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When there are differences like this, where each side can scarcely believe that the other side means what it is saying, there is usually some fundamental misunderstanding. The folks who can throttle back on the abuse and personal comments and interrogation techniques are usually the ones who are mot likely to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding.
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Excellent points. Sigh.

I don't think the motivating dynamics have much of anything to do with theology. I think they are 99.8% psychologically rooted.

Sometimes I'm not sure it's misunderstanding. Seems more like perversity.

But there is plenty of understanding problems, clearly. A post I have yet to reply to is mystifyingly obtuse in it's internal wording. Muddleheaded seems to be putting it mildly.

I don't have a lot of home for a variety of people.

But my challenge is to avoid striving with someone who claims to be and shows any significant evidence of being a believer. And how to balance the gentleness Scripture calls for in that with forcefully declaring the truth in a way that MIGHT have a chance to pierce the denseness.

But mostly, I write for the lurkers.

It is a conundrum as to how much gentleness fits vis a vis how much bold, brash, fierceness. I've seen both be absolutely useless by turns and each for long periods.

I think it often boils down to RELATIONSHIP. Folks with very poor attachment experiences the first 8 years of life attach to -isms. Philosophies, things, pride, control, and a myriad of other idols take the place of the deep holes in one's life from lack of the love buckets and affection needs being filled those first 8 years of life.

Such folks can become TRUE BELIEVERS in the worst classic sense of that ?Hoffer? term. And the blinders get thicker and thicker.

Usually such folks have a great weakness to incapacity to see themselves remotely accurately and particularly to admit having been or being wrong on any significant and most petty issues.

I sometimes try to jangle such folks awake by asking how their close relatives are in being comfortable with them or enjoying being around them or avoiding verbal conflict with them. Usually, they brashly insist that all is well. I'm never convinced. It's just not that easy to be fiercely harsh, incongruent, blind, angry, authoritarian, rigid, narrow, brittle etc. in one forum and NOT that way at home. Life's just not that easy to compartmentalize on those scores.

And my heart goes out to them in spite of their spikey prickliness. But there's usually little reaching them until they crash and burn MANY TIMES usually in big ways.

And, I've not been above trying to hasten such crashing and burning in the hope of helping get them through such painful yuck sooner, faster.

Hereon . . . I mostly use such as foils for declaring truth for the lurkers. I hope THE FOILS learn something too but their hides and constructions on reality are usually thick enough that expecting that any time soon in any significant degree would be exceedingly foolhardy.

I HAVE HAD an amazing percentage of success, by God's grace, with even such rigid, very slow to learn such types being unable to wipe fiercely provocative things from their memories and HOLY SPIRIT THEN USING SUCH TO haunt them over years until they finally gain some insight.

Calm sweet things are usually forgotten and erased from their memories fairly instantly. Interestingly.

Decades of eventually, much delayed but productive experience with such is a HUGE PART of what continues to motivate me to be so . . . Quixish.

I don't really enjoy being seen as the ornery one. I'd much, much, MUCH rather folks saw me as a Mad Dawg derivative teddy bear. Or Jesus meek and mild. Sigh.

Thanks for your thought provoking post.

LUB,

CORRECTION

I don't have a lot of ~~home~~ realistic HOPE for a variety of people.

Yet, hope in Jesus springs eternal.

Brother,

I feared you would take that as an - well not a rebuke but -- a sort of targetted admonition.

It really was just my observation. When one person says, "A" and another says,"If you can stand there and say 'A', obviously you are the kind of person who eats babies for tea," then something is amiss.

That's why I tried to back away from the conversation. My best guess is there's a fundamental failure to communicate" here.

When I worked a "beach ministry" (now THAT was a great job!) a zillion years ago, there was one guy who stopped by every day and asked, "How many people did you save yesterday?"

And I always answered, "I don't save people. Jesus saves people."