As for challenging Geoff on his own blog… I do it all the time and he’s never deleted any of my sledges - many of which have been deliberately crafted to stir him up. You effectively just called him piss-weak again Tim.

Fortunately for you, Geoff doesn’t share my willingness to smite those who get up my nose… so you’ll probably get away with it.

In reference to your statement #1… I think that goes without saying, and I’m not sure why you feel the need to tell me not to “automatically choose to bash the church” I don’t believe I bash the church at all. We are both equally guilty of taking the high moral ground on this issue.

What I do do, is speak frankly about my issues with the church, just as freely as I speak about the things I value about the church. For me to do anything less would feel dishonest.

What I find most confusing is that I made a comment about my values on Paul’s blog, and you felt the need to tell me that my values are wrong and need changing. Apart from being clear evidence that you aren’t piss weak, its also a tiny bit intense… hence why it pushed my buttons. If I had commented on your blog, it might have been a little different.

1. Don’t automatically choose to bash the church out of preference over the world but make a choice based on understanding rather than allegiance.

2. Statement 1 doesn’t make it OK for you to call me piss-weak.

I’m comfortable with both those statements, and I don’t think that they are necessarily there to “squash dissent”, nor do they lead into a slippery slide towards creating an infallible leadership structure. At least I don’t think they do.

I’m a lot more upset about the slight on my character than I am on your “reflective comments”. I’d like to think that I’ve offered “reflective comments”, and that maybe you could take a trip down from the moral high ground. That’s all

I had an interesting chat with Paul last night… and it seems he and I have had a few similar experiences (although his sound far more intense!) in that regard. I have experienced situations where I had to either be assertive, or choose to live against my values… and I was told that I was a sinner and that I wasn’t submitting to authority when I chose the conviction of my values over the directive from the church.

So when anyone tries to squash the voice of dissent, I get quite frustrated… because to me it’s the top of the slippery side into creating an ‘infalible’ leadership structure. Dissent is a reality of life and is always present. There’s no point crushing it, in fact its utterly dangerous to do so.

It intruges me that you can comfortably tolerate someone being anti-richmond because you understand that there are different teams… and that you are evem comfortable in saying your team played a crap game if you feel they did… but when it comes to church, the same kind of reflective comments seem (unless I’m misunderstanding things) to really upset you.

I’m sure I’ve missed something… or maybe a few things… because I really don’t understand how it works… and I’m like homer with the electric donut. Everytime it happens I get shocked again and it pushes my buttons. You’d think I’d learn.

But I’d appreciate it if you veered away from implying that I’m “piss-weak” because I disagree with you. That hardly fosters an environment for respectful discussion.

plus I do actually agree with what Geoff says about looking for the truth in a situation… which essentailly comes down to basing your actions on specific values rather than on individual organisations…

but sometimes values still lead us to have to make difficult choices about the way we respond to organisations, institutions and groups who are requesting our allegiance and conformity.

So let me rephrase my original statement. If the church asks me to mistreat, judge, or discriminate against general humanity, then I will stand by my values rather than being conformed to the church. If this becomes a matter of critical conjecture between the church and myself, I will (I hope) continue to stand up for what I believe. Should the occasion come where I am asked to choose between my church and my values, which I aim to base on my understanding of what is Godly and just, then I hope I will again choose to continue to stand by my values and not be conformed.

I’m more than happy to engage in dialogue about what those values are… but without a rationale that adequately mandates a shift in values, I also will not shift.

This is in fact what I meant, when I said if I had to choose between the world and the church I would cut the church. Commitment to values should stand above commitment to an institution.

Does that make me valueist? Do I then judge others who don’t share my values? maybe… I’m not sure

Actually I think its that kind of flimsy illogic that makes us imagine we can walk a nice peaceful line between truth and lie, just so no one gets upset. It’s a bit like saying your against capital punishment on principle… as long as everyone’s okay with that, and not including those bali guys because that might be embarrassing.

The meek will inherit the earth, but the piss-weak will just be buried in it.