How to get through to Conservatives?

[GillDouglas]

It would be nice if just once a conservative would avoid ad hominem.

It would be nice if just once a liberal would take the Word of God seriously instead of changing its meaning/value/significance because it's not 'progressive'.

 

[Hetta]

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[Gregory Thompson]

Very true.

This is the same thing Gill and I have been saying.

So you liberals and we conservatives see eye to eye on hypocrisy, discrimination, abuse, mercy, etc.

The thing we disagree on is what is sin.

We say it's all sin.

Are you guys saying some sins aren't sins, and some sins are sins?

I think the main deal that needs to be discussed is what we replaced in our lives with Christ .. and if Christ really replaced it .. or if it remains an addiction .. and we're simply acting out and not really emulating Christ.

Jesus said, if my kingdom were here my servants would fight for me, and if the world hated me then it will hate you.

but what happens when the church becomes worldly and animalistic (hating those not like them) in its treatment of those who sin differently than them?

All that can really happen is to back away and let their animal instincts lead to their destruction .. as the scripture says.

But there is something to be said about compassion .. which is probably why there is dialogue.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

It would be nice if just once a liberal would take the Word of God seriously instead of changing its meaning/value/significance because it's not 'progressive'.

Taking the word seriously would mean in this context, to read it according to the premise that you read the scriptures. However, let is examine this .. Jesus said the weightier matters were justice mercy and faith and that upon the love of God and love of neighbour all the teachings were based .. inthat Paul taught that a commandment is summed up in the saying that love does not harm their neighbour .. and anything that does not come from trusting God is sin.

So in taking the word seriously, how does one go about this? I would think the above foundations that I have pointed out would suffice?

I'd say in putting mercy and consideration for others first, liberals are taking the word of God pretty seriously .. considering what James said about judging with mercy .. so we too are judged with mercy. Were you aware of this?

 

[Gregory Thompson]

You mean these passages: Leviticus 18:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Leviticus 20:13-15, 1 Timothy 1:10, Romans 1:26-27, Jude 7 ?

It seems "the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2 Timothy 4:3).

To examine 2 Timothy 4, we need to look at the general context.

I give you a command in the sight of God and Christ Jesus. Christ will judge the living and the dead. Because he and his kingdom are coming, here is the command I give you. 2 Preach the word. Be ready to serve God in good times and bad. Correct people’s mistakes. Warn them. Cheer them up with words of hope. Be very patient as you do these things. Teach them carefully.

3 The time will come when people won’t put up with true teaching. Instead, they will try to satisfy their own longings. They will gather a large number of teachers around them. The teachers will say what the people want to hear. 4 The people will turn their ears away from the truth. They will turn to stories that aren’t completely true.

Because Paul is talking about it being his time to leave this world in the chapter, what this reminds me of is:

Acts 20

28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

29 For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

30 Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

31 Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

32 And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

In 2 Timothy 4, Paul is talking about Judaizers who were making everything about following the written code and Gnostics who were making salvation about intellectual assents. So you may need to examine what you've been taught to see if this applies more to you than what you'd like it to apply to.

But as Paul did, I commend you to the word of his grace which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

 

[hedrick]

It would be nice if just once a liberal would take the Word of God seriously instead of changing its meaning/value/significance because it's not 'progressive'.

One of my goals is to get participants to get beyond the ad hominems:

* You only believe that because you hate gays
* You only because that beyond you just care about being progressive.

Both liberal and conservative Christians are trying to follow Christ. There are certainly “homophobic” people, but most conservatives do not actually hate gays. There are certainly people in the Church who don’t think carefully about theology and exegesis, but follow whatever culture they are in. But most liberal Christians believe that Paul was not condemning Christian gays, and use consistent exegetical principles in coming to that conclusion.

If there’s going to be any communication we need to understand both “you hate gays” and “you care more about being progressive than about Scripture” are unfair and not helpful ways to respond to other Christians.

 

[hedrick]

I've argued for some both on CF and elsewhere that I don't think "conservative" and "liberal" are particularly helpful theological terms.
…
If these--liberal and conservative--are to be regarded as theological categories, what do they actually and really describe? Is the difference between a theological liberal and a theological conservative a matter of, say, biblical [in]errancy or is it over matters of ancient and established Christian dogma (the Trinity, the Incarnation, etc)? Because certainly there is a radical difference between someone who doesn't accept biblical inerrancy and someone who rejects the Gospel itself.

-CryptoLutheran

In my opinion, liberal theology came from two places:

* Application of critical methods that started in the Renaissance to Scripture
* A suspicion of the use of Greek metaphysics in theology, that arise from a general skepticism of abstracts as expressed by Kant.

There have been a number of different responses to those challenges, but they’ve shared common assessments of traditional theology.

* One approach takes criticism far enough to believe that we can’t know enough about the 1st Cent for Scripture to be useful in any specific way. This approach recreates Christianity on general principles such as love and justice. I associate this with Schliermacher.

* One approach attempts to use the results of critical study to found Christianity on Jesus’ teachings as understood by modern scholarship. I associate this with Ritschl, and more recently with the “historical Jesus” movement. This approach tends to focus on NT scholarship over traditional theology.

* One approach starts with traditional Protestant theology, and updates it where changes are needed because of new exegetical understandings. I would associate this with Barth.

Most real Christian thinkers combine at least some of each approach, but in different amounts. The result is quite a broad spectrum, enough so to lead people to say that there’s no such thing as a liberal theology. But I think there is, because they’re all responding to the same basic concerns, and the groups aren’t all that separate. I think there’s really one liberal theological community, with a few different wings.

How does this interact with orthodox / non-orthodox? Not much. That’s primarily a criterion used by non-liberals. The liberal perspective almost by definition doesn’t use traditional theology as a norm. It’s our heritage. It often sets the terms in which we operate and the kinds of questions we ask. It lets us see the consequences of various positions, so we can avoid going down blind alleys that have already been explored and rejected. But ultimately, we don’t ask whether things are orthodox or not. We ask whether they reflect Jesus and Paul accurately. We ask whether they embody what the Gospel demands.

Most strands of liberal theology share two features:
* A strong concept of the Church. Most of this theology seems to come from Reformation Protestantism, i.e. from strands that are committed to theology being an enterprise of the community, the Church.
* A commitment to the Trinity and the Incarnation. All major strands of liberal theology are trinitarian. That's kind of interesting, given the apparently radical basis of liberal theology.

 

[hedrick]

It’s useful to understand the history of conservative and liberal approaches to Scripture. Neither arose as ways of justifying specific positions.

Now and then you’ll hear liberals saying the inerrancy is a 19th Cent construct, which was popularized as a way to defend slavery. While it certainly was used that way, it actually goes back earlier, to the 17th Cent I believe. It was originally a Protestant response to the Catholic argument that sola scriptura couldn’t work, because no two people could agree on what Scripture says. It was an attempt to codify exegetical principles that could lead to consistent results.

Similarly liberal exegesis is not about supporting our current culture’s sexual attitudes. (Indeed the liberals I know have problems with a lot of our culture’s attitudes towards sex.) It goes back before sexual ethics was an issue. It’s really a reaction to the Enlightenment.

 

[ICOCguy]

As a Conservative Christian, I am offended by some of the comments on here by people calling themselves Christian.

Many Conservatives love the sinner but oppose the sin. While those on the left encourage the sin. All have sinned and falling short of the glory of God. But we are to help each other when we sin not encourage and support them to continue their sinful ways.

 

[Hetta]

As a Conservative Christian, I am offended by some of the comments on here by people calling themselves Christian.

Many Conservatives love the sinner but oppose the sin. While those on the left encourage the sin. All have sinned and falling short of the glory of God. But we are to help each other when we sin not encourage and support them to continue their sinful ways.

The bolded is a lie.

 

[GillDouglas]

One of my goals is to get participants to get beyond the ad hominems:

* You only believe that because you hate gays
* You only because that beyond you just care about being progressive.

Both liberal and conservative Christians are trying to follow Christ. There are certainly “homophobic” people, but most conservatives do not actually hate gays. There are certainly people in the Church who don’t think carefully about theology and exegesis, but follow whatever culture they are in. But most liberal Christians believe that Paul was not condemning Christian gays, and use consistent exegetical principles in coming to that conclusion.

If there’s going to be any communication we need to understand both “you hate gays” and “you care more about being progressive than about Scripture” are unfair and not helpful ways to respond to other Christians.

Amen. Something that I can agree with! We may never agree on such topics but we can both agree that we are a lost helpless people without Christ.

 

[hedrick]

There is one thing that worries me. Currently the churches that accept gays have good reason to do so. They all have a history of more than a century of using exegesis that would lead to this result.

But today something like a third of younger evangelicals also accept homosexuality. Have they suddenly adopted new exegetical principles? My concern is that we may be seeing a growth in what many have called “lay liberalism.” This is a kind of liberalism that comes from giving up on the idea that Scripture has a definite meaning, and that theology matters. This isn’t new. My father (who is now 95) expressed similar views when I was growing up. This was before the current culture wars, and seems to have come from theological conflicts among various Protestant denominational traditions.

While this may give what I think is the right result with gays, it’s also not capable of sustaining faith, nor of leading the Church to confront problems with the culture. That’s just as much of a concern to liberals as conservatives. I think our nation is moving in a direction that is hostile to Jesus’ teachings (though I fear many Christians are supporting it).

 

[Jack of Spades]

But today something like a third of younger evangelicals also accept homosexuality. Have they suddenly adopted new exegetical principles? My concern is that we may be seeing a growth in what many have called “lay liberalism.” This is a kind of liberalism that comes from giving up on the idea that Scripture has a definite meaning, and that theology matters.

I believe there has always been a gap between the religion of academic theologians and that of "folk religion". Also, there are two things why theology nowadays might appear a bit unattractive, or at least does so for me:

1) It appears that in order to even be qualified to have any sort of opinion on what the Bible says or is about, I'd be first supposed to get academic level education not just in theology and the Bible, but also in church history, ancient languages and ancient cultures. For people who are not already academics or have generally no academic ambitions, it's an overwhelming task.

2) Even if I magically found the motivation and time to do this, the reward doesn't always seem to follow the effort. There is no quarantee of finding any kind of ultimate truth, theologians seem to disagree more or less as much as common people do. I happen to personally know a guy, who's a Christian theologian, and I once asked him "Do you think you can find truth by academic research" and he replied "No. With academics, what you find is loads of schools of thought."

With those things mentioned, I understand perfectly if people with no academic interests are looking for a shortcut.

 

[Truthfrees]

I think the main deal that needs to be discussed is what we replaced in our lives with Christ .. and if Christ really replaced it .. or if it remains an addiction .. and we're simply acting out and not really emulating Christ.

Jesus said, if my kingdom were here my servants would fight for me, and if the world hated me then it will hate you.

but what happens when the church becomes worldly and animalistic (hating those not like them) in its treatment of those who sin differently than them?

All that can really happen is to back away and let their animal instincts lead to their destruction .. as the scripture says.

But there is something to be said about compassion .. which is probably why there is dialogue.

Agreed. Compassion is something that can always be promoted.

Hating needs to be stopped.

Then sin can be discussed.

Discussing sin in the atmosphere of hate is a waste of time, in fact it's dangerous.

Sin becomes a catalyst for more hate.

In a loving atmosphere, discussing sin becomes a catalyst for redemption and freedom.

So what would that look like?

For conservatives to properly express love toward GLBTs before bringing up the topic of sin, what would you like us to say or do?

Remember we will always see the literal interpretation of scripture, so we'd have to put that whole topic aside, but please clarify how we can be true to our scriptural convictions, and yet make sure you know we love and accept GLBTs.

IOW, put yourselves in our shoes for a moment, and give us your thoughts on how you'd show love to someone, without compromising your convictions?

 

[High Fidelity]

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[hedrick]

I believe there has always been a gap between the religion of academic theologians and that of "folk religion". Also, there are two things why theology nowadays might appear a bit unattractive, or at least does so for me:

1) It appears that in order to even be qualified to have any sort of opinion on what the Bible says or is about, I'd be first supposed to get academic level education not just in theology and the Bible, but also in church history, ancient languages and ancient cultures. For people who are not already academics or have generally no academic ambitions, it's an overwhelming task.

2) Even if I magically found the motivation and time to do this, the reward doesn't always seem to follow the effort. There is no quarantee of finding any kind of ultimate truth, theologians seem to disagree more or less as much as common people do. I happen to personally know a guy, who's a Christian theologian, and I once asked him "Do you think you can find truth by academic research" and he replied "No. With academics, what you find is loads of schools of thought."

With those things mentioned, I understand perfectly if people with no academic interests are looking for a shortcut.

It’s a problem I’ve thought about. Christianity shouldn’t become something that only academics can pursue. In fact I think the term “lay liberal” is condescending, but it’s one that seems to be used commonly.

I do accept the Reformation idea that you can get enough from Scripture directly for salvation. I’ve never felt that the kinds of disagreements we see here impair anyone’s salvation. However it is an unfortunate fact that fully understanding a document written 2000 years ago requires work. Hence, despite the Reformation doctrine of perspicuity, the traditions going back to the Reformation have always demanded a high level of scholarship of our leaders, and scholarly commentaries are a key tool of theology.

But what is an ordinary non-scholarly member supposed to do? Unfortunately they have no practical alternative but to accept leadership. And of course Jesus did give the power of the keys to the leaders of the Church. Leaders have more responsibility to make sure that they know what they’re talking about. But I think members have at least some responsibility to make sure that what they’re hearing is something Jesus would agree with. Most Christians have a sense of what Jesus would do. We just have a tendency to let that get overruled by what we expect or have been taught to hear.

 

[SarahsKnight]

However, re-writing history to state that conservatives hate all sin equally is not borne out by the behavior in either the outside world, or these Christian Forums, where just yesterday a thread was created by a member who admitted to hating (literally) Liberals and homosexuals.

Please be fair, Hetta. I really do not think this had anything to do with Grandvizer's political stance. He truly seemed to make that thread specifically to admit his fault in feeling hatred towards those he disagreed with. He was asking for help. I generally agree more with the liberal stance on the SSM than the conservative, but still, I just don't think it's fair to use Grandvizer as an example of specific conservative intolerance of homosexuals alone, since it did not appear to be a thread where he was declaring his feelings of hatred proudly. I know it can be maddening sometimes to hear fellow believers talk in a judgmental or hateful way, but Grandvizer is a brother who needs help in his own ways, just like all of us.

 

[Jack of Spades]

But what is an ordinary non-scholarly member supposed to do? Unfortunately they have no practical alternative but to accept leadership.

That seems to be the logical conclusion when emphasis is put on academic theology.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Agreed. Compassion is something that can always be promoted.

Hating needs to be stopped.

Then sin can be discussed.

Discussing sin in the atmosphere of hate is a waste of time, in fact it's dangerous.

Sin becomes a catalyst for more hate.

In a loving atmosphere, discussing sin becomes a catalyst for redemption and freedom.

So what would that look like?

For conservatives to properly express love toward GLBTs before bringing up the topic of sin, what would you like us to say or do?

Remember we will always see the literal interpretation of scripture, so we'd have to put that whole topic aside, but please clarify how we can be true to our scriptural convictions, and yet make sure you know we love and accept GLBTs.

IOW, put yourselves in our shoes for a moment, and give us your thoughts on how you'd show love to someone, without compromising your convictions?

I've noticed people get irritated at sin, and then verbalize what they are irritated at by criticizing the person.

However, I am reminded of when Paul said "it is no longer I who sin but the sin within me that sins" .. so to Paul sin was more than a list of offenses.

Living in that question, I tend to remember that confessing sins results in God forgiving them and cleaning up all unrighteousness, so I confess my own and the other persons at the same time. So instead of it becoming an accusatory activity, it becomes an intercessory activity .. as with a lot of disciplines I've learned over the years .. it involves trusting God instead of trying to scratch the itch myself.

 

[Truthfrees]

I've noticed people get irritated at sin, and then verbalize what they are irritated at by criticizing the person.

However, I am reminded of when Paul said "it is no longer I who sin but the sin within me that sins" .. so to Paul sin was more than a list of offenses.

Living in that question, I tend to remember that confessing sins results in God forgiving them and cleaning up all unrighteousness, so I confess my own and the other persons at the same time. So instead of it becoming an accusatory activity, it becomes an intercessory activity .. as with a lot of disciplines I've learned over the years .. it involves trusting God instead of trying to scratch the itch myself.

Wow! I like that a lot! 1 John 5:16

Excellent post!