[ExI] Tolerance

[moulton at moulton.com]

On Thu, 2009-12-10 at 12:09 -0600, jameschoate at austin.rr.com wrote:
---- Post Futurist <p0stfuturist at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> > No genuine Christian would burglarize a home, just as no real doctor 
> >  would practice quack medicine.
> > It does happen, but is anomalous.
> 
> Malarky.
> 
> With regard to 'genuine Christian' what does that mean? Strictly one 
> who follows the words of Christ in the 4 gossipals? You're asking us 
> to accept such a broad generalization without justification the 
> conclusion begs the question.
  
I think I see the problem with what Post Futurist has written.  While the term "Christian" has a variety of definitions the common and traditional meaning is that a Christian is one who accepts Jesus as their personal savior.  Note this is not dependent on future behavior; thus if a person who is a Christian breaks a commandment the person does not stop being a Christian.

Actually this possible eventuality is built into the standard Christian theology; if a Christian breaks a commandment such as burglary then the Christian needs to repent, pray, confess, ask forgiveness and try to improved their behavior.  Note the during the entire process from the burglary through repentance, prayer and all of the rest the person is still a Christian.  Thus we can see the conceptual error of Post Futurist in his usage of the term "Christian" since even using term "Genuine Christian" does not change the situation since there is no more or less of being in the state of being a "Christian"; a person either is or is not.

However note that individual Christians may vary from person to person in whether they resist committing burglary and thus if there is a population of Christians and some of them commit burglary then we can work on developing a statistical model.  We can also work on a statistical model for Hindus and for Buddhists and for Taoists and so on.

Now we go to a formatting problem.
  
Actually I (Fred) wrote the following line not Post Futurist.
> > Have you done any study on the issue?  How about some evidence.

The problem is that messages from Post Futurist tend not to follow any quoting standard with which I am familiar. Thus the confusion.  Actually I was trying to ask Post Futurist for some evidence just as you (James) are asking.  The absence of any evidence is conspicuous.  Basically Post Futurist does not appear to know what he is talking about.

> Seems to me you're the one making the exception claims, therefore the 
>  exceptional evidence lays on your shoulders.