ScoutNerd

I don't think I would have liked to been pushed for Eagle the entire way, but certainly at the end, every Eagle that I've known, myself included, need something for a kick in the pants to finish up the last bit. The drivers license thing did happen to a few friends of mine, it's called the "Wings before Wheels" incentive. My father figure wasn't my father, so he couldn't do such a thing, but he certainly made finishing the obvious choice when I was really close to it, but getting a bit burned out.

-Curtis

Dug, you keep going back to this, so I'll pose the question back at you...

Do you believe your own logic? do you believe that Homosexuality is not really all that immoral? Do you think that choices can only be free when they are unpredictable?

What if God has seen clearly all the outcomes of every choice of ours? It certainly would be within his abilities... Then the choice we make was still forseen but not required of us.

-Curtis

God being Good, Great or bad is not the debate here and has no bareing on the debate.Its not about his charactor, Its Free Will vs a Perfect God.

On the contrary, the character of God obviously is the main issue here. If he wasnt good, how could he be perfect? And if he wasnt creative, why would he give us free will?

Then on the topic of choice Im failing to see how knowing someones choice makes it any less of a choice for them. If God knows what I will choose, by all means the adventure of the choice is still there for me. Im still responsible for making the choice, and I certainly still have to go through much mental deliberation to make some of them. I think we need to point out the difference between knowledge of someones choice and control of it.

and I agree with OGE, well maybe I could recommend a few more contemporary authors (as to keep the argument of their ideas being outdated out of the picture - though they are very good writings, biblical, well thought out, I'd certainly call them true)... John Stott, CS Lewis, AW Tozer

Perhaps we should take this to a spin off thread, since were getting rather far from the initial question of what would you do?" though this topic is certainly something I'd like to keep discussing :-D. If you think it doesn't apply to scouting enough, then by all means, (esp. Dug) send me a personal message and we can keeping going by email.

(copied from personal message to Dug)

Assuming that if one person has free will, everyone does... if you know how your wife will react to something does that take away from the freedom of choice she exercises in reacting that way? I don't really have a good example of the outside-of-time because frankly, it's near impossible for us to grasp... I simply trust God to do things in a loving, holy and just fashion. Not really because God's knowledge is so vast, but because his character is so good. How much God knows is not as important to me as the character he has. At the beginning of the world God created us in His image... let us not try and return the favor in this day and age.

(then some addition)

Why should God have to conform to our logic?

A quote from CS Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" comes to mind...

"He's not a tame lion afterall" :-D

-Curtis

Col. 2:8

Wow, ok...

Let me start a response by pointing out that the Christian Church has had a debate over the nature of this argument for years. If the high up theologians have difficulties comming to terms with this, then I really don't expect to. Many people, including myself at times, put this away as one of those mysteries of God that we won't be able to figure out, but that we trust is true, because we trust the God who is in charge of it all... that being said, I have not ignored this subject. Being involved in a Christian group/club at an engineering university, my friends and I actually sit and ponder this kind of thing in depth. Here are some of the things we've come up with over the years.

1.) God created time, therefore He can not be defined by it. He exists in what we call the past, and future, the same as He exists in our present. In Exodus, God called himself "I am", thru which He was passing on the understanding to people of Him being the Self existant one, not defined by our reference frames :-D. Keeping this in mind God lets us have free will, lets us make our own choices. Just because He knows the outcome doesn't make it any less of an adventure/challenge/choice for us.

2.) Another possible explanation: God Created us, right? (is it safe to assume we agree there?) He knows every detail in our lives, every reaction to every situation, my friends and I joke that one of His hobbies is nameing the hairs on our head. He knows us so well because He created us. He knows us better than our parents/spouse/kids do, better than we do. (You said yourself that we're assuming God's knowledge is perfect, which I heartily agree with). Because of that, He know's how we'll react when presented with any choice. The choice is not of a required answer variety, but God still knows how we'll respond. Think of it in the same way that you can predict how you're best friend will react to certain good or bad news, but God can predict a whole lot more precisely, and a whole lot more... well, infinitly.

I hope that makes sense. Either or both of these is Biblical, and true, so feel free to tear them apart. :-D

The other part of the discussion was about imorality vs. God's Soverignty

I serve a God that is Holy and Just, and loves us with the Holiest of loves. He neither wants to force us to follow him, nor can he accept us as we are. That's what I've come to know that Christ is the only way for everything to work. Someone had to die for us to be justifed, so He could love us with his Holy love, and by sending his own son to do the dying, He showed us exactly how much He did (and does) love us.

Frankly, I'm perfectly fine with the idea that God allows sin, because God allows free choice, but we still must deal with the consequenses of those choices. It's not that Free will and God's omnipotence/perfection can't coexist, it's that the people with free will choose to go against God, therefore they deal with the consequences. Personally, I've decided that following God is more important than my free will, so I choose (freely) to do what God wants me to do.

"And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

...Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." (Romans 1:28,32)

well I hope that makes sense, and that you can find it as applicable to the topic as I can (and yes I did proof read it)

-Curtis

Finished reading the rest of it,

God is all knowing. (I personally believe he is apart from our time frame, so he has already ssen the choices we'll make, therefore is still soverign) that being said, of course there's free will. Why would such a creative God want to be followed/loved by a bunch of puppets?

-Curtis

For starters, I'm sorry if this has already been said, but I read about til page 3, then realized I'm very passionate about this issue, and couldn't postpone a reply long enough to get thru the last pages.

I would pull away, no doubt. Baden-Powell started this whole organization as one guy trying to instill good morals, and valuable skills into a bunch of boys, right? So if the BSA actually turn their backs on such morals as they've done a more than descent job of holding fast to, I would definitly feel too... well betrayed to be able to stay. I would pull a "Baden-Powell" and bring together any "hypothetical" sons I would have, and their friends, and do the same things that Scouts has been doing great for years. (I may or may not be slammed for saying this but...) Teaching our boys values is SO Much more important than following the edicts of the organization (if that wasn't true, the Boy Scouts would be nothing more than a well organized cult). I stick with scouts because I was raised in it, and I believe it to be a great way to instill those values in our young men.

I understand that the only hypothetical changes would be taking the socially charged issues of homosexuality and god out of the picture... but where do we get our values if not from God? What, besides God, is the final ultimate criteria for what's right and wrong? Certainly not this relativistic "it's right if you think it's right" nonsense. Giving in on any point would just brocast to the boys the idea that the values they've been learning for as long as they've been in Scouts have really been from such relativism, and that they could adopt if they wanted to, a moral standard where it's ok to do all the things we know (way deep down) to be wrong, like sexual immorality, or drugs. Foremost as a Christian, a child of God, and secondly as an Eagle Scout (one of the biggest scout nerds you'll ever meet) I wouldn't be able to keep going in this if it weren't for the values.

Hope I didn't offend anyone to badly,

Curtis H. :-D

Romans 12:1-2; Psalms 118:14

SMT376, I think I might be able to give you some ideas based on what you said. I've been on the pool staff of a boy scout camp for 6 summers now, teaching everything from swim lessons to Lifesaving MB, it's safe to say I've seen this kind of thing more than once. But a few questions to clarify...

1. You mentioned that he barely passed the second class req's. By this do you mean that he was in the water, swimming (or something close to it) for about 25m? if this is the case I know a whole lot of tricks to convincing the kid that the rest is nothing compared to what they've just accomplished.

2. Is his aversion to water go to an extreme, or is it an aversion to the deep end? Will he stand in the shallow?

get back to me and I might be able to give some help. (private message or on this post, it matters not :-D) A lot of this kind of thing can usually be dealt with by tricking the kid into doing what they think they can't do (without them realizing that their doing it) it requires a bit of sneakyness on your part, but it's more fun than it is work :-D

-Curtis H

Asst Aqua Dir. of MANY years,

Camp Frank Rand, NM

In my long time at Scout camp, the staff has defined class B uniform to mean scout pants and a scout related t-shirt. (if they're wearing shorts, then scout socks are req'd but you can't see them under pant legs anyway). there are indeed days when we are told to wear the same shirt (for example the camp staff offical shirt), and during all this time, every morning at flag ceremony we salute. The idea we've tried to emulate is that a uniform is more of a cohesive element than it is a certain shirt. This was told to us by the camp director who works for the council, and it was told to him by the Council's Chief Exec.

One thing that worked in my troop as a kid (given it was a big troup with 6-7 patrols) was having and "Honor Patrol". It would be based on (friendly!) interpatrol competitions, (patrol that was best at scout skills for example), and also which patrol was the most active with eachother outside of the troop events/meetings. I didn't realize it was anything special, but we had a close knit brotherhood going, once our patrol just got too small and had to be disbanded, and sent to different patrols, we were in tears because our patrol had meant so much to us. Give the scouts time during each meeting where they are encouraged to plan things of their own (for us it was the first 20 minutes after the opening flag ceremony, during our 2 hr meetings) During that time, we also had an adult patrol advisor who kept a nice balence of work and play. Basically, give the boys some reasons to have pride in their patrol, and find ways to make them realize that scouting is only fun if they make it fun :-D

good luck

-Curtis

Having spent 7 years, and 4 summers after that at a scout camp in those pants, let me tell ya... They grow on you :-D

The fabric is really durable (for middle and high school I only had to get new ones because I out grew them, not because they've worn out. And even then it was rare because they were really easy to hem to the right length- sewing MB anyone? :-D). Whenver the fabric gets wet, it dries SO quickly. And they most always look good, even for being piled up not-so-neated in the corner of a room, then thrown on 5 minutes before leaving for the scout meeting (guilty here :-D)

They're very easy to keep clean while camping, and therefore looking good even it the wearer reaks to high heaven :-D

And from being a lifeguard at a boy scout camp pool for more than a few summers, they are the absolute best thing to use for that close floatation requirement. (hands down)

-Curtis :-)

I'm new here, so I'll try not to be dogmatic,

I started (at 16) on Camp Staff as a Jr. Staffer,

but I've been going back every summer for 5 years now (this summer may be the 6th), so I am definitely qualified to be Sr. Staff. Every year we've had Jr. staff of the feminine variety (mostly sisters who first came as visitors of either campers or staffers), and every year we do admittedly have slight problems based in gender issues (guy and girl alone with tent flaps closed for example). That being said, I really don't think the problems (individually or in sum) outweigh the problems we have from normal interpersonal issues (if it were strictly male staff). Sometimes (coming from personal experience) having the girls around actually helps the work get done more quickly.

One of you, more experienced than I, said it before, we do become a family, but we start off as group of completely random people, who are going to live together and work as a tight-knit team for 9-10 weeks. That means that there are bound to be all sorts of problems/conflicts/disagreements no matter the gender makeup of the group. Some of the girls I've had the privilege(