Very gracious… I respect your honesty and your ability to admit when you were wrong.

We are called to love our enemies… its just a flippin’ shame our enemies are, at times, our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Shalom

Thomas
Motherwell, Scotland

Good for you, Josh. Well said.

Yeah mon, it b cuz U a nice guy.

Here’s the root problem: “I’m still learning to love fundamentalists as much as I love pagans”. I’m neither…so you can already luv me dude!

*waving*

Hey Jamie! Been a long time time, bro…

there is room at the cross for you

Josh,

It takes a man to say he is wrong. I am curious if I can learn anything from you guys with what is wrong with the church. I know what is wrong with the church primarily and that is man is involved with it. But what really disturbs me the most is the lack of scripture that you guys hold onto. Seriously how do you know what truth is? By your feelings, what pagitt or maclaren say? How do you decide what is right and wrong?

Nicholas,

In the previous discussion with you I still wanted to talk about the Bible and scripture. In this combo box it is hard for me to distinguish if you are really interested in knowing what is true or if you were being sarcastic. I am not as cool as either of you two to know. Anyways a good debate on scripture is always fun.

I am always questioning my faith. Do I really believe all this stuff. I try and take a look at the other sides of things but I always come back to scripture and put my faith into the promise of Christ. If you start picking and choosing what you want to believe in the Bible then you are going to have some messed up things. If God created this universe then how can I not believe He could write a love letter to know Him and how to live? I believe the bible, yeah are there some difficult things in it? Yes but it is truth over and over again I see it in my life daily.

Wes

Headphonaught,

I am not against a person but I am against anything that goes against sound doctrine, the Apostles teaching and the Bible itself. If the Bible is not 100% true then I will never really know if any of it is true. But I have seen what it does for people who embrace it, including myself. The inner joy and peace that it has brought to me is amazing. It saved my marriage (9 years ago), it taught me what true love is all about (obedience not a feeling), and it has given me hope.

Why am I against it you may ask, because people are going to perish. I want to practice 1 Peter 3:15 but [a]sanctify (A)Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready (B)to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the (C)hope that is in you, yet (D)with gentleness and (E)reverence;

Now here is my problem with gentleness and reverence. I can be ummm lets say not the most gentle at times which I pray for.

thanks for the comments wes. believe it or not most of us value and esteem scripture in a very high way. so much so that we don’t want to bastardize it with our attempts at cramming it into the interpretative box of the last 400 years of church history.

and the conversation is really too nuanced and too fundamentally different for us to talk about it without some cursory readings in the academic world. i’m sure nick could recommend some for you. but if you’re interested, email me and i’ll give you some works to get started on that will give you a basic start for understanding some of the problems of objectivity and certainty.

also . . . i’m glad the bible saved your marriage and has brought joy and peace to your friends who have embraced it. but not all of us have been as lucky. for many of us it’s been a thorn in our side and caused us many problems. this is not to say we want to get rid of it because of our problems with it. we’re just tired of it being used as a club to beat us and others.

Josh,

It was Christ who did all that for me. I saddens me to know that the scripture is a thorn in your side. It may be difficult, it may cause me pain in my life but it reveals God to me and I love Him for that.

Wes…

Thanks for your response.

I am a theological simpleton… haven’t been to a seminary or anything… so I can’t really comment on sound doctrine etc.

What I would say, however, is that there is way too much enmity between brothers and sisters in Christ over interpretations and opinions. There must be a better way?

I come from the West of Scotland where people have died because of “which foot they kick a football with” [whether they were Catholic or Protestant]. I have seen the ugly side of sectarianism and I am honest when I say I hate what I am seeing now (not just the toing and froing within Josh’s blog but within the blogosphere and Christian media).

“If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1st John 4: 20

This is where I am coming from… surely we can disagree with our brothers and sisters with kindness, gentleness and self-control? Instead of sarcasm, arrogance and anger (I do not direct this at you).

Way I see it… if we fight amongst ourselves then Satan is happy > because he has less work to do.

Let’s focus on those folk who are perishing (as you rightly point out) and expend less energy on defending our faith and spend more time living our faith in the world.

This isn’t an attack… but more an observation.

Thomas
Motherwell, Scotland

Amen Thomas,

I couldn’t agree more. You don’t need to go to seminary to understand the Bible though. All you need is the Holy Spirit inside you to make meaning of it.

I would encourage you to keep reading your Bible and praying that God would speak to you through His word. Because I know He is not very likely to wisper new revelations in my or your ear. So I have to go to His letter to us to find out what He wants.

I appreciate your comment. I want to love God, love my wife, love my children and love my neighbor. It really goes back to love if we read 1 Corinthians 13. But how do I know how to love… through Christ and His word.

And by the way 1 John is one of my favorite books in the bible I have read it so many times. So much truth.

Thanks Wes…

We are each other’s neighbour > in fact – we are siblings in Christ!

Josh, Ken, Nicholas, Jamie, you and me > we are all kin. Let’s start acting like it… and focus on fighting the real enemy… instead of each other.

Cheers,

Thomas
Motherwell, Scotland

Oh and btw… sorry if I offended anyone with “flippin’” – its a Scottish slang term that could be misconstrued as swearing… but, trust me, its not.