I suppose . . . pullling wayyyyyyyyyy back and limiting my responses to highlighting a minimal number of what I perceive to be outrageousnesses . . . it’s still quite wearying to my spirit.
Still prayerfully pondering about therefore what.
It appears that you have been working hard to moderate some of your side’s more horrific attitudes and nastiness. Congrats for that. Herding cats with distemper or rabies can’t be very much fun.
Am trying to wrap my mind around . . . assuming that in X weeks or months . . . the world will be very different.
And if FR and the net are still functioning, how will the dramatic changes in reality alter my posting.
And trying to adjust my thinking, feelings, attitudes and style accordingly a bit ahead of time. Therefore what, I don’t know but praying in such directions about such matters.
There may be occasional exceptions.
However, in general, I’m done with the jerks on your side. And the Jr jerks bucking for elevation to Sr Jerkdom. And with the merely admiring of the jerks as well. Enough already yet with such relentlessly personal meanness and nastiness.
They can pat themselves on their own backs for all the extra white hankys they think they are earning by such nastiness until Jesus Comes again. I suspect they’re likely to be surprised at how God looks at such accounts.
I’m well aware that those who exalt in despising me feel similarly or worse.
Thankfully, by God’s Grace, I despise no one on FR. I forgive everyone and wish everyone a closer relationship with God.
I *THINK* YOU AND I BOTH have a deep, keen appreciation for
HOW INCREDIBLY COMPLEX
LIFE and theology etc. are.
There’s abundant room for serious disagreement even purportedly based on evidence and even with the best heart attitudes and intentions.
THROW IN STRONG BIASES AND THE inevitability of serious disagreement and stronger emotions escalates.
THROW IN A TON OF BAD FAITH, PERSONAL INSECURITIES; MISPLACED PRIORITIES; BAD EMOTIONAL MATURITY ETC. AND SUCH JUNK GOES OFF THE SCALE.
I don’t have the delusion or illusion to think that with so many humans in one context, there would be an absence of those on the fringes of normalcy or devoid of maturity.
I am disappointed that the worst apples in the barrel seem to be the most vocal and prolific at the loudest volumes. And THEY scream about MY fonts and colors! Sheesh!
Yet, I guess it’s always been so.
I’m also pretty used to having some sort of facility or tendency for turning the heat up on and surfacing such crud.Sometimes I seem to do it just walking into a room of strangers. Curious phenomenon, that.
Anyway—certainly interesting times we live in.
BTW, I have had an impression that The Lord is going to visit you in a different, new way or else with a bit of a different message for you than you are used to. I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate . . . just a very subtle impression in such directions. My best guess is that it may be related to the central role you play in a lot of lives in your sphere of religious activity.
IF THAT IMPRESSION IS REMOTELY ACCURATE, I hope you are able to receive His msg with discernment but also without unnecessary flesh driven walls.
Okay, flogging myself to make an answer before I collapse here:
I have, in justice to resist tacitly or explicitly agreeing that ‘my side’ has a monopoly on nastiness. Whoever is currently winning, though, it is hard to imagine that those who justify their posting style because they are playing to the lurkers REALLY think the lurkers are edified by this sort of thing.
And besides, I have all I can do to remember myself to apply to God’s mercy for the strength to avoid disgracing myself. I can’t moderate “my side.” I leave that to God and then bumble on as best I can.
As to coming crises. I make sure I have food, water, ammo, and some knapsacks ready to go, and I commit it all the IHS. There’s nothing to be gained by worrying about tomorrow when “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (I often say that is the smartest thing Jesus ever said.)
I think it is good to avoid jerks, and even those who strike one as jerks. It’s a step forward to be ‘done’ with those who stir us to anger and all that, I think. Even if it turns out to be a flaw in our perception, if hanging around leads to sin, then leaving is not a retreat, it’s a tactical withdrawal.
Aeschylus said (quoted by Heidegger) “There are many things that are strange, but none more strange than man.” And as long as I’m strutting my stuff, there’s an implication in Heidegger’s “Introduction to Metaphysics” that the important questions are not the ones we ask, but the ones that ask us. (He then goes on to say a lot of stuff about how Christians can’t be philosophers, because we think we have the answer. But there he errs. We pray the answer has us, and rejoice when we discern Him in the process of transforming us from dead things to living sons — even if it hurts.)
Thank you for your good wishes. May God never leave me, may He always direct my heart and my mind towards Him. May He not allow me to turn away from whatever he wants me to see.
And, come to think of it, I pray the same for you.
ZZZZzzzzz.