Monday, April 27, 2009
Jettas
I love VW Jettas! We got our first Jetta in 1985. It was a used 1984 diesel. It had 4by 60 air conditioning (4 windows down, 60 miles per hour), no turbo (0-60 by the time we'd gone a mile), lots of black exhaust and noise. I loved it! Especially when I would get going from a full stop and watch the driver behind me uselessly trying to wave the black exhaust away so he could see enough to drive. The car got 75 miles to the gallon on a road trip! There were downsides, such as not being able to leave it unplugged in winter more than about 2 hours because then there was little hope of getting it started again (gotta love Manitoba winters!). It didn't heat worth a darn once it was colder than 0 Fahrenheit. On a steep upward incline such as the Coquihalla Pass, the best I could do was drive in second gear and only highway tractor/trailers went slower. So embarrassing! But I did say 75 miles to the gallon? At about the 550,000 km mark, we sold this car and invested in a brand new 1996 Jetta turbo diesel. This was the last generation of turbo before the TDI. It was a beautiful car to look at - sleek and stylish! It had air conditioning (the real kind), and cruise control for a time and comfort. It also heated somewhat better in the winter than the first one did and could actually be left unplugged for more than 2 hours on a cold Manitoba winter day. The downside with this car was that it had huge electrical issues. It didn't take long for the cruise control to stop working, and various lights in the dash quit working. Repairs to the electrical system only lasted days or weeks before the car would self-destruct the electrical once again. It ate glow plugs. At around the 250,000 km mark, the odometer reset itself to zero -another electrical glitch. The clutch was extremely fragile/brittle, so it was incredibly easy to break teeth in the clutch, which we did and were told by the dealership that it was because we didn't know how to drive. I had to learn to drive without the clutch (except to start from a full stop.) I liked knowing how to do that. The car was somewhat of a lemon but still fun. German engineering makes the Jetta a superior handling car with lots of power. I could actually dare to pass a vehicle even if oncoming was less than 5 miles away! The electrical issues soured me for a time and so the next car I bought was a Honda. This was a functional car, but not economical where fuel consumption was concerned and uncomfortable to sit in on a long road trip. In the winter, I would get approximately 400 km to a tank of gas. Taking corners at a higher speed made it feel as though the body was going to slide right off the frame. The car forced me to drive like an old woman, because once again, I lacked the power to pass cars unless I had miles of room to do so. The best day was when I bought the 2004 TDI. What a wonderful car! Comfort, fuel economy, sun roof, heated seats and power to burn! I could pass vehicles with 1/4 the room needed with the other cars. Sweet! On a long road trip, even with a cross wind and running the A/C, I still got about 55 miles to the gallon. No complaints there. I now own a 2009 Jetta TDI. This car has comfort and a six speed manual transmission. However, it's a much bigger car and has too many politically correct features to suit me. I don't need my dashboard dinging me because it is now 4 degrees Celsius. I don't care! It has traction control for winter, which is a mixed blessing since I like doing power turns on ice. The car is rated at 60 mpg on highway, but I can't get much past 40. What is good is that the car has tons of power and sits higher, which makes it easier to get into and out of, handles well and is comfortable. I love German engineering and Jettas will probably always be my car of choice.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Legalistic Crap Disguised as Religion or Christianity
I have been a Christian for almost 37 years. I have gone from spiritual infancy and immaturity to being close to grown up in Christ. I have gone through my years of "the letter of the law" and have come to realize that the spirit of the law is often far more important than the letter of it. I hate legalistic, smug, religiously superior, self-righteous, lying hypocrites who twist what's written in the Bible and try to use the Bible to support their own bitter and twisted opinions. This invites people to follow God "how?" It doesn't. Period.
We were all born with a sinful nature, which means that we are all predisposed to do bad or wrong things. That's how life is here on earth. We say things that hurt people, we do things that are wrong and harmful, we do the things we shouldn't, and don't do the things we should. We are all guilty of that. Yup. Even me. :) If it were not so, God would not have needed to send Jesus to this earth to lay down his life for us, so that when we accept his gift of death, we can have eternal life. Jesus was perfect. He could only die once he took all of our sins on himself, which made him detestable to God. My sins that did it! When I think of what Jesus endured on that cross so that I could spend eternity with him, it makes me hang my head in shame. I truly believe that is how it should be. Apart from Jesus' gift of life, we are spiritually dead.
Then you have the "Christians" who puff themselves up because they think they have arrived. They are smug and arrogant and have all the answers, most of which are narrow and judgmental in nature. They condemn very easily because in this way they think they are doing "God's will" here on earth. They are arrogant and proud of themselves, and I believe God feels ashamed for them. They are really not representing God well at all. The God I know reserves the right to judge all of us. He has forbidden us to judge one another because he knows that we can't be fair or righteous when we do it. We cannot see the heart, motive, etc., of the person to KNOW how to judge. We just have a speck of sand from the beach and make our judgment based on that. God loves us first and foremost. It doesn't matter whether you love him or believe in him - he just loves us all because we are his children. God is kind, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. There are so many stories in the Bible where God is angry and wants to destroy people from the face of the earth, but when he hears them being truly sorry, his heart softens and he relents. We could learn a lot from that, and we should!
This brings me to a man I refer to as The Moron. The Moron is my fiancé’s son-in-law. He attends (warms the pew) a cultish Baptist "church" where there are more rules than you find in most organized sports. The pastor of this cult has a huge following (don't cult leaders usually?). He tells his people that anyone not in their church will go to hell, and not to associate with anyone who will not attend their church. Anyone who chooses to leave the church is condemned and remaining members are forbidden to have further dealings with them. Women are required to wear skirts and I've seen beautiful young women turn into dowdy, middle-aged frumps virtually overnight. Members are required to show pay stubs and bank statements so that the pastor can tell them how much money to give to the church. Supporting any Christian organization not approved by this pastor is wrong. TV is ok as long as you watch PG shows, and when commercials come on, you are supposed to turn off the TV for the duration or leave the room. This pastor has the final say on everything in the church and is the head of absolutely every committee. He trusts no-one to be as “wise” or discerning as he is. In my opinion, he has sold his soul for power and money. I believe he has appointed himself as God's spokesman, and that God would like to see him removed from that post. He makes Christianity as warm and inviting as an outhouse filled with mothballs to deodorize the air. I wouldn't darken the doors of this cult for anything. The Moron attends this church because his mommy has told him to. His wife (my fiancé’s daughter) thinks being a good wife is doing whatever she's told (she's been bullied and brain-washed into believing that) and supporting her husband even when she knows in her heart that he's dead wrong. I have issues with these two, which goes back many years.
When my fiancé and I first started dating, he was very closed and secretive about me, which led the Moron to think that I was stalking him. He never asked either of us what the truth was, he just made his own judgment and ruling. This was during a tumultuous time in my life where I spent a great deal of time driving around thinking and trying to sort out the mess my life was. The Moron lives on a busy highway in what was at that time, the neighboring town. My drives often took me past his house, just as they took countless thousands past his house as well. One day, having had a bout with Crohn's Disease, I was particularly out of sorts, and probably did a little more driving than usual. As darkness neared, I drove past his house and saw that his car was parked in the driveway facing the road. It appeared as though the car wasn't running and that there was no-one in it. I turned down a side street only to find that the Moron was right behind me. He had started his car with the park brake on so that the headlights were off, and reclined the front seat so that he would be hidden from anyone driving past. I was incredulous because he'd always made a big show of treating me as though I wasn't there. In other words, we had no relationship. At a stop sign, he started to get out of his car and walk towards mine, but then there was an opening in the traffic and I drove away. He got back into his car. About 20 minutes later, there he was standing on his front steps under the outside light, making windmill motions with his arm as though to summon someone to him. Since I really didn't know him, I ignored him and figured there was someone else in the vicinity he meant. Half an hour later, he was crouched in his front window with the curtain behind him, doing the same thing. By this time, all I could think was "wing nut." Still, I wondered if maybe he had meant me, so a week later, I called him at work because I didn't want to call him at home and possibly upset his pregnant wife. Well . . . that didn't go so well. He smarmily accused me of stalking him, asked me what I was doing in his town driving around, and told me he was (hiding in a darkened room watching for me) writing down the dates and times that I drove by his house and that if he saw me again, he would call the police. For the next week, every time I saw him, he would turn his head toward me with a gloating, smug and self-satisfied smile on his face. Talk about being two years old! The next thing was that I was approached by his employer to do business with them. I let them know that I would never do business with them as long as they had this employee working for them, but I was intentionally vague so as not to finger him. Because nobody at his work cares for him, they figured out pretty quickly who I meant. He was told that his behavior towards me was worthy of a warning, and that if another complaint of this nature was brought to them, he would be fired. Now, how did this two year old deal with this? I know that he should have hung his head in shame, called me and apologized. Nope. Not him. Now his pride was wounded, so he went to his father-in-law and tattled. He was told he'd gone too far and was not in the right and he dealt with this by hating me. Six and a half years later, he still holds the grudge . . . but he warms the cult pew really, really well and believes he is above reproach before God and is doing his will here on earth. Sure . . . . . . . . . For six and a half years, the Moron and his wife have pretended I don't exist and are intensely mean and rude to me. Because I love my fiancé and he loves his daughter (the wife), I have gone out of my way to be kind to them. I won't go into details, but they have never acknowledged any kindness or help I've extended to them and continued to be rude, immature and cruel to me.
For the next part, I will say that I am divorced and have been for five years. Divorce is NOT the "unforgivable sin," although legalistic Christians try to make it that. If I ask forgiveness for a sin and have been granted it, God says it is as far from him as the east is from the west. If that is the case, I am free to live. The sin is forgotten by God, but not by legalistic "Christians!" My ex and I have a good relationship, but there's no going back. I had Biblical reasons for leaving him and divorcing him, which he acknowledges, but which I won't go into here. The Moron, not having a clue about God, mercy, grace, forgiveness, the Bible, etc., has decided my being divorced is the perfect ammunition to justify his hatred of me. My fiancé and I have friends who have divorced for the same reasons we have and have remarried each other. The Moron is nice to them and helpful and supportive. All of this was needed to explain the next part. We are fixing up my fiancé’s house so we can sell it and buy a house for the two of us when we get married next month. (My house will be sold as well.) Fixing up his house is a lot of hard work, and we need help. Since my fiancé has helped the Moron with countless projects, I couldn't understand why he wouldn't offer to help in return, so I called him. I asked him if he would do me a big favor. "That depends," was his reply. I went on to tell him that we were fixing up his father-in-law's house and could use more help than I could offer since I'm not that strong, and that if my presence was keeping him from helping, that I could go home. This religiously superior, self-righteous, lying, hypocritical waste of skin had the nerve to smarmily tell me that he couldn't support our fixing up this house so that we could buy a house together and move in together. When I told him that we planned to marry before moving into any house together, he maintained that he just couldn't support what we were doing. When I confronted him about this other couple I mentioned with, "H..... and T... are divorced and remarried and you support them. Why can't you be supportive of us?" His reaction? He hung up on me. Why? Because I got the better of him once again and confronted him with his lie. Now that his pride has taken another s... kicking, he will now hate me FOREVER. Plus he will lie about my end of the conversation to bandage his wounded pride.
Sucks to be him. Rude, immature, smug, religiously superior, controlling, self-righteous, hypocritical, unforgiving smarmy weasel.
Having said all of that, I have forgiven him, even though it sounds as though I've not. I have no use for him, but how can anyone hate such a pathetic fraction of a man? In his pride, anger and bitterness, he is being all he can be, even though it's not anything worthwhile. He will probably destroy his marriage with his unforgiving nature, which is too bad. Maybe.
I really should have bought him the t-shirt that reminded me of him years ago, which is no longer available. "Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole." Or the demoticon that says, "You were made for me, perhaps as a punishment."
Life is too short to waste on ill feelings, even if justified. Be a Jesus with skin on. Love and bless your enemies, and in so doing, you will be heaping burning coals on their head. Being Christ-like in response to a person like the Moron gives them no satisfaction and just makes them more bitter. My conscience is clear. I doubt his is.
We were all born with a sinful nature, which means that we are all predisposed to do bad or wrong things. That's how life is here on earth. We say things that hurt people, we do things that are wrong and harmful, we do the things we shouldn't, and don't do the things we should. We are all guilty of that. Yup. Even me. :) If it were not so, God would not have needed to send Jesus to this earth to lay down his life for us, so that when we accept his gift of death, we can have eternal life. Jesus was perfect. He could only die once he took all of our sins on himself, which made him detestable to God. My sins that did it! When I think of what Jesus endured on that cross so that I could spend eternity with him, it makes me hang my head in shame. I truly believe that is how it should be. Apart from Jesus' gift of life, we are spiritually dead.
Then you have the "Christians" who puff themselves up because they think they have arrived. They are smug and arrogant and have all the answers, most of which are narrow and judgmental in nature. They condemn very easily because in this way they think they are doing "God's will" here on earth. They are arrogant and proud of themselves, and I believe God feels ashamed for them. They are really not representing God well at all. The God I know reserves the right to judge all of us. He has forbidden us to judge one another because he knows that we can't be fair or righteous when we do it. We cannot see the heart, motive, etc., of the person to KNOW how to judge. We just have a speck of sand from the beach and make our judgment based on that. God loves us first and foremost. It doesn't matter whether you love him or believe in him - he just loves us all because we are his children. God is kind, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. There are so many stories in the Bible where God is angry and wants to destroy people from the face of the earth, but when he hears them being truly sorry, his heart softens and he relents. We could learn a lot from that, and we should!
This brings me to a man I refer to as The Moron. The Moron is my fiancé’s son-in-law. He attends (warms the pew) a cultish Baptist "church" where there are more rules than you find in most organized sports. The pastor of this cult has a huge following (don't cult leaders usually?). He tells his people that anyone not in their church will go to hell, and not to associate with anyone who will not attend their church. Anyone who chooses to leave the church is condemned and remaining members are forbidden to have further dealings with them. Women are required to wear skirts and I've seen beautiful young women turn into dowdy, middle-aged frumps virtually overnight. Members are required to show pay stubs and bank statements so that the pastor can tell them how much money to give to the church. Supporting any Christian organization not approved by this pastor is wrong. TV is ok as long as you watch PG shows, and when commercials come on, you are supposed to turn off the TV for the duration or leave the room. This pastor has the final say on everything in the church and is the head of absolutely every committee. He trusts no-one to be as “wise” or discerning as he is. In my opinion, he has sold his soul for power and money. I believe he has appointed himself as God's spokesman, and that God would like to see him removed from that post. He makes Christianity as warm and inviting as an outhouse filled with mothballs to deodorize the air. I wouldn't darken the doors of this cult for anything. The Moron attends this church because his mommy has told him to. His wife (my fiancé’s daughter) thinks being a good wife is doing whatever she's told (she's been bullied and brain-washed into believing that) and supporting her husband even when she knows in her heart that he's dead wrong. I have issues with these two, which goes back many years.
When my fiancé and I first started dating, he was very closed and secretive about me, which led the Moron to think that I was stalking him. He never asked either of us what the truth was, he just made his own judgment and ruling. This was during a tumultuous time in my life where I spent a great deal of time driving around thinking and trying to sort out the mess my life was. The Moron lives on a busy highway in what was at that time, the neighboring town. My drives often took me past his house, just as they took countless thousands past his house as well. One day, having had a bout with Crohn's Disease, I was particularly out of sorts, and probably did a little more driving than usual. As darkness neared, I drove past his house and saw that his car was parked in the driveway facing the road. It appeared as though the car wasn't running and that there was no-one in it. I turned down a side street only to find that the Moron was right behind me. He had started his car with the park brake on so that the headlights were off, and reclined the front seat so that he would be hidden from anyone driving past. I was incredulous because he'd always made a big show of treating me as though I wasn't there. In other words, we had no relationship. At a stop sign, he started to get out of his car and walk towards mine, but then there was an opening in the traffic and I drove away. He got back into his car. About 20 minutes later, there he was standing on his front steps under the outside light, making windmill motions with his arm as though to summon someone to him. Since I really didn't know him, I ignored him and figured there was someone else in the vicinity he meant. Half an hour later, he was crouched in his front window with the curtain behind him, doing the same thing. By this time, all I could think was "wing nut." Still, I wondered if maybe he had meant me, so a week later, I called him at work because I didn't want to call him at home and possibly upset his pregnant wife. Well . . . that didn't go so well. He smarmily accused me of stalking him, asked me what I was doing in his town driving around, and told me he was (hiding in a darkened room watching for me) writing down the dates and times that I drove by his house and that if he saw me again, he would call the police. For the next week, every time I saw him, he would turn his head toward me with a gloating, smug and self-satisfied smile on his face. Talk about being two years old! The next thing was that I was approached by his employer to do business with them. I let them know that I would never do business with them as long as they had this employee working for them, but I was intentionally vague so as not to finger him. Because nobody at his work cares for him, they figured out pretty quickly who I meant. He was told that his behavior towards me was worthy of a warning, and that if another complaint of this nature was brought to them, he would be fired. Now, how did this two year old deal with this? I know that he should have hung his head in shame, called me and apologized. Nope. Not him. Now his pride was wounded, so he went to his father-in-law and tattled. He was told he'd gone too far and was not in the right and he dealt with this by hating me. Six and a half years later, he still holds the grudge . . . but he warms the cult pew really, really well and believes he is above reproach before God and is doing his will here on earth. Sure . . . . . . . . . For six and a half years, the Moron and his wife have pretended I don't exist and are intensely mean and rude to me. Because I love my fiancé and he loves his daughter (the wife), I have gone out of my way to be kind to them. I won't go into details, but they have never acknowledged any kindness or help I've extended to them and continued to be rude, immature and cruel to me.
For the next part, I will say that I am divorced and have been for five years. Divorce is NOT the "unforgivable sin," although legalistic Christians try to make it that. If I ask forgiveness for a sin and have been granted it, God says it is as far from him as the east is from the west. If that is the case, I am free to live. The sin is forgotten by God, but not by legalistic "Christians!" My ex and I have a good relationship, but there's no going back. I had Biblical reasons for leaving him and divorcing him, which he acknowledges, but which I won't go into here. The Moron, not having a clue about God, mercy, grace, forgiveness, the Bible, etc., has decided my being divorced is the perfect ammunition to justify his hatred of me. My fiancé and I have friends who have divorced for the same reasons we have and have remarried each other. The Moron is nice to them and helpful and supportive. All of this was needed to explain the next part. We are fixing up my fiancé’s house so we can sell it and buy a house for the two of us when we get married next month. (My house will be sold as well.) Fixing up his house is a lot of hard work, and we need help. Since my fiancé has helped the Moron with countless projects, I couldn't understand why he wouldn't offer to help in return, so I called him. I asked him if he would do me a big favor. "That depends," was his reply. I went on to tell him that we were fixing up his father-in-law's house and could use more help than I could offer since I'm not that strong, and that if my presence was keeping him from helping, that I could go home. This religiously superior, self-righteous, lying, hypocritical waste of skin had the nerve to smarmily tell me that he couldn't support our fixing up this house so that we could buy a house together and move in together. When I told him that we planned to marry before moving into any house together, he maintained that he just couldn't support what we were doing. When I confronted him about this other couple I mentioned with, "H..... and T... are divorced and remarried and you support them. Why can't you be supportive of us?" His reaction? He hung up on me. Why? Because I got the better of him once again and confronted him with his lie. Now that his pride has taken another s... kicking, he will now hate me FOREVER. Plus he will lie about my end of the conversation to bandage his wounded pride.
Sucks to be him. Rude, immature, smug, religiously superior, controlling, self-righteous, hypocritical, unforgiving smarmy weasel.
Having said all of that, I have forgiven him, even though it sounds as though I've not. I have no use for him, but how can anyone hate such a pathetic fraction of a man? In his pride, anger and bitterness, he is being all he can be, even though it's not anything worthwhile. He will probably destroy his marriage with his unforgiving nature, which is too bad. Maybe.
I really should have bought him the t-shirt that reminded me of him years ago, which is no longer available. "Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole." Or the demoticon that says, "You were made for me, perhaps as a punishment."
Life is too short to waste on ill feelings, even if justified. Be a Jesus with skin on. Love and bless your enemies, and in so doing, you will be heaping burning coals on their head. Being Christ-like in response to a person like the Moron gives them no satisfaction and just makes them more bitter. My conscience is clear. I doubt his is.
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