Posted on 07/10/2008 5:22:30 PM PDT by fanfan
When Reverend Rigby wanted to teach his congregation a lesson about being kind to others he came up with a rather colourful way of demonstrating his point. As the 70 churchgoers turned up for their regular Sunday morning service at the Methodist church in Prestatyn, north Wales they found a scruffy tramp sitting in the church porch. Stinking of beer and dressed in filthy clothes, the disgusted churchgoers did their best to ignore him as they filed past. This task was made even harder when the unwanted guest joined them on the pews, surrounded with syringes and drinking from a can of lager.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
He went overboard with the syringes and lager.
LOL!
At the Catholic Cathedral in Chicago bums hang out at the doors asking for handouts.
Innovative.
Provacative.
Curious.
Would this play in Boston?
I think not.
I love being an atheist Republican. It is almost impossible to make me feel guilty about anything.
He's sitting there in disguise with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in his mouth.
Enough money for booze and smokes, looking like he had the world on a string and not a care in the world.
boo freakin' hoo
The syringes, yes, but Jesus said something about people not seeing him for who he was because of the way he was dressed, or appeared.
I’m not ‘learned’ on such matters.
Chuckles, I hope you don’t mind me pinging this to you.
I know you are smart about such matters.
Thanks.
They should have said hello and invited him in.
No, not in Boston.
In Boston, he wouldn’t dare shame them like that.
He’d never ‘work’ again. ;-)
Did you look in in mirrow when you said that,or just smiled.?There are alot of ways to get peoples attention,hopefully this got at least one.
“He went overboard with the syringes and lager.”
Exactly. Common sense tells anyone that you don’t show up in a church with these items in hand. Or if you do, you hide them. This guy was brazen about it, which leads one to guess he’s just seeking to draw attention to himself—hardly the behavior you’d award with charity.
Sounds so impoverished.
Why not act as if for the sake that Jesus might be the real deal and that eternity might be at stake.
You wouldn't lose much and you might gain everything.
He’d probably get treated to dinner if he showed up on the church steps here. Especially with all the liberals we have. They would see him as an example of what Bush can do to a poor working man, thrown out on his butt, lost his house, his car, his job, his wife...then they would take him to the nearest shelter and help him fill out papers so he could get mo’ money from the good Vegas citizens. Homeless people here number about 20,000, now, and they are all in one area. No churches there...just the Salvation Army.
Because you do lose something. You lose the freedom to reason.
Handouts are a waste of everybody’s effort.
A hand-up, is worth it, but that is beside the point here.
This guy knew his flock, and he called them on one of their short comings, in the eyes of Jesus.
Overall, I think he did well.
I mean, if you’re going to talk the talk, walk the walk.
:-)
Maybe not such a good idea. Some homeless guy might show up disguised as a priest and start molesting the choirboys, just to prove a point.
I disagree. They should have called the authorities and had him arrested. Obviously he was acting like he was drunk in public, and displaying syringes is associated with illegal drug abuse. Street persons, like he was pretending to be, are often mentally ill and have numerous diseases. If he relay was the bum he was pretending to be, there is a high chance that those syringes are HIV infected. He was a clear danger to the people trying to enter the church.
The minister may have no firsthand experience ministering to bums.
Same here, and my hat's off to you for expressing it so completely, yet succinctly!
Uck, syringes and a lager. Those parishioners were wise to avoid a drunken druggie. That priest was STUPID.I avoid alcoholics and druggies too, and I do not believe it goes against my strong Christian beliefs to do so. First, if they are loaded, they are not ‘there.’ Second, they bring chaos and UCK syringes into church. What about Order? What about “pick up your mat and walk?” I think he was laying a guilt trip on the parishioners and they should run him out of town.
Now, that would have been funny.
And which of the ten thousand flavors of Christianity would you recommend? Just kidding, don't answer that, we have plenty of threads here at FR with people insisting that everyone who doesn't believe in their particular sect is making the wrong choice...
Yes.
Then he came into the church, and everyone again avoided his eyes. People he'd known for a long time.
That was the lesson.
You never know who is 'in there', and what gifts they may have to share with you.
I thought it was a great idea.....imagine the shock that ran through the congregation. :-)
The most aggressive bum I’ve encountered was in a London park when I nicely told him I couldn’t give and had to hurry off.
He got in my face and balled me out for being an upitty American.
Some folks do live a dogs life.There are dead dogs ,just no Dead Atheists.
Chaos, I am SO with you. I used to run a food program at our church. Parishioners would come up to me, whining — “There is a poor bum begging for (whatever).” I’d see it was Joe, again — “Joe’s running a racket with the churches in town. Do not give him money, it will just enable him.”
They thot I was so mean. And if Joe saw that they were talking to me, he’d squirm. Because HE knew he was running a racket with the churches in town.
I really believe Jesus would have these guys pick up their mats and walk. I do not believe he’d have them running rackets on sentimentalist Christians who fell for their shenanigans, and then spending the money on booze and doing it all over again. And I believe He’d have the sentimentalists think it through.
That’s just me.
‘I told the congregation they are a stingy lot.
Enabling alcoholism or drug addiction is not being charitable to the neighbor. There are certainly indirect ways to be of service -- handing out cash isn't one of them.
The mirror?
I don't understand what you are getting at.
How so?
I had an aggressive drunk accost me in the market the other day. He started to tell me his life story! I stood there politely for a minute or two, flummoxed, and then I excused myself and walked away. He snarked at me!!! as if I were the one who was rude!! I ran into him a few minutes later, as we both headed our carts into a small aisle. He said, very sarcastically, “Well, EXCUSE ME! I know you are in a hurry. PULEEZ, after me” in a very snotty and exaggerated tone.
I don’t believe HE was Jesus, either.
It can be tiresome, occasionally, to be an atheist or agnostic on FR, but for the most part, it’s worth it.
>>Rev Rigby pulled the stunt to remind the congregation about a passage in the Bible when Jesus’ disciples failing to recognise him because of the way he was dressed.<<
To which passage is that referring. And how were they hypocrites?
What character in the bible was the pastor portraying, and what parallels was he drawing?
I know of beggars, but the pastor was not pretending to be a beggar. He was just disgusting relative to the culture in which he was mingling.
Basically he made himself disgusting, but even that is not relevant, for his motives for being disgusting were different than those of a person who would genuinely compare to the person he was attempting to look like.
The only thing he did was trick his people. If he had had a hand out and actually begged, it would have been a LITTLE different, but even that is not convincing in a land of opportunity. India maybe, or El Salvador...
This had nothing to do with church and this priest is an idiot for staging such a stupid event. The church is for believers, not as the culture-at-large would have one believe - for unrepentant sinners. I would expect most any congregation to have members that would come forward and try to counsel or aid such a person, but it is not the obligation of the body to stop matters and focus on the derelict. This is roughly the equivalent of Nuns throwing blood on nuclear weapon silos and claiming to be representatives of the peace of Christ. Leftist idiocy twisted into bad theology to embarrass the Church.
>>I love being an atheist Republican. It is almost impossible to make me feel guilty about anything.<<
Guilt comes from Satan. CONVICTION comes from the Lord.
Reverend Rigby any relation to Eleanor?
When the "unwanted guest joined them on the pews, surrounded with syringes and a lager", the congregants should have done something............
they should have physically removed him from the church and called the cops.
>>Because you do lose something. You lose the freedom to reason.<<
Ex-athiest C. S. Lewis would differ with you. In fact he would say just the opposite based on what I have read in his book Mere Christianity. He discusses the intellectual bankruptcy of atheism pretty convincingly.
But basically, like me, he didn’t seem to think most self proclaimed atheists were really atheists. More like agnostics.
I personally have yet to meet a self proclaimed atheist that, once questioned on it, did not eventually admit to what is textbook agnosticism.
Prolf, if Jesus is the only way to heaven, pretending to believe in him, (hedging bets), isn't going to help anyone.
One either believes in the story of Jesus, or one doesn't.
I was wondering the same thing. It is contrary to my experience. I found atheism incredible constraining. One more reason to reject it.
When I worked downtown, I looked the bums square in the eyes. After a few negative experiences over a decade ago, I completely stopped giving ANYTHING to a beggar. As I said in a previous post, this aint India.
>>This guy knew his flock, and he called them on one of their short comings, in the eyes of Jesus.<<
What shortcoming would that be? Seriously.
That wouldn’t be teaching him anything.
What a shame.
The HIV fear is a good one, but as a Christian I don't think you want to be the cause of further alienating him from the church by calling the police.
I say, sit down with him for a moment and explain that your happy to see him there, and would like to treat him to breakfast after service. Then explain how people would justifiably be nervous with the syringes in the doorway.
I can't think of anything that Jesus said or did that would indicate that He would want us to call the cops and leave it at that.
If the people in the flock care about each other, they wouldn’t let it go that far.
Silly.
;-)
I'm sure you know that Jesus cured the man before he told him to pick up his mat and walk. I don't get your point with this reference.
True!
I was accosted by one here, many years ago, as I was on my way to work via public transportation. As I got off one bus, and began to head for the crosswalk, some guy came up to me with his hand out, asking for “quarters.”
I told him to get a job. He became livid and yelled in my face, “F___ YOU!” I smiled and said, “Well, your daddy liked it!” He then began to froth at the mouth, and yell some more, and I said, “And your mama liked it too!” By that time, the light had turned green and I was crossing the street.
When I got to the other side, and turned toward the next bus stop, I saw him with his hand out to someone else.
Since then, I tell them plainly: “I’ll buy you dinner, but I won’t buy your drugs, cigarets or alcohol. Take it or leave it.” Thankfully, Oscar has cleaned up the downtown area, so the homeless are pretty much confined to a single area.
Liberals have put out the welcome mat for them, and Oscar has done everything he could to keep them from the tourists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.