Monday, August 31, 2009

Follow-up to Forum 121 Gathering

In re-reading my own post (something I don't do very often), I was struck by the fact that one comment I made might easily lend itself to misinterpretation and I wanted to clarify it. I had remarked that I didn't feel that it was necessary for Dr. Reid to sing the praises once more of the Conservative Resurgence and comment on the fact that there will always be a battle to be fought for the Bible. My concluding sentence in that paragraph states, "Angry and argumentative Baptists who excoriate fellow believers with hate-filled words simply aren't fulfilling the command of Jesus to love one another, no matter how much they insist that they're merely defending sound biblical doctrine." As I thought about it, I realized that some might take those words as a criticism of Dr. Reid's own demeanor or presentation at the conference. He in no way was guilty of such an attitude or action from my perspective. His words were gracious and his illustrations clearly indicated a man who shares the love of Christ with a heart of compassion for others. My comment stands though in the sense that his tribute to the Resurgence did nothing in my opinion to strengthen his presentation. It was more like the perfunctory bone tossed to the dogs to keep them hungry and wanting more. I encounter numerous commenters on the Baptist blogsites in particular who can't even conceive of a moderate Baptist as belonging to the family of God and are quick to lash out with accusations of liberal, etc. whenever someone dares to question one of their interpretations. There seemingly exists an utter inability in the fundamentalist mindset to be able to separate the action of questioning their interpretation of a passage with rejecting the Bible itself.

My apologies to Dr. Reid and the forum organizers if my comments somehow indicated that he was guilty of angry or hate-filled speech toward fellow Christians, for he most certainly was not.

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