Now you insult me PeterJens.
I don't "pander". I know God accepts me and I don't need anyone else approval.
Ariel - I cannot distinguish you from those you empathise with. Lots of people have had
the same problem discerning what you actually hold to because you respond to people as
if they are innocent of picking fights and not being honest about their own beliefs.
I do suffer from pride, the desire to be consistent in my models of faith.
I know this is probably impossible, because different perspective of the same truth
can appear contradictatory. So I attempt to follow a consistent path through it all.
Now we as a small group have spent months saying very similar things. So there is
little point trying to change the positions.
There is the problem of intelligence and ways of expressing oneself. Some are less
gifted than others.
So my propositions are not "straw men" but real positions or ideas. Now in describing
them one always falls into compromise and failure, but one hopes to create a good enough
representation to make it helpful. Now being an extrovert, it is actually how I talk through
an idea with myself as much as others.
Now many of these points will only ever exist here between us, because of the unique
way this environment is constructed. To make this work there has to be a degree of grace,
but then obviously that is largely missing, but praise God I will still continue in His strength.
And Ariel, God loves you, like He loves me, and this is a brutal place, but we are talking
life and death, heaven and hell, not nice touchy feelly things, and I am accused of being
satanic, doomed to hell, and by others a righteous lover of God. So Hallelujah that here
we can still rejoice that in the cross we have been found and forgiven, Amen.