Erika Shupe *glower pout* Large Families on Purpose Part 5

[lauraloralara]

At this point, Erika's long-windedness is becoming a caricature of itself. The woman spent almost an entire paragraph on why she cuts an apple for Bible study. It's not like it's some great allegory, either - nothing about the seeds inside being like the seeds of faithfulness or whatever. No, just her explaining why she cuts an apple and why doing so is so very beneficial to her time in the Word. *smile* 

Also, interesting to note: one of the things Erika mentions asking for in her daily prayers is a larger home. She wouldn't need a larger home if she didn't have thirty million kids. But what do I know. *frown*

Ugh, just realized from reading the comments that this is a repost. Again!! My comments above still stand, though.

[ViolaSebastian]

Holy crap, she posted a looong winded explanation of why she recycles material.  TL;DR: She's changing it just enough to be "new" and since they had 1/3 of the readers they do now, most people haven't seen it anyway.

[OnceUponATime]

People aren't going to believe her right? I mean if they don't clean up all the spelling errors then they aren't doing a good job at 'modernizing and updating' the blog...

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This has been absolutely instrumental in my ability to learn strait from God's Word on my own.

 

The way she talks about doing her Bible study makes me laugh. Is reading her Bible not productive?

Quote

I do my Bible study first thing in the morning even before my shower for two reasons. One, because I've found that once I am showered my mind is off and running and I do not slow down to study God's Word.  If I showered first then I would start doing something productive immediately following that [...]

 

[TShirtsLongSkirts]

4 minutes ago, OnceUponATime said:

The way she talks about doing her Bible study makes me laugh. Is reading her Bible not productive?

I thought that too!  It really reads like she doesn't enjoy it at all.  "If I don't do it first thing in the morning then I'll get busy doing other more important stuff and won't get my time with the Lord!" Surely if it was that important to her she'd find time without it being a chore... 

[feministxtian]

I read the bible study post...and her bullshit about leaving the house. She doesn't want to leave Bob and the kids alone because they might get "off schedule". IME, most churches schedule men and women's studies on the same night. On those nights, there's usually child care, for the younger crowd and teen activities going on. 

IOW....she's fulla shit. 

[OnceUponATime]

9 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

I read the bible study post...and her bullshit about leaving the house. She doesn't want to leave Bob and the kids alone because they might get "off schedule". IME, most churches schedule men and women's studies on the same night. On those nights, there's usually child care, for the younger crowd and teen activities going on. 

IOW....she's fulla shit. 

our church usually had a selection of groups: men's, women's, single's, couple's, young adult's, new Christian's, general. The group (or group leaders) decided on which night it was (usually Tue, Wed, Thur). I don't think there was ever arranged childcare. Our youth events were always on Friday or Saturday nights. That meant that the parents who didn't have children old enough to stay home alone usually had a teenager who would babysit for them every week. That or they would go to bible study on different nights. It wasn't really a big issue because most of our groups started at 7.30pm, a time that most young children were already tucked up in their beds. If you had to babysit them you were paid a few bucks to watch tv. 

I don't understand her gripe about homework. We never had homework, or at least not in amounts that I remember having it. Most of our small groups used themes based on the sermon themes. I once lead a group, and while I had extra work to prepare for some evenings it was never excessive. Sometimes but not most of the time it was looking up a bit of extra resources if it was needed. On occasion I would prepare a lot of extra questions, or ask around the group if someone wanted to share a testimony about the them but yeah, not that time intensive.

Her needing to stay home for family time sounded a bit of a rubbish excuse. I wonder how many times Bob took the kids out to eat fast food while she went to Bible study before she stopped going.

 

[happy atheist]

Church homework? Two great tastes that taste great together!

Gotta say this does not make me want to reconsider my position of this whole religion thing.

[feministxtian]

My Tuesday night study has activities, "homework", to be done every day...takes me about 15-30 minutes. My recovery group also has "homework" that can be a little more intensive, but there's a reason for that. I'm usually out on Tuesday night, Thursday night and Friday night. Tuesday night, the Mr. stays home. Thursday and Friday nights, we're out together. 

Tuesday night and Friday night, there's a pot-luck dinner before the study time (yummy!) and on Friday nights, there's dessert afterwards. It's FUN, it's getting out of the house, it's definitely cheap...once a month, I have to bring something to add to the pot-luck on Tuesday nights, on Friday nights they have a donation bucket. 

Now that I think about it, maybe Erika stopped going because she set herself up as THE paragon of virtue and the other women just thought she was a bitch. 

 

[Coy Koi]

2 hours ago, lauraloralara said:

At this point, Erika's long-windedness is becoming a caricature of itself. The woman spent almost an entire paragraph on why she cuts an apple for Bible study. It's not like it's some great allegory, either - nothing about the seeds inside being like the seeds of faithfulness or whatever. No, just her explaining why she cuts an apple and why doing so is so very beneficial to her time in the Word. *smile*

I'm glad she explained about the apple. When I first heard of it, I was obviously confused and alarmed. "But how and why would anyone eat an apple?" I wondered nervously. I had all kinds of questions about how this apple would be prepared, what advantages it would offer over other choices of refreshment, and if there would be any time saved over the 20 minutes it would inexplicably take to make a cup of tea (and don't even get me started on the sugar in tea making somehow making you fall back to sleep). Let me tell you, she answered all those questions and more. And now I can finally stop drinking tea during Bible study like a moron. *laser-sight beam*

[OnceUponATime]

1 minute ago, feministxtian said:

My Tuesday night study has activities, "homework", to be done every day..

can you give an example? (I'm assuming you're referring to a Bible study). Is it something like finding someone to share your testimony with? or bookish work like memorize the book of Jude?

[feministxtian]

Just now, OnceUponATime said:

can you give an example? (I'm assuming you're referring to a Bible study). Is it something like finding someone to share your testimony with? or bookish work like memorize the book of Jude?

There's usually a couple of pages to read and some questions to answer...they take thought and reflection, and that's usually what takes the most time...The Tuesday night study is an application study on the Armor of God...and each week discusses a different part of it (it's a 7 week study)...so the "homework" is application time...IOW...how can you apply these ideas to your own life and spiritual walk. 

My recovery group homework is more of guided self-reflection...there's the 12 steps and 8 principles (not Gothard principles), working to deal with and look at certain parts of life...my husband is in an addiction group and I'm in a life issues group. The life issues groups (men and women) deal with things like PTSD, depression, being a DV victim...there's also a separate vets PTSD/trauma group for both men and women and those are led by trained LCSWs who specialize in that particular thing from the local VA hospital, who are also church members (a friend of mine leads the women's group). 

Sorry I got a little long-winded there...

 

[OnceUponATime]

@feministxtian  that sort of homework makes sense. If I had that sort of homework from a bible group I would make it part of my personal bible time. I wouldn't get all ' I have no time to do anything' about it. (looking at erika there and not you!)

 

[feministxtian]

1 minute ago, OnceUponATime said:

@feministxtian  that sort of homework makes sense. If I had that sort of homework from a bible group I would make it part of my personal bible time. I wouldn't get all ' I have no time to do anything' about it. (looking at erika there and not you!)

 

It IS what guides my personal time. I usually do one in the morning and one in the evening. It's not like it takes ALL my time. Heck, I can throw a load of laundry in the wash, turn on the dishwasher, stuff like that before I get started and I know that when I'm done my study, the laundry will be done or something else has been accomplished. I curl up here on the couch, play some music (I hate Christian music so I'm usually listening to classic rock) and get going. Mr. xtian works on his throughout the day in 10-15 minute spurts. 

When I go back to work, it'll be a little rougher, but like so many other things, if it's important, you'll find time!

[mango_fandango]

There's been a post on FB about this whole post recycling thing. Here's a snippet:

 

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 All that to say, if you see something come up as new that looks familiar, it is but, its highly likely that its not entirely the same as when you read it years ago.

 

Except they virtually ARE the same posts. You can really tell, because sure she updates the kids' ages, but sometimes doesn't update other bits so things jar. One of the biggest clues is in the House Tour post. She's got photos of the new triple bunks, but in one of the photos there's a sign that says BOYS, and *just* in the photo you can see a crib. Spencer's six now, he'd've last needed a crib ages ago. 

She's also deleted all her old schedules. Seeing as those are one of her major selling points, and she said that it was a frequent request so she'd created a section in the topics sidebar, I wonder why she deleted them. She's still got some scheduling posts like why they're important yah yah yah, but all the samples she posted are no more. They have ceased to be. They have expired and gone to meet the great Timetable God in the sky.

 

[defraudingjezebel]

Erika thinks she is so smart and can explain away what she is doing. Ummm... no. Here's another prime quote from her announcement:

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This is not an attempt to revive some old work or for a lack of material to write about now or writers block etc. We have been doing some house cleaning of older material, updating in some cases doing major re-writes in others and outright deletion for some. Sometimes this is because we have learned new things, the content was in error or misleading, outdated, broken links, obsolete products or places, or just bad writing. 

[bolding mine]

I can't even snark that. The jokes just write themselves at this point. 

[desertvixen]

@OnceUponATime, but if she corrected the grammar errors, she'd be depriving her new readers of the complete Shupe experience!

[THERetroGamerNY]

Regrettably: There are actually worse blogs in the 'sphere, as far as typographical sins are concerned.

Some Wordpress Christian blogs use walls of all caps, combined with typed-out prayers.

Issue I have with Erika's typos: A good twice-over review of the post, with a spellchecker could avoid them.

[Jingerbread]

How does it 20 minutes to make a warm drink?  Is she using a mortar and pestle to smash up tea leaves, then heating the water with all the heat she blows out her ass?  And how the hell does it take 3 minutes to cut an apple in half?  She sucks at managing her time.

[iweartanktops]

10 hours ago, happy atheist said:

Church homework? Two great tastes that taste great together!

Gotta say this does not make me want to reconsider my position of this whole religion thing.

You don't want to write a ten page essay on Jebus? 

[Eternalbluepearl]

15 hours ago, desertvixen said:

@OnceUponATime, but if she corrected the grammar errors, she'd be depriving her new readers of the complete Shupe experience!

 Hilarious!

[JillyO]

11 hours ago, Jingerbread said:

How does it 20 minutes to make a warm drink?  Is she using a mortar and pestle to smash up tea leaves, then heating the water with all the heat she blows out her ass?  And how the hell does it take 3 minutes to cut an apple in half?  She sucks at managing her time.

No kidding. Apparently, her kids only need thirty minutes of math "lesson" per day, and yet it takes her twenty minutes to make a cup of tea (during which time she can't even do anything else because apparently she has to watch the water boil or something).

[slickcat79]

12 minutes ago, JillyO said:

No kidding. Apparently, her kids only need thirty minutes of math "lesson" per day, and yet it takes her twenty minutes to make a cup of tea (during which time she can't even do anything else because apparently she has to watch the water boil or something).

Maybe that's why it takes so long. #awatchedpotneverboils

[THERetroGamerNY]

Well, she just teaches the girls multiplication, so that eases things.

[happy atheist]

21 hours ago, Coy Koi said:

I'm glad she explained about the apple. When I first heard of it, I was obviously confused and alarmed. "But how and why would anyone eat an apple?" I wondered nervously. I had all kinds of questions about how this apple would be prepared, what advantages it would offer over other choices of refreshment, and if there would be any time saved over the 20 minutes it would inexplicably take to make a cup of tea (and don't even get me started on the sugar in tea making somehow making you fall back to sleep). Let me tell you, she answered all those questions and more. And now I can finally stop drinking tea during Bible study like a moron. *laser-sight beam*

 "Drinking Tea During Bible Study Like a Moron" is our newest post count title!

[THERetroGamerNY]

Thanks to this thread I now have a mental image in my head of Erika's oldest sipping tea like a moron, and reading some book titled "Godly Math for Girls Trapped Indoors: Multiplication and your Vagina"

Because in Fundie math 1+1=Let God plan the answer!