What I will learn from it is that when I struggle to express my religious commitment, something intimate and dear to me, I will be laughed at. After a while I won't take the trouble, and conversation will languish.
The "lure to hell" idea, while (carelessly? unwisely?) provocatively (to say the least) expressed, at least is a proposition: to wit: dissent from the One Church is or provides a tool for the bad guys. So when we wipe the spit off our face, we can say stuff like, "Dissent?" "One Church?" "Tool?" "bad guys?" and start doing some, ah, parsing and examining.
Another point: What I learn from my mere 275 hours of t-group was that I could choose when and how to interact from among a variety of ways, that what is appropriate for a t-group may not be appropriate for a seminar, and it's up to me which of a whole battery of commo styles I use. To me the idea of psycho therapy is to expand my range of choices and to develop my freedom to choose among them.
= = =
Good points.
But goodness, dawg, a roaring rauchus t-group is such FUN! LOL. Besides, without all that, the intense group hug and at the end would be far more muted and hollow! LOL.
Part of what drives me blitheringly to distractions is that such . . . seemingly unassailable assertions as:
"dissent from the One Church is or provides a tool for the bad guys."
are also inherently cheeky; prideful; authoritarian on hollow foundation; parochial to the max; smug; offensive.
AT most levels--so what. Lots of things all kinds of people believe are prideful, hazardous, offensive. So what.
But when the demeanor, tone, content, argument etc. is relentlessly that ours' don't stink but yours do . . . the overwhelming urge is to let a few more for good measure and right in the biggest, most loftily held noses.
And, at least, for my case, it is NOT just to defend my personhood [that has daily cross sessions anyway] or my philosophy or my manhood or my rights to be right or any such . . . it IS an important, to me, theological point, fact, truth:
ALL HAVE SINNED AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD. And organizations, MORE SO.
NO ONE AND NO GROUP HAS A CORNER ON GOD NOR ON GOD'S TRUTH. He hasn't allowed it. Pretending and pontificating otherwise doesn't make it so. Perhaps the Reformation, in part, was a screaming statement of that fact. This or that individual or group may have a corner on a microscopic part of God's truth--for a time. But they'd better treat it well and live it well or they will get wildly askew in no time.
And before long, a rabid atheist will be better off than the "Christians'" arrogant lukewarmness or rabid off the wall-ness.
That's one reason I think UNITY OF SPIRIT is, especially in the short term, the best and most unity we can realistically expect.
Thankfully, that is enormously awesome and powerful in and of itself. It's not to be dissmissed lightly. But it DOES require a laying down of personal notions of majors and minors and a willingness to flow with Holy Spirit's obvious majors in that setting at that moment.
I absolutely guarantee anyone reading these humble words . . . those communities which have a diversity of Christian churches coming together to pray earnestly and authentically in Love and humility for their area and our country will have far less and far less horrible disruptions from natural disasters and terrorism in the coming months and years.
Those communities where each Christian congregation is standing up on their soap box distinctives demanding that all the others bow or capitulate or defer to THEM . . . may well suffer the most--at least plenty given that judgment begins at the house of God.
I think those areas with the most political, eccleastical, moral corruption and person to person violence and abuse will have the worst of disasters and terror.
God WILL HAVE A PEOPLE. Father WILL HAVE A CHURCH UNIVERSAL WITHOUT SPOT OR WRINKLE AS A BRIDE FOR HIS SON.
And all the finger pointing and proud pontificating will quickly be seen as a stain, a horrible stinking stain of great hazard to one's relationship with God.
The wise ones will quickly flush such and ask God to cleanse, burn such out of them wholesale so that they miss out on nothing He has to offer . . . and so that they may live a bit longer in this life.
We will live to see the day when this is far from a friendly or not so friendly academic issue. It will be a life or death issue. We will treat AND FEEL toward our RC or Calvinist or Pentecostal brother AS TRUE BROTHERS AND SISTERS or we'll be outside the camp. I'm not saying it will mean loss of salvation though in some cases that may be a hazard. But outside the camp will at least mean not surviving in this life as long as might have been the plan.
God is not playing tiddldee winks. Paul didn't scribe a lot of that rich stuff about relationships as an idle after thought. We treat those verses as optional. They are not.
We will come to find out crucial God considers them. We might all do better to practice better, now.
"dissent from the One Church is or provides a tool for the bad guys."
are also inherently cheeky; prideful; authoritarian on hollow foundation; parochial to the max; smug; offensive.
I got no further than this.
I don't see that it is inherently cheeky. If it's not true, yeah. But until we establish the truth, how can we say it's inherently all those bad things.
Or another way, to say it's inherently cheeky is to contest the proposition. It doesn't show anything useful about it unless we add (as it SEEMS to do, but I don't think that was intended) "And if I don't like it, it's not true" as another step in the argument.
Sometime I'll list what I don't like about what I hold to be true.
The problem is to avoid saying,"Let's talk ecclesiology, but your position is outrageous!" To me what's inherent to the job of talking ecclesiology is the willingness to consider potentially painful notions despite the pain.
Somebody (lots of people) says I'm an idolater. Can you really think that is not painful to read or hear? But I don't say,"That opinion is laughable, you are silly," at least not at first. I try to articulate what we think about dulia, hyper-dulia, latria. (And then usually I get told that that distinction is bogus. And am still not supposed to be hurt.)
Our language is rich in terms of abuse and of emotional expression. We have a thousand ways of saying,"I don't like this." And while I am sometimes touched by the pain of others (more so if they don't immediately say it's my fault, and if I weren't a jerk they wouldn't hurt and wouldn't feel a divine call to make me hurt) it's not an argument. We are fallen, and the good hurts us while the bad delights us, and that's as true of intellectual objects as of physical. Pain is not dispositive or even indicative.
As for the rest of your post, to the extent that it touches the idea of "One True Church" it is, I think exposition, statement of the proposition and a few of its consequences. But please note that the bulk of my response dealt with your writing that the position (or a lemma from it) was inherently cheeky, prideful, authoritarian, on hollow foundation, parochial, smug, offensive, and gosh darn people just don't like it.
It is precisely because all these things mean so much to us and are so personal that we need to try to avoid giving needless offensive and need to be aware we will probably give it unintentionally. When you type something in all caps, it "sounds" like you think I haven't thought long and hard about it, or even heard it until now. That feels like you are dissing my thought, study, and prayer. It also sounds like you think your position necessarily follows from the thing you deliver in Caps. (I'm not saying that's what you intend, I'm reporting on what my receiver . kicked out, not on what your microphone and set transmitted. This is what I "copy")
But other peple have read dand pondered the same text, and gotten something else out of it. Having the same text thrown at them again and again isn't going to make them change their minds.
How many times must I read words that sound like -> I <- am being accused of 'pretending and pontificating' before I am allowed to conclude that you don't really want to discuss, to examine and re-examine? It is VERY hard to resist that notion (But I am resisting it, never fear ;) ), and it is painful to think that you have not considered that somebody would think such things about Holy Orders in general and the Papacy in particular -- or about, say, becoming Catholic, and do those things NOT with pretense and pompous pontification but in very great, stomach hurting, almost puking, anxiety (which is what I had when I was made a priest - as I thought - in the Episcopal Church because I was committing myself to answer what I thought was a call to draw near to a consuming fire that could consume me (bad enough) or lead others, through my sins, to sorrow (even worse).
What being ordained meant to me was a continued, over and over again rededication of myself to God's will, to rooting out my will, and holding it up to God for healing and conversion, to continually handing myself over the best I could.
I know Pope Alexander is reported to have said, "The Papacy at last is ours; let us at least enjoy it," and when I stop laughing (Yo! Homies! I'm Da POPE! Bring on the shizzle!), I think that's vile! (and He got his, I'll bet.)
But I simply cannot think that every, or even most, ordained, or consecrated or crowned (!)(tiared?) religious figure underwent those ceremonies in pomposity or in anythhing but revereent fear. We have read the books. We KNOW what God says about people who pervert His ways.
(If it was up to me I'd be Bill Gates or something involving money and sailboats. )
SO "pretending and pontificating" ups the emotional ante, makes the conversation harder, is followed by my feeling abused and wanting to abuse in reply.
I am NOT trying to blame here. I am "reporting from the interior" in hopes that I can make a case about how we must talk if we are to talk about difficult touchy things. Maybe we are, unbeknownst to ourselves, pretending and pontificating. Just because the idea is painful to me does not mean it's not true. But then the tactical question changes: What will conduce us to see that painful truth? What won't is abuse and what looks like abuse, or even, carelessness.
Dawg rests, for a while.