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You are quite happy to condemn the likes of John Dehlin as a wolf in sheeps clothing, an apostate, bitter and cunning with all that that would entail as regards his eternal salvation, yet you don't like it when some of that venom, much less inflamatory and condemning of your eternal soul, is pointed back at you.
This is utterly irrelevant to the personal lying defamation of both Scratch and Graham yesterday, on things of which they have utterly no knowledge whatsoever. Scratch's claims are so over the top, and so obviously fabricated, that it beggars imagination to understand what he's thinking in making such claims.
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I'm not saying they are right to do it. Just that there seems to be some disconnect there with how you label others? Maybe I'm wrong.
Yes, you are, because my considered opinion of John Dehlin as in apostasy and as a classic scriptural "wolf in sheep's clothing" is based upon that which he actually says and argues about the Church and its teaching. What Scratch and Graham have said about me is utterly without foundation and was intended a pure character assassination, not honest opinion or analysis. Vast difference. Scratch and Graham have no more idea regarding my life, my work history, or the nature and conditions of my economic and personal life than an amoeba knows when Christmas is coming.
What you're not focusing on, Mary, which concerns me, is the fact that, regarding Scratch' claims in particular, nobody in this forum knows a thing about me, my life, my past, my work, my challenges in life, whether I never worked one day in my life or whether I worked in a coal mine for the last 30 years, save perhaps two people who I've briefly met in person, and who are on friendly terms with me). No one.
Anything anyone here knows about me is that which I have told them, and is, as it could only be, fragmentary and without a great deal of continuity. No one here knows
anything in any detail about where, at what, and how much I've worked throughout my life. No one here knows
anything about the few years I had my inheritance, how much it was, how it affected our lives, and to what use it was put. No one here knows
anything about my economic life before, or sense. Nothing.
Do not defend these people, Mary. Do not associate with them, and do not white wash their conduct.
Scratch and Graham are both bald, uncompromising liars and well poisoners, they know they are, and they know that because they are utterly incapable of defeating me or any other apologist in the marketplace of ideas, they had better burn down the marketplace and turn it into a kangaroo court.
This kind of behavior against defenders of the Church has a long, long history, going all the way back to Philastus Hurlbut and other early apostates who left the church or were excommunicated and then turned on it like ravening shrews. Its a pattern - indeed, a perennial pattern - that still persists so long as there is apostasy and a gospel of Jesus Christ to apostatize from (note, I am not placing John Dehlin anywhere near Scratch, Graham, or the others here who are piling on).
Its an indication of the very mindless hatred, bigotry, and ferocious self justification that Graham says does not drive him and other apostates. They lie to themselves, they lie to others, and they lie in public about other people (just ask Gee, Rhodes, Peterson, Schryver, Englund etc.).
My opinions about Dehlin, and people like Brooks, are intellectually based and grounded in a comparison and contrast between what the church teaches and what they teach. This defamation of me is purely psychological and emotional in nature, and was intended to destroy for the purpose of emotional catharsis. Scratch and Graham have a long and sordid history of this kind of behavior, and I'm not by any means the first to have been at the bottom of Scratch's tabloid calumnies and the burning cross of the Kevin Klux Klan.
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I chuckle at the names that some of these guys give themselves. They are, or so it seems to me, playing into that mindset of good and evil. Kishkumen as Snape, Dr Scratch (another word for the devil if I remember rightly), Darth (vader), the evil dark lord, and so it goes on.
Yes, its interesting you noticed this. A great deal of darkness, nihilism, and antinomian alter ego creation.
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In truth, what they are, or again so it seems to me, are intelligent academics who see injustice, lack of honor, and dishonesty in the church, in the system, in the the way that fellow academics are treated and want to call the 'church' out on it.
Scratch is not an academic, nor is Graham. Its very difficult even to label these people "intellectuals" except in the sense that they move within the world of the written word and of ideas.
In any case, I see no injustice, lack of honor, or dishonesty in the church whatsoever, and I think those who are looking for it are, in point of fact, projecting onto the church their own internal psychological conflicts and contradictions.
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I think that they are as committed to truth and honesty as you seem to be.
We are as different as molten lava is from arctic ice. No two sets of personalities could be father apart. The differences are
polar.But this is, after all, exactly what the gospel predicts and anticipates to be conditions in the Last Days among the world's peoples.