Thoughts of a Tattooed Christian

Fear mailing! PLEASE STOP! DO SOME RESEARCH!

2011-02-26T08:11:00.000-06:00

I am hot and you will see why in a moment!

I was sent this email ANYTHING IN RED ARE FACTS I FOUND USING A GOOGLE SEARCH!

THANK GOD FOR THE 2ND AMEND

You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door.

Half-awake, nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers.

At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way.

With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun.
You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it.

In the darkness, you make out two shadows.
One holds something that looks like a crowbar.

When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The 16 year old was shot in the back trying to get out a window!

The blast knocks both thugs to the floor.

One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside..

As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.

Yours was never registered. Yours was registered but your permit was taken from you when you started shooting at cars!

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died.

They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm.

When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably
plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask.

"Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing.

"Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper.

Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot
are represented as choirboys.

Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them.

Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims"
have been arrested numerous times.

But the next day's headline says it all:"Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die." I have been unable to find this headline on a Google search (other than pulling up this bullshit story) Dang I have found this story everywhere but nothing backs it. Just blog postings. Which people I guess are believing because they just want to be told crap and not DO THE RESEARCH.

The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type
pranksters.

As the days wear on, the story takes wings.

The national media picks it up, then the international media.

The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.

Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.

The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several
times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their
lack of effort in apprehending the suspects.

After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.

The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

Not lying in wait....Just sleep with your clothes and boots on. traps set. not mentally ill at all.

A few months later, you go to trial.

The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted.

When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.

Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man.

He was painted as a man with mental issues and "A mind like a child" yea we want this guy to have a gun!

It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

You end up doing 5 years for manslaughter. And has been released early.

This BS story has been created and massed emailed to people who will believe it just because they want to believe it.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England , killed one
burglar and wounded a second.

In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.

How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire ?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903.

This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons
and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a
license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only
handguns but all firearms except shotguns.

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by
private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the
Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man
with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw.

When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.

The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control",
demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned
handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a
semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public
school.

For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable
or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up
law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up
all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The
Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms
still owned by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away
most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed
self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant
gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was
no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or
robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.

Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying,
"We cannot have people take the law into their own hands."

All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several
elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no
fear of the consequences... Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had
seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars..

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given
three months to turn them over to local authorities.

Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't
were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they
didn't comply.

Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private
citizens.

How did the authorities know who had handguns?

The guns had been registered and licensed.

Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA ; THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

"..It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."

--Samuel Adams

If you think this is important,

please forward to everyone you know.

You had better wake up, because your

president is going to do this very same thing

over here if he can get it done...

Please email this to everyone you know so this kind of fearing mailing will STOP!!

And there are stupid people in congress and

on the street that will go right along with him.

I have a domain, now what?

2010-05-17T00:19:00.000-05:00

i purchased a domain but I have no idea how to access it. lol

"They just mean!"

2009-08-04T05:13:00.000-05:00

Bare with me

Yesterday afternoon I was riding around the Houston area fixing peoples cable issues (yes I work for the cable company I am not a rouge fix it guy like Robert De Nero in "Brazil" you should check it out (the movie that is)) Where was I?

Oh yea I was out working on people's cable issues and we pulled into this lower income area. Knock on the door, work on this nice lady's phone issue well we figured out we had to run a new cable from the tap (where your cable comes from)in her neighbors back yard because the one in her back yard is broken. She was very concerned about our safety entering the neighbors back yard (even though we have a right to be there). She also asked if the tap in her back yard was tampered with. I asked her why would that have happened? She said, "well my neighbors, they just mean!" she was concerned about the neighbors coming home and pulling a gun on us!

This morning (yes I am writing this at 0530 hours and woke up from a bad dream at 0300 hours) I am thinking to myself, "when we go out into the world what do our neighbors think about us?" Today are our neighbors thinking "I love how that person is always helping me out when I need it, I wonder why they offer to do that?" or are they thinking "well my neighbors, they just mean!" She thought that the neighbor would have cut her line or destroyed her tap out of spite!

Jesus said, To love our neighbor as yourself and then described to the Jewish people the lowest people they could imagine as their neighbor (the Samaritan).

Now I don't know the full story of this woman, she could just be paranoid or having a dispute with her neighbor.

I do know that as a christian I sometimes find myself making others meet my standards to be saved by the grace of God. I find myself cutting the lines to Jesus without even realizing it. Am I like the people that made my so unhappy at my childhood church that I left the church for 15 years? Do my neighbors say don't go into that yard! "They just mean!"?

From the ramblings of an insomniac.... I hope it makes sense tomorrow!

2009-04-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

Here is the reason I believe that you can find God in any religion. (coming from a Christian perspective)

In Acts 17:22-25 Paul states to the Athens "Areopagus" (a council of elders in Athens) "As I wondered your places of worship, I even found an alter with this inscription "To an unknown god" There for you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you The Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as if he needs anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone."

if the God you worship is the God that teaches the following, then we are in love with the same God and brothers / sisters and that should rejoicing together.

And if you are an Atheist or Agnostic and you feel love for your fellow man, and the sting of injustice for all your human brothers, we should break bread together as well.

Thomas (a disciple of Jesus) John 20:24-29 did not believe until he examined the wounds of Jesus, after his death. If someone who knew Jesus, a walking miracle worker, didn't believe the good news until he touched the wounds, then how can we hold it again people who have a hard time believing 2000 years later?

I Corinthians 13: 1-8 Paul again...

"If I speak in the tounges of men and of angels, but I do not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but have not loved, I recieved no benefit.
Love is patient, Love is kind, Love does not brag,
it is not puffed up It is not rude, It is not self serving,
It is not easily angered or resentful.
It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

I Corinthians 13:13

"And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

http://lovedyouare.yuku.com

Getting "Saved"

2009-04-19T22:11:00.000-05:00

"People use to term "get saved" a lot. But what do you believe you are saved from? Do you believe there is a difference in being saved and being born again?"

This question was asked recently on the forum I frequent (Revolutionnyc)

I used to think that I was saved from hell, this was fire insurance for the hereafter, something just in case. I was living a very miserable life and leaving the church altogether after awhile seeing the way "even sinners behave this way" that the Christians treat each other.

Now I believe something amazing....

I am saved not in the after life but the here and now. I feel the after life is a bonus to the life that God has now shown to me.

I am saved from the self hate, life I was living.

I am saved from the resentments of life I felt I feel a warm, bracing love surrounding me through all things God whispering "I got you, be calm, I got this, I love you, you will be OK."
I feel this love and now I am push to serve my fellow man, where he is at not where he needs to be.
I want other to feel the joy that I feel. (this being said people around me don't want to listen to the Good News and I do get frustrated on where God wants me to be)

I believe others will be shown the love of God either before they die or after they die. I choose to believe God has no limits .... time and death can't keep him from his children whom he loves unconditionally.

People will spend time in hell until they come to believe that all people can be shown the grace of God. To your left will be the person that caused you the most harm and to the rights will be the person that you hurt them most at the feast Jesus has prepared.

War

2009-01-25T22:01:00.000-06:00

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it. Leo Tolstoy

Do we want peace as much as they want war?

2009-01-24T00:11:00.000-06:00

WTF?

OK so Israel lashes out at Gaza basically saying we have had enough of the rockets coming into our homes, schools, and parks, I get that people have the right to defend their home land blah blah blah. What I don’t understand is the double standard the always seams to happen when we want to strike back. Yes there are small numbers of militants in the Gaza Strip and yes the people they are killing are innocent women children and men this makes it a terrorist act (I guess). So something has to be done agreed. Why is the only thing left to them (Israel) is violence? Killing even more women, children, and men… This makes Israel a terrorist nation. These attacks aren't justice they are vengeance.

What it boils down to is when a child is killed does the child really care why he / she was killed? Does the mother of that child care the political standing of the person shooting the rockets or dropping the bomb?

Do YOU know that the people building these weapons reside in the U.S. condoned by your government?

Now I know we have a new president (thank God that is over) but his stance on this issue is the same as the one before.

Now Israel decides from the day the new president in elected to the day BEFORE he is inaugurated to start blowing shit up. Then just stop. Because the old pres. won’t do anything and the new pres. can’t do anything.

I had some pictures on here my wife said people didn't want to see so I removed them. But I couldn't leave this one off.

The Kingdom of Heaven is here but we as a people don't want to see it I guess.

Oppressed by Religion

2008-12-09T08:10:00.001-06:00

Why do we oppress each other? Isn’t life hard enough without us grinding our fellow men or woman into the dust? Why do we as “Christians” feel superior in general ways if we can keep someone down?

We didn’t vote for civil rights; our government had to pass a bill! Why is that? Are we so small to have to oppress others to feel superior?

Jesus thought we were because he left the parables on how we should treat each other; he saw it happening then in his day and it is still happening today. Most of the parables I read are on how we treat each other, how we should live in community with one other. If he didn’t have to tell us to behave like a loving parent what else could we have learned from him?

Jesus even had mercy on his most “hated” things! Don’t believe me? Look it up here Matthew 8:28-34. Jesus took mercy upon the demons and instead of destroying them he took mercy and sent them in to the herd of pigs (the pigs then jumped off a cliff but I think that was better than the destruction the demons where afraid of)

Why do Christians feel it is the correct thing to do, oppressing others?

I am looking at ideas for a new tattoo right now and I came across this piece. It is about this guy who had the crucifixion of Jesus tatted on his back. The writer wrote well but then came the responses – “it is a sin according to Leviticus 19:26-31,” and "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD."

Now, not even considering this is believed by the scholars to be a warning to the Jewish people about a pagan practice at funerals and that the other verses in this chapter are overlooked completely (no rare meat, only wearing certain hair cuts, and my favorite over looked verse 33 and 34 “treat a stranger (alien as in illegal) in your land as your own countrymen and love him as yourself (paraphrased).”

Instead of expressing love for the person with the tattoo, damnation and disdain were generally passed around. I put up the verse Galatians 6:17 "let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body." And people where shocked that I took it out of context. (It is a verse about circumcision BTW). As if we haven’t been doing that for years!

But back to my point - “Where is the love?” that Jesus talked about over and over and over again.

- “The Good Samaritan” the other people on the road where too concerned for the rules of the Bible to even see if the robbed man was even alive.
- The story of the bad servant oppressing the other servants while taking care of their own whims.
- John 13:34-35 "new commandment, love one another as I have loved you, this is how you will be recognized."

Now it does also say that God will forgive the people that don’t know any better. So I hope I will be forgiven as they (the people running down tattooed followers) for judging others.

This is another distraction from praising God, like no cussing, no smoking, etc, etc. I am not saying smoking won’t kill you (ex-smoker here) and cussing will make people think twice about hiring you. What I am saying is that I think God would like the people who cuss, smoke, and drink to praise him.

“God comes to you just as you are”
-? –

“Don’t tell me about your religion, show me how you live and I might follow”

Stigandi

Blog Description

2008-12-06T01:27:00.000-06:00

I grew up following the teaching of the Holy Bible. I was taught as my father, who was taught by his grandfather (and great grandfather most likely going back no telling how far) that there was the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who while wanting me to go to heaven, would send me to hell if I didn’t follow the laws set down by the Bible. Well I just couldn’t live up to those standards (hell who could?) and while I was told that Jesus saved us when he died on the cross to wash those sins away. I didn’t understand the grace that went with it.

Maybe I was not in a place to listen or hear that message. I didn’t see the love of Jesus from the other children I was in Sunday school with (I was at church Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday evening until I was 16 when I got my driver license) I was an outcast there. I got to the point where I dreaded going church. I thought I was in hell already, getting in fights, going home feeling worse than when I got up in the morning.

I did blame my folks for this for a long time, but if I didn’t go through what I went through I wouldn’t be in the place I am now! Now I thank them with all my heart! They where God’s tools that showed me another way. I have found another way to look at this book we call the Bible. Now I am not the founder of these thoughts. If you look at the links in this blog you will find the people that showed me this. My folks might have known this, and even tried to show me this but I wasn’t ready to see it!

The thing I missed as a child and young adult was the concept of Grace. The grace of God/ Jesus this is the true power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Grace, Grace, Grace. Without the love and grace of the Jesus all would be lost.

I would like you, the reader, to engage me, to say, “Stigandi, I think you are way off on that point and here is why….” The only thing I ask you to leave behind is the legalisms, and the biased point of view that the “religion” of Christianity have taught us. Then we can open ourselves up to the true love and grace of Jesus.

“Don’t tell me of your religion, show me how you live and I might follow”
-me-
Grace to you.