Morning China, I�m not thinking that you�re obtuse at all. Please accept my apologies.
As you and I have noticed in some of your other well-presented threads, there are certain individuals who really don�t care what you, I, or anyone else for that matter, have to say. They�d prefer to shoot anyone and everyone down who doesn�t agree with their position.
I find that sad. Hence, my comment about the zealots who live in their little nirvana. I�ve just this second remembered my second year in Romania after the fall of Ceausescu and his �tasteful� wife. There was a church group that arrived�loads of money in their pockets�and loads of dogma. Within about 6 months, their church was indeed full. And you could quickly identify some of their congregation. They�d walk through the village with their Bibles in hand and each and every breath they uttered in public was some form of salutatory blessing. But what also happened is that there was a clear division growing. Those who did not attend �the church� were looked down upon and became targets of ridicule and elimination (in the metaphorical sense). This phenomena lasted for a few years. Today, it�s back to a level of balance�
Sorry, I digressed..but I gather you got the point.
That more or less leads to the infection. SO many churches are forced to deal with this on a daily basis. Cliques are formed, petty differences abound, those who contribute more believe they have the right to dictate�and sadly, there are clergy who actually believe they do! But at the end, the silent ones, the �different� ones, the ones who fail to conform to the established essence of that church, really, in the rawest of terms, have fallen prey to that infection.
If we remove the word �church� and replace it with mosque, it becomes more easy to identify when the preaching of hatred places a pall over the faithful. And in time, slowly, almost imperceptibly at times, that