bmeyer - You said
It seems, though, that quite a few people here DO seem willing to make that judgment, based solely on what other people are writing in response to questions presented in this forum. Based on the above, I am assuming that you would agree that this is unwarranted?
There is a difference between redeeming the time and absolutes. You should be able to ask anyone on this forum who is like myself quite willing to judge against another person, even to judge that they need to get saved, if their judgment is absolute or is it subject to error.
And therein you see the error of your slant. You would like to hold against us righteous who condemn the wicked, that our judgments are somewhat erroneous because we can not know for certain if someone is saved or not, we might be good guessers and sometimes very bad guessers, but we are acting in a way that discredits Christianity, not helps it.
Correct me if that is not what you are basically saying.
So I say, you are simply pointing out human imperfection. It is even possible that you could encounter someone who is supposed to be a close family member of your own family, and be mistaken about who they are. It is “possible”. It is possible that if you were asked for the answer, what is one plus one, you might get it wrong, it is “possible”, because we are human and we are prone to error.
Right, we are human and we are prone to error. But that is hardly the issue, if you see someone headed towards destruction, and you don’t do something to help them because after all, you can not be absolutely positive that they are headed for destruction, so what do you do? Do you attempt to redeem the time and save (or assist) as many people as you can, to lead them to know the Lord or to know Him better, or do you just say, well I could be wrong and not proceed based on the chance that what you think to be true, simply is not.
Your right, we are not God, we can not “perfectly” know every thought and see right to a person’s heart, but God teaches us Christians the nature of men and their heart and their actions and their words and their life’s witness and the relationship between them, He teaches us to judge people according to their words and their life, and to do so according to absolute right and wrong. But you would be wrong for pretending that such an observation should stop believers like myself from acting upon the belief that someone is or is not saved.
And don’t act like you don’t do the very same sort of thing in judging the inner man of other people. If you date, you size up a person to see if they are your type or not, you check their level of honest, their intelligence and sense of humor, etc., same with many interpersonal relationships especially where trust and respect are important to you, in fact, in greater and mostly lesser ways, you probably form dozens or even hundreds of discrete personal judgments about other people every day. So don’t worry, be happy, and if your not saved and many Christians can tell, that’s life, get used to it!
