Thanks. There are many reasons to be positive, as enumerated above, by many of you.
- It keeps dialogue open
- Scripture recommends that we put the person above the issue at hand–with Christ treating those who disagreed with him, with love (eg, coals of fire, walking the extra mile, etc)
- In many situations, it’s recommended that a rebuke be sandwiched between 2 positive observations. This makes it more likely that the other will listen.
- It avoids tribalism–we don’t want to do what we condemn in AiG, as being unfriendly and hypercritical, to the point of breaking fellowship over small things, relative to our commonalities with not only AiG, or fellow Christians, but the whole world.
- Finally, it’s easy for people to make generalizations about each other’s groups, including even odd presumptions, such as were in those of Calvin Smith’s concerns about heresy. Personally affirming commonalities of good intent, rather than arguing over abstracts, seems a preferable approach.
This is not to ignore the wrong things that AiG does. There are a lot of other areas that we have documented that, and are continuing to do so (as in the Heresy thread).
Thanks.