I stumbled across a comment I wrote elsewhere some time ago, that another blogger thought was profound, and thought, what the heck, I should see if it connects with any of you. It’s about balance and extremism in ethics, with reference to fundamentalism and liberalism and more authentic ways of being Christian. I wrote:
I think there is a basic failure to understand that the equal and opposite of one evil can often be an equal and opposite evil. Balance is not considered and found too hard, it is often not even considered in the first place. Many seem to operate under what I call “the myth of the slippery slope”, a way of seeing the world that leads them to suspect that anything half between two extremes is half way to hell, a myth which reinforces that anything less than extremism is compromise. But what if we operated under a different story, the story of the life giving well in the middle of the desert, one which draws people in from extremist positions? Consider what the world would be like if liberal Christians could sit down at the table with conservative Christians and say, look I am really, really concerned for the rights of gays but I agree with you that a position which tosses the New Testament out the window cannot reasonably be called Christian and I part company from the religious syncretists that do. Looky, I think you need to be more compassionate and we’ll disagree on many things but I agree there are outer limits to what can be considered Christian dialogue. Consider also if conservatives could say, look I think you’re too flaky but i agree that hate mongers distort the truth as much as syncretists, yeah lets set some outer limits to what can be called Christian dialogue. This is exactly what the Athenasian creed did in terms of Christology, I think we need something similar in terms of sex theology, an agreement on outer limits in both directions.
So, what about you?







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