Hi Luke!

you are wrong, and I am correcting you.

Brent

Dear Chuck and everyone else,

I am sorry for that last post that I put on here.  It was dishonoring and disrespectful.  I am sorry and this is the reason that I erased it.  I was wrong.  

Thanks Brent for telling me.

A Brother in Christ,

Luke Robinson

May I suggest that you call John on the phone?  Soft-spoken...polite.  Worse things could happen.

what a spectacle.

brent and chuck:
look at yourselves! you are falling all over each other trying desperately to do damage control on john's behalf. you are doing this because you can see how out of line he is, but you don't want to admit this too openly because of some kind of awe you have of him that relates in some way to his ability to criticize the assembly. of course he is really good at harshly criticizing the assembly: he would appear to be harshly critical of pretty much everything and everybody. he has been building up his criticism muscles for decades. its his specialty. its not that he has any great insights, rather he is a kind of criticism bomb, and you were hoping to contain the direction he would blow in. now you've got your hands full. are you suprised by this? he is just warming up. he established his posting pattern pretty quickly: he looks for someone to say something he can criticize, then he swoops in for the kill. if they are still wriggling, he looks for their weakest and most sensitive points and hits them again as hard as he can. he fights dirty, and for no reason. and you want us to just ignore this kind of posting? live in denial? "oh, look, john just insulted that nice young man's father. now he is mocking that woman who suffered abuse. heh heh heh - thats our john. isn't he cute? he is such a kidder." i see him viciously and deliberately trying to hurt people, and i am not amused. my interpretation of your post, chuck, was very similar to luke's. its like you are chuckling a bit and saying "ok, john, c'mon, please stop trying to deliberately crush innocent people - lets get on to the real reason we keep you around: crushing mike zach."

i'm sure there is more corruption to be exposed, and i think the only way such corruption can ever be healed is by an open and honest facing up to the facts of what has been going on. if john has such amazing and valid points then let him write an article about them. in my mind, there is no excuse for allowing him (or encouraging him!) to bully the people on this board, whether they are in or out of the assembly. bullying is always bad, period.

i decided to engage john in open debate because it is easier for me to watch him come after me than other people on this board. i am totally unafraid of his clumsy yet vicious attacks, but he can and has really hurt other people. i feel a sense of responsibility for that because i am helping admin this board. it grieves me. i am perplexed that it does not grieve you.

just out of respect for the integrity of the historical record, john malone was never banned from this board for anything he posted. after i put up that header message telling everyone to place nice in the sandbox, john deleted all of his own posts and went away, all by his own choice. maybe a week later he came back and dropped into a chat room under the assumed name "mdeadly" and tried to freak everyone out by anouncing he had hacked into the website. meanwhile he was sending brent a barrage of emails, and when brent became convinced john had finally crossed the line in some things john had emailed to him, brent decided to ban him from the bb. thats when john started his own website, naming this place as "vile" etc. but apparently john has been wanting back into this vile place pretty badly, because he finally convinced brent to publicly apologize and unban him, and now he is back in all his glory.

i will answer john's childish attacks on my character another time. for those of you who stood up for me, a heartfelt thank you. it means a lot to me. and i also thank you, brent, for putting confidence in me. i will not let you down. even if i disagree with your decisions on occasion   i think it is good and healthy when we can have honest differences of opinion and still trust one another.

this for now, and more as time allows,

brian

John,
You ego speaks a lot louder than your words. Desist.

you are really milking this angle, aren't you? you have written maybe 10 open accusations against me on this board in the past 24 hours, claiming that i have never been saved, and never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and made many ugly conclusions about my character as a result. these claims only prove what a fool you are to those who actually know me. what is your basis for this? simply that from the time you started making these wild accusations, i had all of an hour to produce my entire spiritual biography for you to paw through, otherwise i was conceeding the point?

i recieved the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior when i was five years old. i remember it clearly. i was babtised when i was 13 years old. from the time i was a small child, the one overarching goal of my life was to serve God - it was all i ever wanted, more then life itself. there was nothing i would not sacrifice for this noble calling. it was all the meaning in my life. those of you who knew me know how seriously and deeply i was committed. as a result, some of you may even have a general sense of how painful it has been for me to be forced to question what was for so long the most basic definition of my existence to me. what threw everything into question for me was the inconsistency and hypocrisy i witnessed in the assembly.

the only thing i will say about the current state of my faith is that i am no longer sure what to believe in. i have a lot of painful soul-searching i am in the middle of. i deeply respect the christian faith. i am healing from third-degree burns and i don't feel like exposing them to a bonfire. i finally am exposing them, but not for your sake, john. i am saying these things so that those who don't know any better then to be misled by john's cruel behavior won't be.


who is served by your treatment of me, and others you disagree with? certainly not Jesus Christ. you say intentionally hurtful things in order to try and win arguements that you could not win by strength of mind alone. you attempt to confuse the issue by attacking the person you are debating with, rather then presenting your side of the argument. this is a common logical fallacy (obviously the most horrible person in the world could present a valid counterpoint), but what makes you so much worse than the typical illogical debater is how vicious you become in your attempts to hurt and discredit people. you enjoy it.


first of all, since when have you had a problem with mocking?
second, lots of different people go into the mission field, such as george geftakys.
third, even though people who do not deserve respect do go into the mission field, i do instinctively respect those who go because in the vast majority of them it shows a sincerity of committment that i can strongly identify with.
fourth, i wasn't mocking them. i was communicating how absurd this situation is becoming. then again, once you fall down the rabbit hole, who knows how far you may go...?



this balatant threat and open declaration that you are going to try and run me off the boards is an open violation of your user agreement. however, since brent is the one who escorted you back onto this website, i feel my hand are tied in this matter and i defer to his judgement of when you have crossed enough lines to be curtailed. i still would not yet ban you, because everyone deserves a chance to change their ways.


what boastings are you talking about? i have said nothing against god or christianity. don't try to make this into a holy war. all the things you have said about me are a direct result of my challenging your position on spousal abuse. you quit defending your position and focused on trying to run me off the boards.

others are praying i remain as admin. you will all get an answer - one or the other will happen.

if brent ever wants me to step down as admin, he wouldn't need to boot me. i wouldn't be trying to hack back into the website, and i wouldn't start setting myself up under assumed names, as you did. all i would need from him is a simple request to stop being an admin. done, and no hard feeling. but until that comes from him, i will do the best job i can as an admin.


and yet you did make a public declaration. why exactly?
i am not cackling. this is the saddest and most distasteful job i have faced since joining this project.
"flood of lies..."?? a flood would indicate i am posting at an amazingly high rate, yet you post easily twice as much as i do in direct response to me, and in open attacks on me. i simply don't have as much time as you do to waste in this necesary silliness.

what lies have i told, specifically? and don't say the best lies contain some truth, and leave it at that. this is another one of john's famous innuendos. if you cannot identify lies in what i have written, then all charges must be dropped and a bigger man than yourself would aplogize for slandering me.


thats so thoughtful of you, john. but don't you think you are reading a bit too much into a mere message board? you are setting yourself up, all over what? a discussion about how to handle situations of spousal abuse? yeah, i still think they should be reported to the authorities.  


and yet another of john's now-famous innuendos. what deeds have i done that are evil, exactly, john? argue with you?

i am wasting too much time on this nonsense. i hope you get my point across for me soon. i wonder how much more it will actually take?

brian[/quote]

As one who has had a lot of experience on the Internet in the form of discussion groups (and I'm sure there are many here coming out or still in the assembly who may not be so familiar with such things) there are people out there who are known as 'trolls'.

Trolls used to be defined as an ugly-looking ogre who would wait for innocent passers-by and tear them to pieces.

In the modern sense of the word, a troll is someone 'addicted to negative attention', 'an annoying pest looking to start an argument', 'someone who states their viewpoint over and over', or 'someone obsessed with a narrow topic'.

As the history of John Malone Sr.'s posts have shown since his posting privileges were restored, he's much more interested in getting attention and starting arguments (otherwise known as 'flame wars' in Usenet jargon) in his ad hominum attacks on Brian and others. He has made some positive contributions as well, which I do not discount; however when he starts in on someone I simply ignore him. To reply to his attacks, innuendo and/or accusations is just to meet his need for attention.

I'm sure a phone call to John Malone Sr. will achieve the same effect for attention, and it is clear that he is a cogent and reasonable individual. And I'm sure he has some positive contributions to make. In the interest of free-speech and 'letting the light in' I agree with Brent's decision to restore John Malone Sr.'s posting privileges; however in view of the fact that he may attack a particular person's viewpoint at any time, we all need as a group to simply keep in mind whether or not a perceived attack from him would only further a 'troll-like' desire to receive negative attention.

This board and positive contributions from so many people, including Mr. Malone's at times, needs to be preserved. Brent and Brian have spent a lot of time and energy to put all this together, and there's a lot of hurting people who need the wisdom and experience of many others who have already left to help in the healing process.

The Lord knows that I'm still healing after six years. I couldn't contribute to the post on stuff I got away with during my 15 years in the assembly, because I was so earnest in my endeavor for what I thought was God's best at that time.

(Putting on asbestos flame-retardant outfit) Mr. Malone, it is my hope that people will learn to ignore you when you are clearly speaking out of line, and that they will also listen to what you have to contribute as it is clear you know a lot about theology and assembly experience.

Written sincerely,
Dale Yuzuki

John,
Your love of debate is getting the best of you and it's not furthering your cause at all. Ben's right and so is Dale.  Don't be a "troll" anymore. We need your input not your vituperative words.
Pat