Khandu, I am very pleased that you chose to share openly what you had already shared with me earlier today. Your struggles in this area have been much on my mind, all day. Since you came to us for help with these issues, I am going to offer some sisterly words. I will be pleased also to continue our e-mail discussion of this.As soon as you judge the people with whom you take issue... you have already become them. You have taken on the sin you abhor. Your effectiveness stops as soon as that occurs. I invite you to ask our Lord to restore it.
So the question is not, are you right about what you see? Of course you are, and you did not need us to tell you that. You already know it through logic and conscience.
I believe that the first question is, what do you (personally) do with the reality that so many are living, teaching, and preaching in error?
To try to first gain understanding, as I believe you tried to do, is a wonderful thing. I have seen your soft, sweet spirit often, in posts throughout the Forum. But dear... you know, you will not find too many here at the Mudcat who live, teach, and preach from the viewpoint you describe finding so wrong. So when you ask these questions here, see what answers you got. (Not me, not me, not me.... not so badly... not like that....) Your view was simply affirmed. And a number of people shared openly, in deeply moving ways, because you had created a thread couched in terms that caused them to think about a matter in a particular way.
Here, what I believe you can actually accomplish is gaining support for whatever you yourself choose to DO about what you see happening around you.
Whatever you choose to do, you will not find anyone who actually lives, teaches, and preaches as you describe amenable to the questions you posed. For these questions are cast in the paradigm of legalism and judgmentalism. Your "opponents" are already masters at this approach and they will "win" every time you take their approach as your own. If these people and their viewpoints were not so rigid, your questions would work. But you yourself know that you have tried them before. You know they did not work.
What I think we-- your friends-- can offer is support for the grief and outrage left behind from these attempts to be heard in the past, and a cheering section as you look ahead.
The larger question will be, who do you actually KNOW who holds these views on life and faith, and what is in the way of your lifting them up? Where are they stuck that needs your love and support and encouragement to a softer spirit?
What does Jesus say to YOU to do about it? What does your understanding of YOUR beliefs require of YOU in these matters?
To the rest of you, I would say this. I know the deep satisfaction of speaking with the openness many of you have found today in this thread. I pray that you will not receive the same treatment for it that I have, but I am not naive enough to think that just because it does not come in this thread, it will not come.
I also pray, and ask, that you watch carefully the atmosphere at this Forum. There are a lot of people here who find this kind of discussion incredibly painful to witness, and they have reasons for that which we must respect if we are true followers of the Christ. And these people, if they do not attack you directly in this thread, will, sooner or later, have "enough" with hearing one more time about Jesus, and they will boil over. It may be at me, it may be at you, it may be the next new Christian member of Mudcat who stumbles in here and finds the apparently open and "civil" forum irrestible. But every one of these threads has been followed by a backlash, and we have lost members and heart each time.
Every time we have a "civil" thread like this, people get more open throughout the Forum, and Bamm! Up comes the outrage. (It isn't always out here in the threads where all can see it.) Some of it is mischief. But some of it is real hurt rising to the fore for needed attention and respect. We are not called to judge which is which. We are called to love, whatever the behavior we receive. And it is not loving to jump up and down on sore toes just because you have an opportunity and feel you have a "right." We Christians do not have "rights." We are bought with a price, and we have given these "rights" to the One who paid for us, to be used as He directs.
So remember, the cycle has not stopped, just because you have not seen the flaming out in the open, lately. (You may have posted openly, today, but not yet boldly enough, to cause it to rise.) I pray that the next time this occurs, we will all have the wisdom to support one another more effectively than has been the case thus far.
I thought about nothing else all day, and this is the best I can see it right now. I would invite continued discussion privately in e-mail, on any points I have raised.