This will surely prove to be difficult...
Krispy, will san the complimentary mutual understanding as brothers and cut to the quick.
Having just read an honest accounting of our tendencies [url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5529&forum=35]here[/url] from a new member, Northeast, it seems quite applicable to both this thread and the other on Joel Osteen.
The questions raised is coupled. For one thing, this tendency or bent towards controversy, am prying deeper than the subject matter if you can bare it (not an accusation, just a consideration).
Like the linked post mentions and draws attention to, this matter of exaggeration and\\or "coloring" things. It strikes me as a bit mischievous to bring in 10 to 15 year old quotes as a buttress to your argument, it has the air of a witch hunt when it is not even necessary, but again am prying deeper still.
Another question raised is on the level of "So what?" in the elementary meaning of the definition as I am chewing on it... That is to say, of what substance will any of this be other than another round of circular "Amens" and "You tell 'em", a sort of Brethren bandwagon for everyone to jump on.
It has been a couple of years now but one of our elders in the faith, our own Philologos stated something to me that stuck but did not truly strike until recent times; The gist of it was derived after much of the same sort of commentary on our other favorite and common nemesis, Mr. Benny Hinn. At the time he had stated something about the whole of it that hit me sideways and had me inquiring privately how he could not be as alarmed as I over the whole of his (Benny's)ministry. While agreeing that it was indeed problematic and grievous, that even my own proscriptions were full of merit, he no longer let these things bother him in that fashion. It was a simple wisdom;
"Let them alone"
Just seems to me we have bigger fish to fry, our own true shortcomings to overcome. It is our motivating factors that we are too quick to misdiagnose if to peer in on them at all. Am assured the Lord has a controversy with us that may even exceed the shenanigans of those that frankly have no weight or bearing upon that which is being drawn from in these parts.
Perhaps I am becoming more and more fearful of the things good Brethren are becoming entangled with. Politics, a constant stream of denouncing and complaint in so many forms and factions.
These things draw a great many replies while spiritual depths are cast aside. Spiritual beings, with spiritual understanding and spiritual learning, to say as much seems to draw a sort of casting to the abstract which is very peculiar, it is rarely stated just implied, unspoken.
I am afraid that we can be deceived, dwelling out on the peripheral of emotional, current event styled attributes, running the way the world runs, not as counter, not as [i]The[/i] alternative to it all. Maybe I could just plainly state it as ...
What are we producing?
Just prying ...
For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. 2Pe 2:20
No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of [i]this[/i] life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 2Ti 2:4
