"Your Website is Biased and Prejudicial"

Visitor: "Your website is an exercise in biased and prejudicial thinking.  Your stated mission and posted writings show a consistent pattern:  label something, then throw it into either the "good theology" bin or the "bad theology" bin.  I suppose this method and habit of thought provides you and many of your readers with a sense of security, but to me it is not the way of love.  It is the way of division, judgment, and prejudicial rejection---the very things Jesus spoke out and acted against.  Your view of the Bible is somewhat ironically not supported by the text itself, and to me amounts to Bibliolatry.It is sad to me that so many people (you, your contributors, and uncritical readership) of obvious intelligence have chosen to think in such rigid categories.  I only hope that some will face their anxiety squarely and courageously, rather than hardening their minds and hearts in the cognitionof unlove."

Response: Dear Brother ______,

Thank you for your email. Everyone has convictions and biases ... including me and including you.   When your pastor preaches on the Lord's Day he preaches with certain convictions.  He does not preach in unintelligible contradictions  -- on the one hand declaring that salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ alone and on the other preaching that salvation is by human effort alone. Well, let's hope he doesn't. No, he has studied the Text and comes to certain conclusions based on his studies.  Why would you expect anything less from me?  Of course I am biased. After much study of the Text, I believe that the Augustinian tradition most closely conforms to what Jesus Christ Himself teaches. We are not an undiscriminating or undiscerning news channel that makes no distinctions at all. No I believe certain things about God are true and other views about Him are false and positively harmful. And to the degree we misrepresent God, as He has revealed himself, to that same degree we commit idolatry. Obviously, no one has a perfect theology but I am fully convinced from the Text that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone... I am not going to teach otherwise for the sake of some false unity.  That would actually be the most unloving thing.

Lastly, I think you should take note of some things you wrote in your email.  From you statements you obviously have different convictions than mine and think my views on the gospel are wrong. You even declared that my view was "not supported by the text itself, and to me amounts to Bibliolatry." In other words, you also think certain theology belongs in the "bad theology" bin.  Please do not fail to see the irony of your entire email.  It is a bundle of self-contradictions. To somehow try to persuade yourself that you above being biased and have no convictions of your own... that you make no distinctions, is an exercise in self-deception, especially given the fact that you declared my views to be wrong. If you yourself are making such distinctions, and, as you say, such distinctions are unloving, then by your own definition you are unloving. Seems you need to re-think your entire view so it, at least, has some degree of coherence.
 
One can only conclude that "showing a consistent pattern" is not really such a bad thing after all..


Solus Christus
John Hendryx

Tue, 10/07/2014 - 13:19 -- john_hendryx

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