Everything you assert about my position in that paragraph is the result of stretching for the worst possible interpretation of what I have said, and bridging the gaps with bare assumption where stretching does not suffice.
It is actually malicious to assume that I don’t admit the possibility that you could be simply mistaken. It is an accusation, an imputation of bigotry.
Your original post - the statements that caught my attention - were; Either they only think they’re libertarians, or they only think they’re Christians. Can’t be both.
Did I misinterpret your statements?
You think conservatives are really stupid, don’t you?
No sir, just that the individual conservative to whom I'm responding is mistaken when he states that one cannot be both a libertarian and a Christian, and that the neat little box that he has constructed in support of his position, likely due to his habit of closing his mind, is a box of his own making, and hardly reality.
FRiend, you and I will evidently just not agree on this. While I have considered the "institutionalization" of vice issue at length, I admit that I may be mistaken. Humans can reach false conclusions. I don't think I have done so here, but I respect your disagreement with me on that issue.
But I do not respect your conclusion that my opinion on that issue disqualifies me from being a Christian. As a Christian, I do my very best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I'm human, so I sometimes fail. But it is the fact that I honestly try that makes me a Christian.
“Did I misinterpret your statements?”
Willfully, I think. Having reflected that it might be possible that a libertarian is a bad Christian rather than no Christian at all, I refined my position as stated in the remark you quoted at the top of *your*last*post*:
“If you don’t deplore and reject those things that the Christian faith says should be deplored, then you are not practicing the Christian faith. If you do not want to save both yourself and your neighbor from the glamour of evil, then you are not practicing the Christian faith. If you do not think it is best to live in a society that institutionalizes its rejection of those things, then you do not understand and accept the Christian faith.”
Now, why would you quote that at the top of your last post, and then go back to an earlier post for this note? Is that honest?
“and that the neat little box that he has constructed in support of his position, likely due to his habit of closing his mind, is a box of his own making”
It’s a lot easier to dismiss these arguments unexamined if you pretend that it’s all “of (my) own making,” isn’t it? Whatever you pretend, though, I’m only passing along a tiny little piece of the intellectual work product of civilization’s best minds over the last 2,000 years.
“While I have considered the “institutionalization” of vice issue at length, I admit that I may be mistaken. Humans can reach false conclusions. I don’t think I have done so here, but I respect your disagreement with me on that issue.”
Again, it’s not “my” disagreement. You disagree not with me, but with a number of great minds.
“But I do not respect your conclusion that my opinion on that issue disqualifies me from being a Christian. As a Christian, I do my very best to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. I’m human, so I sometimes fail. But it is the fact that I honestly try that makes me a Christian.”
How much of the teachings of Jesus Christ does one have to get wrong before one is simply not a Christian? What percentage?
It is because that percentage is unknown (by me, at least) that I refined my position, as explained (again) above. Even if – if – one can rebel against a number of the tenets of Christianity and still be called a Christian, however, we are still left with the fact that such a person is in rebellion against a number of the tenets of Christianity.
You have continually strained for the worst, most extreme interpretation of everything I have said, because you don’t want to have to take another look at the implications of libertarianism. The fact remains, though, that the two things have several points of irreconcilable contradiction.