Readers,
* No judging motives. No personal invective. No personal insults. …
* I’m not keen on tolerating “fighting words.” If you call your opponent a liar or accuse him of being dishonest, your comment will be deleted and I just might block you. If you think he’s being dishonest, then you’ll just have to find a more delicate way to express yourself. It’s a healthy exercise. There are other fighting words, but “liar” is the most commonly used one.
The fact is, that I’ve very rarely thought someone here was being dishonest, and those who are tend to get moderated or blocked entirely. If you think someone is lying, don’t make a public accusation. Email me and I’ll contact him and try to resolve the problem. If I agree that we have a liar here, I’ll likely block him. But it’s unacceptable to call someone a “liar” or impugn his honesty in the comment section.
* Attacks that impugn the character of the other person will be deleted and will lead to moderation.
I meant it.
I just issued far too many warnings on this point. I’m not in the mood to put up with this rash of calling others here liars, dishonest, deceivers, and such like.
You are advised to stay far away from the line, because I’m taking ambiguous allegations as violating the rules.
I’ve blacklisted one reader for 30 days for this reason just this week. I find it unpleasant in the extreme to have to call readers down or to block their comments. But these accusations of dishonesty are not going to continue.
Jay:
My post is not seeking to dismiss your warning. It is important. But I do want you to consider something….
This weblog needs to see that “deception” can have nothing to do with an individual’s motives and everything to do with Satan’s work. For example, to date I have not thought anyone on this weblog is trying to deceive me (hurt me, yes; deceive me, no). But if we suddenly exclude the word “deception” from One in Jesus vocabulary… then we face a genuine spiritual challenge:
Not the least of which is explaining the occurrence of “deceive” (Gk. planao) 38 times in the NT (add in the noun forms as well).
I know that “evil” and “deception” and the like are becoming “off limits” in our society. So, does that mean that the candor of earliest Christianity and apostolic teaching/language such as 2 Corinthians 11:13 becomes unacceptable in the twenty-first century?
For my two cents the greatest threat in the U.S. at present is the issue of the “incredible vanishing dark lord.”
In Christ,
Bruce Morton
Katy, Texas
No problem Jay, us dying moderates actually love the progressives and conservatives alike. We just think you are both get extreme.
No problem.