Literary Discussions

Kevin: you were clever to realize that I was influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy and you are persistent so I felt I owed it to you to find something positive to say. To be brutally honest, you are the sort of person whose every statement makes my skin crawl. I will never see you as "a Christian" for the simple reason that I see the entire Protestant Reformation as a sham, something false.  I dont believe you when you make repeated statements to the effect that "I love you even if you are disagreeable" ... I see all that as lip service. People gather once or twice a week in "churches" (buildings) and the chatter buzzwords like "love" "amen" "hallelujah" "praise the Lord" ... and then they go home and think that there place in heaven is guaranteed. You did not even have the moral courage to answer my question "what did you say and do at the news of bin Laden's death, did you GLOAT" - instead you used one of the few sophistical tricks you seem to have in your bag of tricks by asking "what does gloating look like in your world"  and you did the same with the verse "wisdom begins in fear of the Lord" -- you ask "what does fear look like in your world" --- you are dishonest; you dont want to answer questions in a forthright manner. You want to play Socratic question and answer word games.  IF it were true that you have read Ignatius and agree with Ignatius then it would be impossible for you to be clueless about the verse "wisdom begins in fear of the Lord"; as a matter of fact YOU would be telling ME what "fear of the Lord" means -  in one of your above posts you basically seem to say that there is no validity to "the early church of the first centuries" -- you say you are aware of the history but you somehow dismiss it as of no significance.  One cannot be a Christian apart from a Church and a Church cannot be valid apart from a tradition and the only valid tradition is the one that traces back to Apostolic times (which by the way were the years prior to the writing of the Epistles or Gospels.) ===  However since you had questions and since you went to the trouble to request a Facebook add I felt it my obligation to accommodate you.  I suspected that some others, like George, would join in.  ===  I personally think that if you really want to try to be a Christian you would be better off with the Roman Catholic church that with these store front amateurs and pamphleteers (the blind leading the blind).  The Roman Catholic church is not without its problems but it is 1000 times closer to original Christianity than all the Protestant innovations.