In Reply to: Re: chain letters posted by Pastor Don on December 30, 2009 at 12:41:06:
My intention was not to put you down but to address your statement: “Still with what is in it, it gives cause to think, especially with the anti-God, secular humanism so prevalent in places of higher learning today” was broad and inaccurate. Later on you said “One of the biggest things I learned in this respect was not to make blanket statements, and statements one makes should be able to be cited and backed up” and yet had failed to do just that at the onset. You may notice I didn’t point out the contradiction but responded, instead that “there are many Christians in higher education. They teach Christian values and probably more successfully than many so-called Christian churches because they are in the front lines where rubber hits the road real hard, and not in a protected environment where all think the same and act the same.”
With this in mind, I wrote about King David: “he was still a jerk. Pastors will do well seeing the effects of personal behavior of celebrities on others and denouncing them as such. King David may have been a good person but his importance and position magnified the bad things he did. He shouldn't get a free pass just because he was ‘important’.”
To which you are trying to show he didn’t get a free pass. Fine. He didn’t in the eyes of God.
But I am not talking about a free pass in the eyes of God but in the eyes of those who teach only one side of the story. They should also teach that he was a jerk, that he was an abusive SOB who being scolded by the prophet asked for forgiveness (and I will give him the benefit of the doubt accepting that he repented in his heart, unlike Peter and Maria in their hypocritical pretense of apologizing.)
What I am talking about is about the effect his actions had and have on others, and that Pastors will do well preaching about those effects on others. If you feel called to do that, then you should take up the job and do something about that. As for me, it is only my observation of the scriptures. The man of God took up the job and told him off. My words only repeat that, and use the episode as an allegoric example and call for arms to those who want to spiritually lead others.
I said that King David got a “free pass” because he continued being king. He should have been kicked out, but I guess God had other plans, right? Well, then he got a free pass.