Risking It All

[JosephShaydez]

Hello everyone. For those who don't know me, I have been on this forum for a few weeks. I am about to take a risk at what I am about to say, but I know it needs to be said. I love posting on this forum, but there is something that happened that rubbed me the wrong way. Now I strongly beleive in Christian unity, and that no matter what denomination we should all put aside our differences and stand tall in Christ. What I am about to talk about is what happened to my best friend on this forum. He is very strong in his faith toward Jesus, and he did absolutelty nothing wrong or in my opinion worthy of being banned from this forum. However a certain moderator thought differently. Now I know the admins and moderators have a tough and sometimes thankless job and I have nothing but respect for them, but I am completely dumbfounded on why a certain decission was made to ban my friend. Granted, my friend had a name that some people might find questionable (for those who even know what it is) which is Juggalo Preacha. Well I will clarify why he chose that name. The term "Juggalo" is what a secular band called Insane Clown Posse call's their fans. This juggaloism has grown to be an underground occult phenominon. Now let me clerify, I nore my friend are in to that life style anymore, becuase of all of the things it represented, that alone is what kept us away from the faith before we wisened up and followed the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now the whole reason my friend chose the name Juggalo Preacha was due to a scripture verse he got out of I Corinthians 9:20-21 which says: "When I am with the Jews, I become one of them to bring them to Christ. When I am with those who follow the Jewish laws, I do the same even though I am not subject to the law, so that I can bring them to Christ. 21: When I am with the Gentiles who do not have the Jewish law, I fit in as much with them as I can. In this way, I gain their confidence and bring them to Christ. But I do not discard the law of God; I obey the law of Christ."
Pretty much what that was saying was, he makes himself attractive to that certain group of people, and that is what my friend was doing, taking the name of a jugglao, being a Christian and seperated from the juggalo lifestyle, but presenting himself to the juggalos to win them to Christ. That is all he was doing. I think it was wrong to ban first and ask questions later. I know that sometimes you can't be to careful, but you could have just asked him before automatically judging him as a trouble maker. He didn't go and and stir up trouble and cuss people out. And to say that he needs to go to Church and grow more.... how do you know that he is not going to to church and growing? I guess what disturbed me the most was that one of your policies on this forum is that "you hate sin not the sinner." The fact is, my friend is not an un-beleiver, but even if he was, it just seemed like you didn't take the loving approach to it. If you had a problem with how he was presenting himself, you could of said something, he wouldn't of minded and probably would have obliged to your rules, policies and guidelines. But to me, it just seemes so wrong how this situation was handled. Now I know that this post might get closed and I might get banned. I would hate that to happen and that is the last thing I want to happen, is to get banned, cause I actually love coming to this forum. I just beleive that we should come together and sometimes we have to lovingly rebuke people when we see that they are doing something that doesn't seem right. Paul did it to Peter, and I just like Paul am no respecter of persons. I answer to God. Now if this very well is my last time to post because you feel what I am saying is to contraversial or it is breaking policy, then I apologize for breaking it and seriously didn't mean no harm. I just want to tell everyone that I enjoyed the times I got to chat with you, even if it was brief. And to the person who banned my friend Juggalo Preacha, I just want you to know I don't hate you and I care for you in the deepest brotherly way and if you have to ban me then I understand, I know you have to do what you have to do. But please, if you have any consideration in your heart, please try to reconsider unbanning my friend Juggalo Preacha. He meant no harm by doing anything. Remember that we are to be harmless as a doves and wise as serpents. Even if I do get banned, I do have one request, which is, that you e-mail me the reason why my friend Andy got banned at joseph_shaydez@yahoo.com . I am doing this to stand up for the rights of this board and my friend who was harmless in this whole matter, who did the best he could to follow your rules and policies, just as I have. Well that is all for now and I just wanted to say thank you for reading and God Bless everyone, even if anyone dissagrees with me. I still love you all and I am praying for you all.

~Josh~

[Straylight]

I'm going to lift the ban. The reason for the banning is mainly down to suspicion.. we've had a number of people joining in the past with contraversial names who have posted unusual things.. they have very often later gone on to post some really unpleasant material. This has been happening during the past few months - we have a serious troll problem on these boards, and this has affected the way that a lot of us mods/admins handle things.

This banning was obviously premature and I apologize to anyone I may have hurt/offended.

[Gypsy]

Thank you very much for presenting this in the manner that you did, Joseph. None of the moderators claim to be perfect, but we do try to do what is best for the board. Thank you for your understanding and honest, yet humble approach.

[JosephShaydez]

Thank you guys for being understanding. I know you have a hard job on your hands. Keep up the hard work.

[Juggalo_Preacha]

Thank you, Josh for what said and way handeled it. To Guy incharge around here. Thank you for leting me back on. I understand that ya'll can not be to careful.





God Bless
Much clown luv

Andy