Hypothetical situation:
There's a minority Christian denomination that your minister regards as a "cult".
In the few instances where members of your congregation and members of that denomination have had debates of any sort, the formula for the encounter has been "someone from your group tries using canned arguments, only to be left frustrated when the canned arguments are rebutted". This has had something of a demoralizing effect, but the efforts to "improve" the situation keep failing because most of those involved are merely memorizing other sets of canned arguments, most of which are also dead on arrival when actually used in a debate.
This frustration spills over one day when one of your fellow congregants actually loses it and throws a punch. Unfortunately for them, the person they tried to punch is a Dolph Lundgren type, who responds with a single jaw-breaking blow of his own.
The very next Sunday, your minister is up on the pulpit hailing your fellow as a "martyr" who has "suffered" at the hands of the "cult", and as such this should be taken as "proof" that violence underpins everything they do. As such, if you don't devote every waking moment above and beyond your daily duties to trying to bring this group down, you're failing in your duties as a Christian.
How would you handle such a scenario?
(IRL, I've encountered people whose hatred towards various minority religious groups was such that any action of any member in clear-cut self-defense is in their minds an act of overt aggression. A pitchforks & torches mob could march through town to lynch every single member of that group they find, but if one person grabs a brick to defend his family then it's "proof" in their minds that the person is a "violent aggressor" and that the mob's actions were justified in eliminating the "cultist" threat.)
There's a minority Christian denomination that your minister regards as a "cult".
In the few instances where members of your congregation and members of that denomination have had debates of any sort, the formula for the encounter has been "someone from your group tries using canned arguments, only to be left frustrated when the canned arguments are rebutted". This has had something of a demoralizing effect, but the efforts to "improve" the situation keep failing because most of those involved are merely memorizing other sets of canned arguments, most of which are also dead on arrival when actually used in a debate.
This frustration spills over one day when one of your fellow congregants actually loses it and throws a punch. Unfortunately for them, the person they tried to punch is a Dolph Lundgren type, who responds with a single jaw-breaking blow of his own.
The very next Sunday, your minister is up on the pulpit hailing your fellow as a "martyr" who has "suffered" at the hands of the "cult", and as such this should be taken as "proof" that violence underpins everything they do. As such, if you don't devote every waking moment above and beyond your daily duties to trying to bring this group down, you're failing in your duties as a Christian.
How would you handle such a scenario?
(IRL, I've encountered people whose hatred towards various minority religious groups was such that any action of any member in clear-cut self-defense is in their minds an act of overt aggression. A pitchforks & torches mob could march through town to lynch every single member of that group they find, but if one person grabs a brick to defend his family then it's "proof" in their minds that the person is a "violent aggressor" and that the mob's actions were justified in eliminating the "cultist" threat.)
