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Originally Posted by Covenant Joel  This is a perfect demonstration of what I was saying. My point on this thread is about attitude. You can have all your confessional ducks in a row, but if you treat everyone outside of Confessionalism with sarcasm, calling them fools, cowards, and so on, you missed something somewhere along the line. I'm not even talking about my personal views on the thread, b/c I'm not a pacifist, though I have come to understand more why they arrive at their positions. |
I understand why they arrive at their positions but it does not change a thing. Most people consider Ghandi to be wise, I consider him to be a fool though I reckon he was a nice man. I am not being sarcastic in calling pacifists fools and cowards. I am calling them what the Scriptures label men who despise correction or who call the things that God has ordained wicked in themselves. It is impossible to read the requirements for military service in the OT or the passages about Abraham saving Lot or Saul and David protecting border towns without concluding the obvious that pacifists are dead wrong unless one takes an aberrant, dispensational view or concludes that God's view is not immutable. You have not provided one Reformed citation on the subject that we might discuss what the Biblical foundation is for the protection of the weak or what the role of the magistrate is in doing so. Instead, you provide the generic "well there are committed men on both sides" as if Truth is measured by commitment to it. Thus, you have not provided a counter standard or foundation from which you could demonstrate that their position is not un-Biblical (and therefore folly) but are more concerned about judging my attitude.
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Again, my point is not whether you are right or wrong about holding to the Confession tightly. You seem to think that I'm saying you're arrogant for holding to the Confession. Wrong. What I'm saying is that you can hold to the Confession tightly without treating everyone in an arrogant, unkind manner.
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I have not treated a single man unkindly or arrogantly unless you consider Biblical labels to be arrogant and unkind. A man that calls the things that God calls good, evil is foolish. A man that allows a man or woman to die when he could have stopped it is in the role of the coward, whatever you think his motivations are.
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So with that, I will not post on this thread again. I'm not arguing for pacifism. All I'm saying is that I wish that Christians, especially Reformed Christians, would demonstrate a deep grace and humility when discussing these matters, even when committed to their Confessional understanding.
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I speak about men in general, you impugn my character directly and twice. You claim deep grace and humility for yourself and claim that I am arrogant for labelling men according to Scriptural designations. You claim the field for the things important in the Confession. Again, this is the purview of the truly humble: the tolerant.