Michael:

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Frank

re: Jeffrey

SO funny, that passage wa thrown at me in the pixel-lashing I described above in comment #22. Hilarious!

Entertaining point, MP. It probably didn’t need so much elaboration really, except that we feel offended when we are called a liar or a “false teacher, deceiving and being deceived.” I recently cited a little list of foundational beliefs found in all the confesions and creeds, and was labeled a liar and false prophet for it. Why? Because I connected the dots among them illustrating the centrality of “Love & Life” to the gospel and I used the word “immortality” alongside “resurrection of the dead”, without speaking explicitly of “heaven”. Wow, that was all it took! This very orthodox, conformist ThD dude objected to almost every cardinal doctrine of the faith, just because I cited them in referrence to a concept he himself did not emphasize. Since nothing I said was actually false or falsifiably-proof-textable, in his eyes I was all the worse a liar, relying on spin and subtlety to lure men away from the true gospel of Christ. It was chilling!

My takeaway from that moment is that we men are far more frail thay we suppose ourselves. I wiki-clicked “Open Theism” as I read your article to make sure I understood it, and there I saw parallel lists of scriptures that alternately portray God “repenting” and his “immutability.” Each side had a lame explanation for it. Love is a far more reliable guide for men that is what we suppose we know to be truth. In faith as in life, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know that counts.”

Great article MP!

I think Paul may have disagreed.

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.”

That is, not only am I lying to myself and others, but I’m a pervert too.

Having had this quoted at me multiple times, I have the same criticisms of Paul that are here directed against some Christians’ rhetorical tactics.

1. If I’m wrong, I’m just that. Wrong. Not in denial of a truth I “really” know. I’m wrong.
2. To adapt an old joke, Paul’s notes probably read: “Weak point here. Shout louder.”
3. This is proof by intimidation. Throw in a threat of hell and it’s downright emotionally abusive.
4. It doesn’t work. On the contrary, it shows me how normally loving Christians can become complete pricks when given a Bible.

And above all, it’s an ad hominem argument.

I just noticed the last part of my comment in #19 was cut off.

It should have ended with:

It’s perfectly possible to heartily disagree without being heartily disagreeable.

mem,

Thanks. No offense taken. You are right. I did seriously overuse the commas in my comments above. Just couldn’t quite get my thoughts across coherently enough at the time.

To clarify: my original question really had more to do with how we deal on this blog with debating teaching that can be neither proved or disproved conclusively by the Bible. Like CMP, I can live with different perspectives that I don’t agree with. That is if they are presented in a respectful and well thought out manner. However, I too have been belittled by the opposition on more than one occasion.

That’s why I think it’s important to approach blogging with the attitude that we are not all always going to see eye to eye. Nor or we always going to be able to convince folks we’re right no matter how knowledgable about the subject we are. Sometimes we may have caused misunderstanding unintentionally by having just stated something too poorly for folks to clearly understand what we meant. Certainly that was the case in my comments above. Even I didn’t understand them, when I went back and read them!

Another thing we have to be aware of is that being honest about our shortcomings may not always be received well. I know I have felt betrayed sometimes when I tried to be tactful but someone took it as a sign of weakness instead. There are few things more frustrating than being jumped on when you extend an olive branch and someone chooses to slap your hand. That’s a serious “ouch” coming from a fellow Christian.

I do think some of the more serious misunderstandings we’ve seen here recently on some of the threads are caused because some people have deep theolgical divides that simply can’t be that easily resolved in the limits of the blogging medium. I personally find it extremely annoying when a debate gets uglier and uglier the longer it goes on. Hurling insults at one another does nothing to advance a discussion. There does come a point in every argument when it either advances toward a resolution or becomes a stalemate. Too often lately the areas of disagreement have gotten so out of hand it has resulted in the moderator having to close down the thread itself.

I also realize some misunderstandings come out of sheer frustration. If we’ve explained something over and over and folks still aren’t getting it, it can get pretty irritating for eveyone on the thread as well. When that happens our instinct to end it at any cost sometimes tends to kick in. We may resort to the worst case scenario of Plan B – Belittling. Chalk up yet another serious “owie’ from a fellow Christian.

No matter who among us is guilty to contributing to the blog wars (and anyone who posts here regularly has proabably done so), I agree with CMP that dirty fighting just needs to stop on all sides.

I get the gist of this post. I get it. I get it.

That being said, Scripture does have examples of liars being called liars. Satan’s called the Father of Lies.

I also think there’s harm done when liars aren’t being called liars.

While there’s harm done when using the word “liar” or the word “lying” too loosely, there’s also harm from not using those words or synonyms when they are applicable.

Obama is a liar.

Michael. I agree generally, but I would add that Mormons and JWs can both use lies if they think it will further the cause of Mormonism or the Watchtower. For JWs, it’s called theocratic warfare. I don’t think the rank and file do it as much as the leadership.

mbaker: I hope that didn’t come out the wrong way—no disrespect was intended.

No problem, mem. Not that important anyway.