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To: WorkingClassFilth
He has a crisis and, behold, he's off on another track.

His crisis was spiritual and has to do with the lack of devotional life:

While I was gaining all this knowledge and continually fueled by a desire to become a great teacher, I was also letting my growth in holiness decline

His ministry work was commendable; who would disagree with this objective:

to take Baptists back to the practices and beliefs of the Baptist founders, which, I believed at the time, to be synonymous with the beliefs and practices of the early Christians.
Absorbed in this struggle, he admits to a neglect of his marital life. It is a consequence of the Baptist faith's deficiencies, not the cause of his leaving it. He had two children by then. Further, whatever that neglect was, the family obligations were a factor in keeping him in the Baptist ministry, as he needed a job.

I think, you are simply unprepared to face the fact that reasonable, academically gifted, devoted to the ministry people would discover the Christ in the Eucharist and the veracity of Catholic historical root, and so you try to find fault in this man.

29 posted on 05/02/2008 7:17:03 AM PDT by annalex (http://www.catecheticsonline.com/CatenaAurea.php)
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To: annalex; Quix
His crisis was spiritual and has to do with the lack of devotional life

False. What he was suffering from was the dichotomy of living a sinful life (apart from God's revealed will) and trying to make the disordered pieces fit and make sense.

His ministry work was commendable; who would disagree with this objective

I would. Works, in and of themselves, are nothing. Submission to the revealed will of Christ and finding his way in Church government and in the process of sanctification is all.

Absorbed in this struggle, he admits to a neglect of his marital life.

Again, false. His abandonment of his primary duties contributed directly to his struggle with his faith. One is fitted for ministry by the tempered life of Scriptural piety - not the other way around.

It {his faith struggle} is a consequence of the Baptist faith's deficiencies, not the cause of his leaving it.

Once more, false. This is not a question of the chicken or the egg. Dissonance is the consequence, or outgrowth, of sin and neglect of the first part.

[W]hatever that neglect was, the family obligations were a factor in keeping him in the Baptist ministry, as he needed a job.

Here you have hit the nail on the head - not the one you sought to hit, but you have hit one and driven it home. He was likely thinking (as many clergy and para-church lay people think) that he needed this work (for his sustenance) and, besides, he was doing the Lord's work (wrong-o). Unfortunately, this is the case across time in dividing the sheep from the goats. What one assumes to be the Way today, is not necessarily the way because it was yesterday or a thousand years ago. Faith, alone, in the revealed truth is.

I think, you are simply unprepared to face the fact that reasonable, academically gifted, devoted to the ministry people would discover the Christ in the Eucharist and the veracity of Catholic historical root, and so you try to find fault in this man.

Reason, academic achievement, intelligence and good intentions have nothing whatsoever to do with things of God or faith unless submitted to the spotlight of revealed Scriptural truth.

I think you are hearing what you wish to hear.

I am not disparaging Catholicism. What I am simply pointing out is the clear departure from Scriptural injunctions about the requirements of leadership. The fact that this man was in "ministry" and in a failing relationship plainly illustrates that he wasn't really in "ministry" at all - only his self-willed verisimilitude. In short, whatever is done in this kind of "ministry" (and that just might describe the majority of "Christianity" today) is being done by his own lights and is worth just as much. Good works are just that - they are not, however, of God, unless God-inspired and controlled. To be there, the life must be in order and in synch.

So, it seems clear to me that what this man really served, in the end, was himself and his own ideas about God (Evangelical pedigree nothwithstanding). It is no wonder that he grew sick of what he thought to be the source of his problems and sought something else. Thankfully, he has wandered into another Christian fellowship. However, I still fail to see the deeper truths that are inherent in his current state of faith - other than it is right that he give up his masquerade in ministry and to concentrate on matters at hand - the application of truth in his personal life.
105 posted on 05/02/2008 4:33:08 PM PDT by WorkingClassFilth (Don't cheer for Obama too hard - the krinton syndicate is moving back into the WH.)
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