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JohnV · #7 (**permalink**) 06-24-2007, 05:23 PM

Bill:

I understand what you are saying. I agree.

But it's part of being a member of a public discussion board like this one. We just have to learn to take it on the cheek.

I can't remember a time on this Board when we didn't have this problem, except may right at the first when we were still feeling each other out. It only took a bit of time before the prejudices came out. That's just part of growing.

A Presuppositionalist can accuse me, a Classicalist, of being sinful in how I approach the Scriptures all day long. Let him go. An EPer can accuse me of being a lawbreaker for singing "Amazing Grace" in church all day long; let him go too. That doesn't make me a sinner. It just shows where they're coming from, that's all. It's their business if they want to be juvenile in their logic and reasoning. What others do ought not to determine what I do. I just know that I can't call them legalists, so I find other ways to address the concerns.

Moderation is a tricky business, because those who moderate are no more nor any less than we are. They can be taken up in things just like anyone else. Do you think that moderators are above the baptism issue? Or the EP issue? They're also struggling with things. And they too miss the same things that we miss. They too often can't see the unfairness, just as we do not.

My wife has an answer for the kids when they say, "That's not fair!" She says that its not about fairness. I wondered about that, until I finally asked her about it. She said that she was only quoting me. This surprised me. Did I say that? But I did, and I knew it. But now I also understood how deeply this had affected her. She understood what I said this way, that fairness is about how we treat each other, but how we treat each other is not about fairness. Fairness is not the goal, it is the means to the goal. Well, that's what I meant, but all I could say at the time was that it was not about fairness; I just couldn't muster the words to explain it at the time. But my wife could.

I think this is something that we have to learn on this Board. Fairness is the means to an end, not merely an end in itself. It is an end in itself, but not by itself. It's about something that we have to be fair about.