water_boy1999

Well, he is becomming a lawyer so he is already on a one way route to hell. lol....

Really, I think it is a rather smart idea. Perhaps he will find something more than just his networking potential.

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Doh!!!!


-Homer Simpson

basmoq

all I can say is, yes he's a whore, but he's a damn smart one...

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"There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need
a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them."

Seer666

Whore. Total whore. Brillint, forward thinking, and I have nothing but respect for him, but still a whore.

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Bad spellers of the world untie!!!

I am the one you warned me of

I seem to have misplaced the bullet with your name on it, but I have a whole box addressed to occupant.

Psycho Dad

This shit goes on all the time. Not that it makes it right, but it goes on. I went to a church once where a guy who owned a Dodge dealership went. He quite often parked a Viper on the sidewalk in front of the building as if it were on display. There were plenty of others besides him inside peddling their wares.

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Don't always trust the opinions of experts.

Rodney

I'd say he's a user, and leave it at that. He wants to use others to gain success, and he wants to use you and Ratbastid to help him get into position to meet his goals. A good user will unhestatingly ask anything of anyone, without shame. He wants you to help him find the right church, help him learn to play a social game so he can fit in...

The problem I have with users is that most of them see _everybody_ in light of what they can get from them. I've only known a few who can separate friends from business. I tend to keep people like this at a distance because, somehow, although they find much to ask for they don't often find much to give back.

There's nothing in the Bible that says, "Thou shalt not use." But you can definitely look at a person and say, "That person sees people as individuals," or "That person sees people as means to an end." Then decide whether that's a good person to have in your life, or not.

As for judging -- sure, we should. all the time. What we owe to others is to make informed, thoughtful judgments. I can look at a friend who's killing himself with drugs and say, "Well, he seems happy and he's made his decision; who am I to judge." Or I can say, "He's out of control, and I'm getting him into treatment." I might be right or wrong in either case. But if I honestly believe that he needs help, _I'm_ a whore, sliding through life just giving people what they want instead of what they need, if I decide it's too hard to try. I might end up losing a friend or getting people angry at me. But if I honestly believe it's the right thing to do -- and am willing to constantly reevaluate what I'm doing, just in case -- then I've got to.

neddy65

If you want Fellowship, go to church, if you want to network join a service group. Your friend is a whore.

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If you're travelling at the speed of light, and you turn the headlights on, do they do anything?

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die!

Drink Dickens' Hard Cider because nothing makes a girl smile like a Hard DIckens' Cider!

Prince

I don't think it's such a big deal. As long as he will be providing actual services and not cheating old ladies out of their savings, I don't see what the problem is. It's not like this would be the first time that God is being used for making money. After all, quite a few churches do it non-stop, not to mention television evangelists.

Besides, he's in law school.

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Who is John Galt?

Esco

Sure he's a whore, but he's not the only one. Many people go to church for many different reasons. I'm sure not all of them necessarily revolve around God.

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The user formerly known as BlingBling

spived2

Rich, churchgoing people need lawyers too....

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"This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." - V

raeanna74

Yeah he may be a bit of a whore. I don't think he's making a wise move.

I would never do business with a Christian brother from my own church unless I was doing it in the mindset of it being for charity. Not expecting payment or payback. I have seen my Dad do business with church members many times and more times than not he does not get full payment or they complain about having to pay. The other members go into it with the midset that my Dad is a "Christian brother" and will GIVE them his services or materials in the attitude of charity. You can do business with someone who goes to church but don't do business with co-church members. It's just not wise. He should find other avenues of meeting people. Town organizations and political functions in town or school functions. Church is a dangerous place to do business. I guarentee he'll get burned. (I worked for a church in their parochial school - worst job I ever had, worst pay, and worst treatment ever.)

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"Always learn the rules so that you can break them properly." Dalai Lama
My Karma just ran over your Dogma.

mystmarimatt

I suppose you could turn on Benny Hinn when he's at your house, and kinda let him figure out the implication from there.

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Words of Wisdom:

If you could really get to know someone and know that they weren't lying to you, then you would know the world was real. Because you could agree on things, you could compare notes. That must be why people get married or make Art. So they'll be able to really know something and not go insane.

BCD

I wouldn't say that behaviour makes him a whore, as much as it shows what a phony manipulator and greedy opportunist he is. It also shows how completely clueless the guy is.

I am a lawyer myself and attend a pretty wealthy church (no, I did not select the church for networking reasons, which personally I find reprehensible). What this guy will find is that his attending a church solely for networking purposes will actually work against him. This is for a combination of reasons, including the fact that (i) most wealthy people already have a lawyer, (ii) many of the existing, long-term members of the church are probably lawyers themselves, and (iii) people entrust important legal matters (at least the matters your typical attendee at a wealthy church would have) with someone they know VERY WELL (not just some guy you sat next to one time in chuch) or someone they are referred to based on the lawyer's reputation as being very skilled (not a brand-new lawyer straight out of school). Perhaps just as important, a lot of wealthy people are very sophisticated in business matters and in dealing with people in general. They will smell your naive little friend's phoniness and hucksterism - as this stranger starts hitting them up for legal work shortly after he meets them - a mile away. So, not only will they not hire him, but they will "run" in the opposite direction and probably warn others about him.

Having said that, let me also make one other comment. The greedy and phony guys I went to law school with, who talked like your friend about having all of these wealthy people as clients and having a sophisticated law practice, are all doing crappy ambulance-chacer work for the complete scum of the earth. They are also the ones who have had bar complaints made against them. I hope your friend grows up before this fate is bestowed on him.

final_identity

Here's a parallel, and frustrating, situation I've encountered. In a (rather large) North American metropolis I've lived in, there is a (very bad) t-shirt shop. It sells "black" t-shirts. Shirts that say, "It's a Black thing, you wouldn't understand," and "Fight the Whitey" and other things that I find racist, but that are currently vaguely "OK" to present anyway.

If the shirts and the business were judged strictly on their merits alone, the shop would probably go out of business. Shoddy workmanship, never open on time, trashy rude counter staff, cheap materials.

But there is enough sentiment in the "black community" in this city that "all new black businesses need to be supported" that, even if they don't agree with the shirt slogans, many people buy enough to keep them in business. "We want to give them a chance to succeed." I hate it.

Are those t-shirt makers "whores" or just good businessmen? Are they "inappropriately" playing the race card, just as this budding lawyer is accused of "inappropriate" playing the soul card?

Similarly, in a choir I was once in, I experienced the following. A soprano was very enamored of the works by a particular living composer, a modernist from her home land. She worked for several years to convince the conductor to put one of his pieces on our repertoire. Ins and outs of season after season went along, she was a successful mainstay of the soprano section, reliable and a strong singer.

Finally, the conductor included that guy's music in a concert. She was elated, and even more so, it was a piece with a sizable soprano solo in it. She auditioned for that solo, as did a few other weaker singers who had very little personal interest in this particular composer or the process by which his work had become part of our concert.

The manner in which the auditions were held required that the prospects sing their potential solo before the entire choir. So I heard all four auditionees. Three were horrendous. Couldn't sing loud enough, didn't keep time, didn't know the notes, clearly would never be able to master this complicated modern piece in time for the concert. One, the woman who loved this piece and this composer, was excellent. And I think my judgment of her is not extreme. It was a clear case of A, F, F, F, and I'd bet all the non-auditioning choir members would have agreed with that assessment.
She was so excellent partly because of her love of the work, partly because she knew the language natively, partly because she viewed this as a chance in a lifetime and therefore worked quite hard to prepare -- much harder than any of her competition.

But the conductor gave the solo to one of the other three. "I wanted to give her a chance," he explained. "She auditions all the time and never gets to do a solo."

He was judging on the basis of something other than ability or righteousness. He thought he was being nice. But every time you choose someone or something out of a set of options, you also by definition reject the remainder of the options. He forgot that part.

I almost quit that choir over that incident. The performance sucked, mostly because the soprano soloist couldn't hack it AND DIDN'T CARE ENOUGH to learn the work. But also because solidarity among the whole group who knew the sob story was just shattered.

What the conductor did, what the t-shirt guys did, and what this lawyer is evidently doing, is human nature.: hope to include context that should not be involved in a decision. Pick which Presidential candidate has the nicest smile, or seems least likely (or most likely) to sleep around and be sexy, rather than choose the one whose policies most mesh with our own.

I don't like it when people do that. But I find that when I DON'T -- and say something like, "But the real issue here is X, not Y" -- people get pissed off at me. "How can you ignore the fact that he does / doesn't seem to sleep around?" What does that have to do with politics?

What did the skin-color of the t-shirt guys have to do with the desirability of their product? Nothing. What did the singing ability of the loser who got the solo have to do with her successful audition? Nothing. What does a church attendance have to do with whether or not a lawyer can defend a case well? Nothing. Nothing at all. But people are stupid enough to think it does.

The Baptists always seem to me to be the worst at this -- they always "make sure to give business to members of our community." That's just SO bigoted ...

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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche

Fearless_Hyena

I think both Rodney and final_identity are mostly on point here. And normally I think I wouldn't even agree!!

But regarding your friend, yes he is:
1) being lazy, by asking you all to find an "affluent" church for him, I guess
2) taking advantage of your friendship, which sometimes could be called "networking"...
3) is a "user" indeed

But I would also call that a form of "Social Engineering", which can be used for both good and bad. It's a "hacker" term. yes we "hackers" are the BAD GUYS (sarcasm there)
I myself am good at social engineering, and I've never used it to harm anyone, either, but some people do.

lurkette -- I would say that you are a step ahead of him because you recognize his game. You know it, so try your best to protect yourself against it (and the others who may not recognize it). I would avoid helping him out as far as you can, but you don't gotta be rude either. He's only going by what he knows, which may/may not be the wrong way. Joining a church just to get connections & clients is the wrong way IMHO, but it works too. He'll probably get more business.

My outlook is that it's really up to the people he comes in contact with. They've got to learn to protect themselves against jackasses who try to take advantage of them.

Just by posting this thread, it seems you know this and you are protecting yourself from this nonsense too!

thespian86

God: Hello ___________! You are one who has been faithful.... Only Lip.... I see, well this is the door to hell, see you!"

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EX: Whats new?
ME: I officially love coffee more then you now.
EX: uh...
ME: So, not much.

final_identity

God: "You are one of the ones who has been faithful. What's that, it was actually only lip-service to get ahead? Well, I don't mind. Lip-service is better than no service. Welcome to heaven!"

-or-

God: "You are one of the ones who has been faithful. What's that, it was actually only lip-service to get ahead? Guess what! That IS service to me. Welcome to heaven!"

-or-

God: "You are one of the ones who has been faithful. What's that, it was actually only lip-service to get ahead? Fool, you know yourself so poorly. You should give yourself more credit! I certainly do. Welcome to heaven!"

-or-

God: "You are one of the ones who has been faithful. What's that, it was actually only lip-service to get ahead? Well then, God helps those who help themselves. Welcome to heaven!"

now repeat all of the above with "Welcome to hell!" at the end as well, and you've got some of the many options. I'm amazed at how simplistic many people's views of God's potentialities would be.

Not that I think he's some kind of long-bearded adult humanesque male who talks in English. But this post is still a useful meatphor ...

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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche

waltert

your friend is admirable...there are enough people who go to church and dont mean any of what they say...he should blend in nicely

BoCo

Your friend is a jackass, but maybe going to church will end up having positive results for him other than just making money.

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Activism is a way for useless people to feel important.

MSD

Maybe he'll find a goal in life other than acquisition of money. We can only hope that something positive comes from this.