In the BDF i mean. People calling each other liars and heretics? Where people seem to be more concerned with everybody else's salvation? As if they're "on a mission from God" to put someone in their place. Is that what the Christian walk means to people? An outward circumstance in relation to ourselves? Seems like so much of the world even acts that way. They just use a different language.
Too true I'm afraid and I have noticed it myself.
Firstly I ask you all if I am like that or get like that then please let me know. I would prefer PM though.
What I find interesting is that people focus on others to prove them wrong and vice versa, because they don't want to be wrong.
They have come to place that they believe what they do. Some having spent hours upon hours looking at both sides of an issue, like OSAS, and others just believing what they have been told without being a Berean.
Truth is that when we have a firm conviction which is challenged it is uncomfortable, it strikes at the foundation on which we walk.
To me this is where the problem arises that you have raised.
You make a very shrewd and correct observation about people being more concerned with everybody else's salvation.
They should leave that up to God, after all that's his domain and not ours.
We should be more concerned with our walk with Jesus and seeking him for revelation of faulty foundations we may have. One of the biggies being pride, which to me is one of the causes of why people repsond like they do.
And if they do as you have noted there is nothing loving about that, seeking to build each other up, basically it's slander.
With regards to heresy I wonder how many people actually knows what it means. Everyone knows what a liar means and maybe people feel the two are the same. Which actually they are but one has to understand what heresy is in the first place.
Heresy is
2 Peter 2:1
Chapter 2
Destructive Doctrines
But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.
DENYING THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS AND THAT HE IS LORD.
1 Corinthians 11:19
For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you.
Paul takes the church to task for having heresies among them—heresies that led to schisms in the body. These verses touch on both aspects of what constitutes heresy in the church: denying the doctrines God has given, and dividing the body He has created. Both of these are dangerous, destructive actions that are soundly rebuked by Scripture.
1 John 4:1-3
Chapter 4
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
Heresey is not a difference of opinion, a difference of opinion is not wrong.
Having a different opinion is not wrong, but when the opinion is divisive or maintained in defiance of clear biblical teaching, it becomes heretical. The apostles themselves disagreed at times (see Acts 15:36-41), and Peter once had to be rebuked for divisive and legalistic behavior (Galatians 2:11-14). But through an attitude of humility and submission to the God of truth, the apostles worked through their disagreements and set an example for us.
What is wrong is when we allow a difference of opinion that is not fundamental to the way of salvation through Jesus Christ the son of God who died and rose again and for our sins to reconcile us back the Father BUT slander each other by claiming they are 'liars and heretics' rather than walk in love and humility and love for each other.
Let us all know that our tongue is very powerful, it can bring death or it can build up.
For me I do not want to stand before God and hear him say "Your tongue, your words your reactions were way off the mark, no love or compassion"
just my limited thoughts.