You haven’t condemned any individual to hell by name, although your views about homosexuality as you have stated them have condemned homosexuals to hell, which could be seen as condemning specific people around here.
First off, let me give credit where it’s due. You have softened your voice and broadened your range recently, but you’re coming off a bad start. As I think you’ve gathered;), Jack Chick doesn’t have much credibility around here, and the force and the nastiness with which you originally stated your views put a lot of people off.
According to what you have said, only Christians are given salvation/allowed into heaven. Yet, time and time again, you’ve said you don’t think Catholics or Mormons are Christian, and you’ve wondered if people who are going to (presumably Protestant) churches are Christian. The devotional which started this whole mess, as you posted it, was even more full of the sort of condemnation which, I’m afraid, we’ve come to expect from you.
I know you’re trying. I know you’re doing God’s work the best way you know how to you, and you’re trying to do it in what is probably the toughest place on the Internet. I also realize that we’ve all got people who push our buttons. Lekatt pushes yours, as, I’m ashamed to admit, you push mine. We’ve tried to reach each other, to widen the common ground we share, but I worry that we’ve failed. Please believe me when I tell you there are a lot of people here who love you including me, even though we don’t always show it that well.
The problem is, we’ve also seen good people hurt and driven away from the church by people who present the Gospel the way you do. In my case, working with oddballs, outcasts, and eccentrics, I haven’t seen anyone drawn to the church by your style of presentation, but I’m working with a tiny percentage of the human race, and anything remotely conventional probably won’t work.
I can’t tell you how many times I vowed never to show sympathy and mercy again when I was younger, or how many times I prayed to God to unleash his wrath and judgement upon the sinners around me. They showed me no mercy; why should I show them any? The answer I got was that I was not to become like them, and that I was to show mercy. My current view is probably closer to the full text of the devotional you cited. I can see reasons for why they did what they did to me and, more importantly, my best friend. That does not mean that what they did was any less wrong. At the time, what I actually did was what any Christian is called to do (in my humble opinion, of course). I refused to give in to what was wrong and continued to stand for what I believed. At that time and place, what was wrong was yielding to a peer group who condemned and abused my friend because of her handicaps and what was right was standing by her and showing her sympathy and understanding because of the person she was.
A couple of nights ago, I was curled up in bed trying to sleep because I was afraid, alone, and in complete despair. A friend of mine called and we talked for about an hour and half. He told me about his crazy family, we talked books, and politics, and not only did he make me laugh, by the end of the conversation I was feeling much better and was out of the despair. This man is a homosexual and a Catholic, a member of two groups you have been less than kind to. He has also a very dear friend’s partner for over 7 years, and plans on being so for the rest of his life. One question which continues to trouble me, even though I usually ask it of you, is how can this person be inherently less moral, less of a good person, than someone like Fred Phelps, or even than someone like the fellow currently being Pitted who brags about beating his wife?
Look, I know I’ve been tough on you, and I may have crossed the line into cruelty. I do apologize. I think you know me well enough to know that, in my book, cruelty is one of the worst sins a person can commit. I get scared sometimes. As I said over in another thread, you’re talking to the person for whom there was no room at the lunch table. At my weaker moments, that makes me doubtful about there being room for me in heaven. When you start citing Scripture to show why large groups of people aren’t going there, I start to wonder how I got lucky enough to make the cut and I tend to assume I won’t. Sympathy and understanding are essential to my take on how we’re supposed to treat human beings; seeing a devotional in which the line “If we can help others by offering sympathy or understanding, we are a traitor to Christ.” stands on its own makes me wonder if I am being a traitor. Christ tells me I’m not. My poor, damaged brain, however, wonders. I try to live the ideal of “My utmost for His highest”, but being the contrary person I am, I no more grant Oswald Chambers infallibility than I do the Pope, or even Polycarp. 
Anyway, since I haven’t said so yet, Merry Christmas! It’s a pleasure to celebrate with you the knowledge that God so loved us silly, contrary, incredibly fallible human beings that He took the trouble to find out what it was like to be one of first hand, not by being born into a rich or mighty family, or even one with a social claim to righteousness, but by being born into a pretty much ordinary, middle-class family. (I know carpenters were reasonably well off, but they certainly were neither notably rich nor notably poor.)
His4Ever, I hope you understand that my words today were not intended to hurt you. In fact, I don’t think they were ever intended to hurt you, although I admit you’ve driven me up a few walls. If I’m clumsier than usual this morning, I’m afraid I’ve gotten a #%&# head cold and it may have affected my brain. So, on to the next great theological question:
Did Christ ever get #%&# head colds, and, if so, what did He do about them? Since they’re pretty minor things, I don’t think he would have healed them automatically, and I won’t ask him to heal this one. Still, it’d be nice to think he had one so he knew what I’m going through firsthand. You know, I think I’m only half joking about this.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to all of you!
CJ
