Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumWhat Does It Mean....
....?
So, I'm driving home the other day and while stopped at a traffic light I see this:
(the pertinent parts of the image are the "Hiz Favr" statement on the license plate
affixed to an apparently high end, late model Mercedes Benz)
and, I find myself puzzled...
and unable to come up with an explanation on what exactly does it mean...
(I feel like I have been struck dumb and unable to process this message. Like I'm being unintentionally obtuse due to my flabbergasted ignorance)
Wha...wha...what are you sayin'....
So I cast a question to my fellow heathens and vermin, please help me process this apparent (religious?) message, what does it mean to you and what are the implications of such a statement and expressed philosophy?
NG
FYI, there is additional information (observations I made while subsequently traveling down the same road with this vehicle) that I am withholding pending a hoped for interesting discussion and further insight.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)The favor god granted His creatures by creating them on the 4th or 5th day?
I hit the buzzer first. Do I win?
NeoGreen
(4,033 posts)...was referring to, I'm more interested in the implications of driving around in an apparently very expensive car.
So, if you don't have an expensive car, that means you don't have "Hiz" favor?
mr blur
(7,753 posts)or, if you like, 'favor'
valerief
(53,235 posts)...I observed it's immediate destination.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)The lord's favor means you are blessed because god likes you better. Note it's a Mercedes.
deucemagnet
(4,549 posts)who thinks the Mercedes and his/her tacky McMansion (I'm guessing) came into their possession by earning God's favor.
NeoGreen
(4,033 posts)...which caused much of my confusion...
That this is where it was going, the immediate destination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wende_Correctional_Facility
The Mercedes pulled into the main (i.e. visitors section, not employee) parking lot of a NYS Maximum Security Correctional Facility (Wende).
Many possible explanations come to mind but the first one that came to mine, is what caused my confusion...
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Did I win?
DetlefK
(16,484 posts)But seriously. "His favor" ...
Maybe it's God's favor that keeps the world going? Like the "daily bread" being a metaphor for God's mercy that surrounds us all the time?
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)No wait.... that's baba ghannouj....
onager
(9,356 posts)And "Hiz Favr" is actually getting shafted when compared to a REAL favorite of Gawd, Rush Limbaugh. A Mercedes? Pfft! Getouttahere! Limbaugh has a garage full of Maybach 57-S sedans. That's the uber-Mercedes. They cost $450,000 each.
Couldn't find anything about that license plate. Did find a cheerful story about one of Wende's former inmates...
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) A former school hall monitor who admitted strangling eight prostitutes and stashing their corpses in his home in the 1990s has died at a prison in western New York.
Prison officials said Kendall Francois, who was 43, died Thursday evening from apparent natural causes. He was an inmate at the maximum-security Wende Correctional Facility in Alden.
A former middle school hall monitor, he told police that he had solicited the women for sex and then killed them during the 22-month spree. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty in effect at the time.
A woman escaped and called police on Sept. 1, 1998, leading authorities to the decomposing bodies hidden in the garbage-strewn home he shared with his parents and younger sister. They were not implicated in the slayings.
Forensic specialists reassembled the skeletons of eight women out of nine who were missing from the Poughkeepsie area, gleaning information about how and when they were dismembered and ultimately helping identify them...
http://wivb.com/2014/09/12/serial-killer-of-8-dies-at-wende-correctional-facility/
WhollyHeretic
(4,074 posts)hall monitor? Unless it happened while he was a middle school hall monitor it doesn't seem like a telling, relevant, or even mildly interesting fact. I guess they are trying for the angle of good guy goes bad but middle school hall monitor really stretching that attempted narrative.
onager
(9,356 posts)No clue why. Maybe just the usual "amp up the scare factor" BS so prominent in the media. "SCARY KILLER WORKED AT YOUR LOCAL SCHOOL!!!" Bugga-bugga. Even though, as you say, his job didn't obviously have anything to do with the murders.
Now speaking of the Prosperity Gospel - how the mighty art fallen! Back in the 1980's, Jim Bakker was a multi-millionaire with his own TV satellite empire, an air-conditioned doghouse and a nauseatingly perky raccoon-faced wife. And Heritage USA, for a while the third most popular tourist attraction in the USA (after Disneyland and -World).
These days, Bakker is reduced to hawking overpriced "survival kits" on his web site. Because Jesus Is Coming Back Soon and you'll need this stuff to get thru the Tribulation. See below.
Long as I'm here - I gotta say, Jim Bakker must be one of the worst judges of character in the world:
--His friend and fellow pastor in Florida introduced him to Jessica Hahn, to make Tammy Faye jealous. That sure backfired. Hahn blackmailed his church into a $1 million payout. The American public may not have really understood his troubles with the Feds over timeshare sales. But they certainly understood "canoodling with church secretary and trying to keep it quiet."
--Bakker's really good friend Jerry Falwell offered to "temporarily" be the caretaker of Bakker's satellite empire. Only during Jim's "time of trouble." Soon as the ink was dry on that contract, Falwell tossed Bakker under the bus, publicly denounced him and took over complete control of Bakker's network. Falwell had been wanting to do that for years, so it's amazing Bakker fell for that one.
--When he went to prison, Bakker turned to his best friend Roe Messner. Asked him to watch over Tammy Faye. Messner certainly succeeded at that. While Bakker was in prison, Tammy Faye divorced him. And married Messner. (Messner later went to Federal prison himself, for bankruptcy fraud.)
Bakker built a Pentecostal empire in the 1980s before he was convicted of fraud for asking his followers to donate lots of money to become "lifetime members" of his organization, a deal that came with a vacation packages that could never be redeemed.
With that history, you'd think he'd want to be very careful about how he makes his money now. On his website, Bakker sells all kinds of things, from jewelry to books to DVDs to, as Talking Points Memo's Nick R. Martin noticed, "Survival Items to tide you through the End Times when apparently all supplies will be packaged in buckets, like his "Bakkers Dozen Emergency Fuel Buckets" for $800.
http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/05/jim-bakkers-doomsday-survival-gear-way-overpriced/52499/