I'd like to share a true story, because I believe it has parallels for many of us, and it may help to adjust our collective perspective on the difficulties we find in our own minds about doctrine which we have never questioned, and that in the minds of others whose doctrine they have never questioned..... until hitting these discussion forums.
Some of us have had our own steep learning curve, over what we received as truth, which turned out not to be so, in the light of understanding scripture.
Please let us remember also, that God allows us to be shaken, that that which can[b]not[u]remain
A girl I met many years ago now, had come to the UK to learn English. Invited to church by a local, she soon was born again and rejoicing in her salvation.
Sometime after this, the church in which she had been brought up, somehow got a hold of this fact, and began to send a representative to challenge her allegiance to Jesus Christ. This woman would be waiting for her when she came home from work, and would call at other unpredictable times, to invite, cajole and generally put pressure on her to return.
When she shared this situation with me, I was unsure enough of [i]my[i]despite
I asked if she was never tempted to give up what she now believed, and go back - even just for the sake of peace from this harrassment - back to the kind of church which had not cared when as a teenager she had joined an atheist naturist commune?
She looked :-o at the question, and replied confidently....
'But they [i]lied