You said:
Why are you and seemingly many others on this thread so ABUSIVE of folks who are outside your sect? (Seemingly including myself.) It simply makes me cringe. At the very least, it's bad advertising of the Christian message.
Now why do I find this comment problematic?
#3 In post #447, Reaganaut asked you a simple Q -- if you believed Mormons are Christians.
You responded as if classifying a group of religionists as "non-Christian" somehow equates to "commit[ing] him to eternal perdition." [In context you said: "My job is to love my neighbor as myself. It is not to judge him, and therefore to commit him to eternal perdition — for doctrinal failures that perhaps exist only in my own mind."]
Your response here proves problematic on a couple of angles:
(a) Do you REALLY think that ANY given missionary to a given people goes there, thinking ALL of them are "committed to eternal perdition?" Really? Aren't they there for the exact opposite reason? (To ensure that doesn't happen with as many of that group as possible?)
I find it incredibly strange that Christians like you are "A-OK" with Lds' 55,000 missionaries out and about (+ over 20,000 mostly retired "service missionaries") treating Christians as "apostates" to proselytize into Mormon conversion; but if any of us dare does the same thing with Mormons -- treat them as lost heretics to be won or at least treat them as any other non-Christian sect, new religion, or even like a world religion, you suddenly assign us to the Hell Consignment Industry...tho probably --to a poster -- ALL of us would admit we don't know the future of any person's life...even if we can say, "If this person continues down the road," hell is a likely place that will snatch more of them than heaven does.
Romney may be saved in the future. I & others here don't place him in the lineup of hell. Who does here? Jesus died for him, too, showing Mitt Romney's great worth.
IOW, your argument in post #449 (that people here are committing others to perdition) -- is an outright strawman.
(b) Your basis of making some distinction of why YOU carry the open authority to morally judge others on this thread -- and other posters apparently have some restriction you've assigned to them -- becomes then a strawman & disparate comparison.
Now in post #458, you added a similar dimension -- "judging another man's soul." If you meant that like the above, that, too is a straw man. Of course, in some way, every missionary calculates the "condition" of men's souls in the group they are trying to reach...If you meant it the same way that these missionaries do this, then by all means, don't stop at condemning thread-posters here, start lambasting most of the present & past missionaries of the world!
These missionaries -- like the Flying Inmans -- have discerned (a VERY good BIBLICAL word, mind you) that indeed Mormons are spiritually needy of the TRUE Gospel of Jesus Christ. There's nothing wrong with that conclusion.
Are you embarrassed by that realization?
So...if there's nothing wrong there...and if your #449 comment was a strawman, then what REALLY are you accusing posters on this thread of "judging"??? Are they not Biblically discerning some key realities here?
And finally -- if you say -- in post #458 that you judge "facts" -- how have you proved that Elsie's posts on this thread are 'abusive'-as-'fact' ... vs. your apparent subjective judgmentalism here?
AMEN!