We can all now enjoy Thanksgiving once again. Between James Malm snarling that it is a pagan holiday and other COG members snipping that Butterball turkeys have been prayed over by Muslims, whats a poor Armstrongite to do?????? Thanksgiving is the ONLY holiday in which COG members feel "normal" in the eyes of the world. Take that away and there's nothing left to enjoy.
Prophet/Chief Overseer and future end-time witless witness Bob Thiel has now come out saying that it's OK to eat a turkey prayed over by a Muslim imam as long as it doesn't offend you or your hypercritical fellow church members.
A while back, a reader sent me a link to the following item from 2011 that was somewhat true then:
But then there was a change in 2012:America’s favorite meal may be secretly dedicated to Allah…Customer service representatives from Butterball, one of America’s most popular Turkey brands, confirmed to WND that the company’s whole turkeys are – without being labeled as such – slaughtered according to Islamic “halal” standards…Multiple phone representatives at Butterball confirmed the turkeys are slaughtered according to halal standards, and one named Tracy (she declined to give her last name) further confirmed the words of Islamic dedication are spoken over the birds. Has your Thanksgiving turkey been sacrificed to idols?
Butterball’s Thanksgiving turkeys won’t be served with a side dish of Islamic dogma this year.Perhaps I should add that the first article also states that Butterball was not the only company that has allowed Islamic prayers over turkeys (there also may be Islamic prayers over other slaughtered animals as well). It should be understood that Jewish rabbis also provide their approval/blessing on various ‘kosher’ foods and ‘halal’ is somewhat of an equivalent in the Islamic world.
The company has announced that its turkeys are not slaughtered according to Islam’s halal dietary principles, which say that animals should be killed while conscious and amid the sound of Islamic prayers.
The theological turkey turnabout came after an online protest on the topic last year threatened to sour the public’s taste for Butterball-branded products. Butterball Disavows Islamic Turkeys
The reason I said basically, as can be seen, is that if this somewhat would offend an acquaintance, then perhaps one should not eat such meat in a manner that would make him/her stumble. Otherwise, eating meat that in other ways is proper to eat is fine.
Worrying about whether an imam has prayed over your turkey is about as silly as worrying that a rabbi prayed over your turkey making it Kosher. Neither of these have absolutely any relevance to anyone that is not Jewish or a Muslim. Followers of Armstrongism focus upon some of the silliest things and make them into major issues. What these whinny people shoudl do, and this includes Thiel and Malm, is get off their over-indulged asses and feed the homeless and poor this Thanksgiving. Perhaps being a "christian" this one day might soften their hardened bitter hearts.
15 comments:
Biblically speaking, the chapter on meats offered to idols come to mind here. But there is also the practical or political side of this question.
When you buy Halal meats (those blessed by a Mu$lim religiou$ doofu$) some of the money goes to the mosque and is used to finance terror.
When you buy Kosher products (those blessed by a Jewi$h religiou$ doofu$) some of the money goes to the synagogue and is used to fund Jewish causes. This might include the genocide of Palestinians.
Therefore I recommending leaving all such products on the grocers shelves, and bitching to the grocer .
This is hilarious. People who check their consciences at their banks and the post office as they send in their tithes to ACOG ministers who are disingenuous in their usage of those tithes suddenly rediscover their consciences to object to and complain about a minor added feature instituted by meat processing companies to expand the market for their product. And, isn't it nice that Muslims would even be celebrating a gateway holiday, such as Thanksgiving? Statistics inform us that their children generally Americanize within one generation.
There are much larger issues than Halal to be concerned about when selecting your foods, like whether your meats came from factory farms, or the animals were fed on processed or genetically modified feeds, were injected with hormones or antibiotics, or even had cancer which was detected and excised by the butcher in preparing the meat for sale. Either Halal or Kosher confronts and improves upon some of these conditions.
In Armstrongism, much of the stuff we used to think we had to do abdicated common sense, and got into the realm of superstition.
BB
Anonymous said...
Biblically speaking, the chapter on meats offered to idols come to mind here."
Of course it does for sure and it's obvious this terribly "important" question needed an answer back in the day from "authorities" or people would just not be able to function.
The real freedom comes when one does no longer really care what the Bible says about any particular idea or problem. It's just another view and many times majoring in the minors as they say.
Churches and minister types make up problems or even cause them so they have something to pontificate about or fix and look busy. I knew several ministers who would stir the pot in a sermon and get to spend all week visiting the results of the fallout and thinking they were working.
Bob Thiel and others love fixing problems that neither need to be fixed or are problems to begin with
"Productive? I thought we were just supposed to look busy."
Charlie Brown
Did Bob also mention that you are FORBIDDEN to watch NFL football on Thanksgiving, even in the turkey is OK?
I'm not worried about the Islamic Turkeys, just the Armstrongist Turkeys.
These Armstrong cults should as well ban arm deodorants/oven cleansers with baking soda and triple during the Passover season and celebrate Days of Unleavened Bread, Days of Unleavened Arm Deodorant and Days of Unleavened Detergent.
Well I don't know about this story, but I just watched a show about a man who became very close to some wild turkeys that came around on his farm as if they were his family. His favorite "Sweet Pea" would cuddle and sleep in his lap. It was sad because one year she didn't come around so he went looking for her. He found her nest and her feathers and her eaten eggs. Poor thing. Made me not even want to celebrate Thanksgiving after watching that.
But then the other turkey he was close to hung around and they became big buds until one day he said the turkey was looking all mean at him and then started flying at him and attacking him. He wouldn't stop and was making him bleed so he got a big tree branch and whacked him upside his head and he ran off and he never saw the stupid turkey again.
I felt better after that and it made me want to celebrate Thanksgiving again.
The armstrongist are orthodox Jews. Let them be about the business of circumcision in this season of thanks.
Cook up those foreskins Herbalites!
This brings back memories about how stupid we could be in the old days when I was right in there eating it up. So glad to be free of all that. We're have all the trimmings tomorrow, including some cheese and bacon mashed potatoes my daughter cooked up. She made some without the bacon to show respect for my sister and brother-in-law who still hold to the dietary restrictions, but they don't go to these lengths.
DennisCDiehl; In regards to you saying real freedom comes when one no longer really cares what the bible says, that's not freedom at all, I would rather agree with what Christ said when he told us he came to set us free, his word to me holds more weight than yours does.
Would I eat a turkey prayed over by Bob Thiel, Dave Pack or Gerald Flurry? Hmmm...dunno :)
Butterball Turkeys is a reference to gutless lying COG ministers (Turkeys) with balls of butter.
Normally, if a religious or spiritually orientated person trusts or respects individuals whom he or she believes are closer to and working for the particular deity that the belief system is centered around, he or she will desire or appreciate the prayers of those "leaders" (for lack of a better term) on his or her behalf. In the case of Muslims, if an Ayatollah happens to pray over one's food, those prayers are considered to enhance the celebrated event, or to be an added blessing. For the Jew, or Messianic Jew, the prayers of a Rabbi play the same role. To illustrate a Christian perspective, back in the day, Billy Graham appeared on (I can't recall which) either Johnny Cash's Thanksgiving or Christmas TV show, saying a few words and offering his prayer. The Cash and Carter families considered him to be a very special guest!
Armstrongite programming teaches that there is only one church, and that all others are imposters, or worse yet, Satan's. So, the fact that anyone other than one of "God's ministers" prayed over anything was almost seen as placing additional curses of paganism on that thing, rather than being a blessing. Muslims, in their own self-history, claim to worship the God of Abraham, which, in our own parlance, would make them perhaps the earliest splinter group, a pre-Moses, pre-Mosaic-law offshoot from the proto-Israelites, instead, taking their roots from Ishmael. In Christian theological terms, this would make them the products of an earlier dispensation. History tells us that in the early centuries, after the fall of Jerusalem, many Jews exiled themselves to Arabic lands, to seek relief from persecution from Romans, and early Roman Christians. They received better treatment living amongst the Arabs.
Jews and Muslims were not always the complete and total enemies that we perceive them as being in our own contemporary times. In fact, even calling them enemies in the present, is a generalization which does not always hold true. The non-extremists amongst both groups do extend tolerance towards one another, and have demonstrated the capability to work together towards mutual benefit.
Over the past several years, in seeking a better understanding, I've learned that many of the Arabs who emigrate to the USA, are actually part of a Christian minority, persecuted in their own countries. Wealthy Muslims also come here to escape the violence which is prevalent in their own nations. They want a better life for their families, better odds of survival. Often, as with other ethnic groups in the past, their offspring become Americanized as early as the next generation. The activists among these groups are often the most visible representatives, but the very word representatives becomes a poor choice in words, because extremists cannot and do not represent the broader cross section.
As Armstrongists, I believe in retrospect that we were taught to adapt an almost Zionist world view. This is another example of black and white, or binary thinking. The truth is often much, much deeper, or complex, as we delve into it to seek more accurate understanding.
There is no reason to fear turkeys that have been raised under more healthful than "normal" conditions, or have been prayed over by people whose name for Father God is "Allah", even though those doing the praying have what are to us radically different customs and rituals. Our own prayers and good intentions are a powerful modifier, and serve as an all purpose antidote.
Legend has it that the Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated Thanksgiving together. The holiday was about thankfulness, and inclusion, not about elitism. If the Indians prayed during the first Thanksgiving, they probably thanked the spirits of the animals whose lives were sacrificed to provide food, and the grandfathers for the unity and friendship of the occasion.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
BB
"Our own prayers and good intentions are a powerful modifier, and serve as an all purpose antidote."
Ron Popeil needs you.
Outside the confines of the febrile mind of the believer, prayers don't do a goddamn thing.
Within those confines, however, prayers are magic spells with limitless properties. Commonly, they are an incantation used not only to magically purify food and water and cure one's food of any bad juju from foreign incantations, but also to help one find missing car keys, heal the sick of any and all illnesses, act as an insurance policy protecting loved ones by invoking an encircling company of protector "angels," and if the believer is feeling especially magnanimous, prevent wars and feed starving children in Africa.
Except, of course, prayers don't do any of those things. They're just part of another brand of sorcery for the superstitiously inclined. After all, hoodoo, obeah, santería and christianity are all theorized to work in exactly the same way.
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