You remind me of the Mormon missionaries. They wanted you to be baptized into their religion, but if they were asked if they would answer questions they were not willing to do that. It seems to me that if you were actually secure in your faith there wouldn't be such a resistance to "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason..." (1 Peter 3;15).
As of this time, I have a very low opinion of "MAD" doctrine from what I have seen of its results both in its doctrines and the spirit shown by its supporters. That poor reputation is not the result of any "poorly taught teaching" but what has been earned. That may not be a fair approximation of all people who might hold similar beliefs, but that's the representation that has floated to the top, even accentuated through hindsight of "ah, that's where he was coming from, and that explains his strange attitude!"
If you would like to help undo that impression, just go back two steps and respond normally and like a regular human.
Sorry but you're still proving my point. But forget about that for a minute.
Listen...MADs, by and large, are not born into MAD nor raised in it. I've met a few who were but most become logically convinced of its biblical fidelity after being challenged to recognize, and then closely examine and test, the falseness of what they're already invested in defending. In my case, that was independent fundamental Baptist doctrine.
But years ago a MAD brother named Joel challenging me to examine MAD against what I already believed, measuring both against the Bible. He challenged me, begged me, dared me to refute a book he would send me, or admit that I couldn't. That was his challenge. I accepted, arrogantly thinking I'd make short work of it.
I have many flaws but I do not break my word. Accepting his challenge really required me to honestly examine, not just MAD, but what I already was convinced was true. The way that worked was by highlighting Scriptures that I'd not really examined or even thought about before. To do that, Joel mailed me the book by C.R. Stam which Clete referenced. Joel invited to "bleed red ink all over it."
My response was, I'm told, pretty typical: at first (good IFB that I was) I chuckled with smug self-confidence. Then I got quickly heated and insulted that God's Own Church was being directly challenged at its most precious point...but I couldn't refute what Stam was saying as easily as I'd expected to. Not at all, in fact.
So, pridefully, I still tried. I really tried. And consistently failed.
I couldn't help but see the truthfulness of what Stam wrote but still could not figure the angle he was coming from, just like I couldn't peg Joel's posts on the message board where we met. What I now know as MAD doctrine wasn't and definitely isn't typical fundie doctrine. Because it wasn't, I got really steamed -- the bull who tries and tries to gore the matador's cape but can't connect because he's too slow. That was me.
Get this: at one point I got so angry that I threw the book across the room and told my wife, "There is NO WAY I will ever believe what these people teach." No joke, it's the truth.
But I made Joel a promise to refute it or admit if I couldn't, and I would not break it.
Soon I went from insulted and angered, to humiliated that I'd been deceived by (at that point) almost 10 years of doctrinal darkness. We came out of a college church that was a doctrinal looney bin and so quickly became convinced that apparently rock-solid IFB doctrine was The Most Correct On Earth; the apparent solidity and systematic Bible referencing it did just seemed so
right. But I was just deceived with IFB as I was in college. More so, in a way. I had to admit AGAIN that I'd been gravely misled, and it hurt.
But now I saw why and how it was wrong, and lots of other systems too, but far more importantly, how the Bible is right, and why.
And here I am.
I'm not patting myself on the back, in case it sounds like it. I was abominably stupid and slow-witted for a very long time (still am, sometimes). I went through much painful humbling to get here, no glory to me, all glory to God because that humbling was necessary. I'm also here at great cost to myself in the form of lost friends and broken fellowship. But it's all because someone dared me to seriously examine what I'd believed, and the truthfulness of the Bible shined forth like it never had before.
Best of all, I actually understand the Bible as a whole now. I understand how all the different parts fit together, and where they don't, and why.I'm nowhere near an expert but I'm light years ahead of where I was back when I met Joel and I wouldn't trade it for anything I gave up.
If you want to call that cultic, you go right ahead. But at least I'm honest about who I am and what I really believe and why. It isn't enough to say "It's in the Bible!" Nope, not good enough. In fact, that can be the most doctrinally dangerous thing to rest one's faith upon.
Because of that, you can ask me or any MAD here
ANY question you want...but if (as mine once was) your own ignorance is so vast that you can't even ask the correct questions, we're going to tell you so, as I did earlier. But I will no longer waste time trying to help instruct those who clearly don't want it, and I don't think you do.
