeting, church members were talking about who'd they'd like to do something nice for, and a group of people favored doing something nice for the local cops. But it turned out nobody wanted to actually spend a lot of money or effort on this.......And then a florist in the congregation mentioned that he had a bunch of orchid plants in his inventory that he couldn't move. And offered to donate them to the cause......So -- the police precincts got orchids. Even that story makes no sense. But it's all I can come up with. My guess is that the stadium box has a similar origin and history, just as emblematic of self-centeredness and overall dysfunction and poor comprehension of anything I'd call either charity or Christianity. (but in this case probably a lot to do with sucking up to wealthy donors....) MMV, of course. 😁 The nuttiness and tone-deafness of these things does suggest to me that Jer may have found exactly the right place for himself, after all.

One thing I really wonder if JB and M are avidly planning and discussing with Golden Boy (not the lawyers) is whether he will plead guilty or whether he's actually going to insist on incurring the very large gamble -- and the expense -- of proceeding to trial. I assume that they at least asked him quite some time ago whether he did what he's accused of.....And while I wish I was sure he told them the truth, I have no confidence at all that he did. I don't even have confidence that Josh would have told them the truth and then realized that the truth and the case about to be presented against him mean he should absolutely seek a plea deal..... But if I were JB and M, I'd definitely want to discuss these things again with him....in depth.....Before he makes one of the bigger, more consequential decisions of his life.... That said, i don't think open and honest talk has ever been even a tiny part of the general Duggar atmosphere and ethos. I think their atmosphere has always been more of -- shut up about it, oh Christ you did X hit you in the head you little jerk, happy talk happy talk lie lie, lather rinse repeat. So I suppose the idea that your family members are people you can and should have open and honest discussions with -- even about small things, let alone life-shattering ones -- isn't really on the table for this crew........I hope the gravity of this particular situation might be putting it on the table this time. But they all have decades of doing everything bass-ackwards, so possibly not.

She could easily have just been chaperoning Jeremiah all this time. He is Sinner Twin, after all.