If you are reading this blog and you find some of it “hard to understand”, please demonstrate your Christian maturity by speaking with me before speaking to others. You can reach me at [ bill 13510 at gmail. com ] … toss the brackets and edit the obvious to get the working address.

The Apostle Paul, even though writing under inspiration, could not manage to please everyone. He described himself as an “imitator of Christ” and that seems especially poignant (def. #2), seeing that Jesus was also often misunderstood.

Note what Peter had to say about Paul’s letters.

(2 Peter 3:16) “. . . In them, however, are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unsteady are twisting, as [they do] also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.” (NWT, emphasis added)

It doesn’t seem likely that I will be able to communicate more clearly than Jesus or Paul. It looks to me like Peter laid the matter out pretty clearly.

Note that Peter, not himself the sharpest knife in the drawer, came to the defense of Paul, one of the better schooled men of his era. Why do you think he would do that?

Could it be that Paul had previously established his standing in the congregation through his fine ministry and thus warranted ‘the benefit of a doubt”?

Jesus often had to privately explain his teachings to his disciples. (Read John 6:53-69 and note that Peter still didn’t understand what had been said. W65 5/15 par.8)

I can not write so as to completely avoid misunderstanding. No one can.

I’m not even trying to.

This blog isn’t meant to stand as an official viewpoint of any organization what so ever. So, while trying to be clear and understandable to all, the central focus for me is to be candid. I don’t care if you like what I write … or not. What I DO care about is whether it prompts you to think. If you disagree, that is even better than if you agree … in the ensuing dialog we might both learn something. I get enough pats on the head … mostly from people too lazy to think for themselves. I’d rather get something a bit more mentally stimulating.

If you think you see something racist here, stop to examine your own heart. Every single one of my male friends is of African descent. Every single one of them.There are NO exceptions. This isn’t part of some private ‘affirmative action’ program wherein I am trying to atone for having grown up in a white-bread suburb and having no dark-skinned friends as a child. It’s just the way things have worked out.

That doesn’t make me any blacker. It doesn’t make them any whiter. We are all just as we started. Except that now we are friends.

Probably 90% of the people I associate with in the course of any month are also descendents of Africans … my wife and my entire congregation included — and, having ample alternatives, I chose both.

If I’m a racist, I’ve chosen an awfully poor way to show it.

Matthew 18:15-17 is all about giving an honest man who has made some error an opportunity to correct it / them. It is also about the responsibility to point those errors out privately so as to ‘cover over’ any matter that properly can be.

If you think that I have spoken in a manner offensive to scripture, do not compound the problem by handling your indignation in an unscriptural manner.

By the way … I sign my words with my legal name and stand responsible for them. You must sign yours in the same fashion for me to take your complaint seriously.