I also do not feel persecuted. I just wanted to state that millions are persecuted all over the world, and were in Russia at some point as well

I ам the Good Shepherd - Я Пастырь Добрый
I give My life - отдаю жизнь Мою
No one takes it - никто не отнимает её
I Мyself give it - Я Cам отдаю её
What about the non-Christian persecuted? I walk through town and some ZZ Top-looking American is preaching homophobic cant through a megaphone. I get on a bus and every few yards it's 'WWJD?' and 'City of God?'. Apparently, 'the Millennium is Christ's birthday. Celebrate it here!' Turn on the computer and I get Karina with her 'helpful' lexical deluge and russkayalove with an inspirational tale about how we can all be brainwashed too if we shut our eyes and wish very hard. Surely this is worse than anything Daniel or Saul had to put up with ?

Bored with it. To tears almost.

If anybody wants to translate the following for me, they're welcome. It's for the sake of my Russian only. Honest. I'm turnin' the other cheek.


'The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.'

Mark Twain


'To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.'

Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo


'Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four.'

Ivan Turgenev


'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.'

'Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.... A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill.'


H. L. Mencken (both)