Cheryl

tiro3,
Your observations were very good! All in all what I see in abusive forums is that there is no toleration for or love for the brethren who disagree. Good point about the Jewish Rabbis. I hadn’t thought much about that, but you are right. In the Talmud there is a lot of Rabbi one said this and Rabbi two said this. The rules and interpretations were very different between the two and they are stated as facts assuming that people will make a decision for themselves. However abusive moderators most often do not allow people to make decisions for themselves. They want to control the conversation to the point that a link to a Christian web site that disagrees on a secondary point or even mention that such a site exists is taken as a threat to their position. However, the way I see things is that if you have the truth why fear the opposition? Your truth will expose the error and those who are truth lovers should be able to see this.

We are not to be children in the body of Christ. It takes work and effort to search the scriptures for ourselves and to make a careful decision looking at the evidence. In the history of the church there has been much passionate debate but the church has not been held back seeing that debate.

What these abusive forums do is hold back the evidence because if a person sees all the evidence and sees it without the ridicule that the forum puts on the opposing view, then their “followers” may make a choice that is against the viewpoint of the forum and they cannot afford to lose followers.

Cults do the same thing. They hold back information so that one chooses the established view not because they have researched both sides and made a careful decision on which side meshes with scripture. Their decision has been made for them and they are not allowed to be mature and to weigh both sides carefully. Forums like CARM operate on fear and intimidation to keep the party line. This is unacceptable for a Christian organization whose goal it is, is to make mature believers who practice being Bereans not mindless zombies who hold to a position because they like CARM.

When anyone takes their pet “doctrine” that is a secondary issue into the church, and they add it to the essentials of the gospel, they have stepped off of the solid foundation and into error. It is time that we encourage those who hold to a position with a closed fist that faith is strengthened by testing all things. Only error needs fear tactics and intimidation to keep the masses believing.