And Judith if I may say is an example of how the hardening happens on either side. last year she was one of the voices of reason, talking of her joys in the Lord in little ways. But then we had one of our multi-color font friends posting pictures of donkeys laughing, of stern women, and posts saying basically “shut up, you fool”.
I don't deny that JA may have had her feelings stomped on by others here, but where in Scripture does it say that this is an acceptable reason to harden our hearts towards each other? Is what happened right? No! But even if there was a valid reason for the ridicule, that's still no excuse to sin by hardening her heart towards other Christians. That's the reason I told JA that she needs to repent, nothing else.
And Judith, before you go off on a tangent, please understand that I'm including myself in this. Frankly, your stubbornness and arrogance really ticks me off and I really, really, really want to tell you to shove it but you're still my Sister in Christ. If I harden my heart against you, I tell Christ that His sacrifice on your behalf was foolish, and that's something that I just can't do. So yes, I think you're hard-headed, prideful, arrogant, overly confident of your own righteousness and generally not a pleasant person to be around but you're still my Sister in Christ and I want to see you overcome these faults, so I need to pray for you to be strengthened and guided by the Holy Spirit. To do that, I can't harden my heart towards you even though that's my first reaction to your attitude, so I'd like to ask that you pray on my behalf as well, that the Holy Spirit help me keep from hardening my heart towards you.