Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Why I’m Rather *Contentious* at Times

My kind and forebearing readers may have noticed I can be rather harsh when going after those who hold basic rights and freedoms in low regard and sell them cheap for their agendas. Some may find my dubbing the New Labour government “Gulag UK” a bit over the top, for example. Others may think I’m a bit too obsessed with exposing Barack Obama for the phony and threat to freedom he is. And all have surely noticed I don’t pull punches on those who ditch the faith and persecute the faithful yet presume to hold church offices, Presiding Heretic Schori being front and center. Some may even find me *gasp* rude – the ultimate sin for an Anglican.

I could make a long explanation for why I choose to be so, well, disrespectful at times. I do know I’ve always been wired that way. I’ve always been slow to see the point in showing respect to those who have utterly lost the right to it. (And it may scare you to know I used to be worse about that than now!) I’m not saying that is necessarily a good thing. God is good to those completely undeserving of it. So we should do likewise.

But I’ll defer to Dr. Mabuse instead of further explanation. Her post on the “Human Rights” show trials in Canada articulates well why I choose to be a bit contentious at times:

Politeness is essential in the realm of common grace, but not in any absolute sense; not 100% of the time. When it comes to the point where a group of people are taking away something ineffably valuable -- in this case, freedom of speech and thought, although it could be your relatives, in a cattle car -- those people do not deserve respect, they deserve vilification . . .

To which I can only say, “AMEN!”

3 comments:

REC CHIP said...

Mark,

You're kidding right? You are among the LEAST contentious Anglican Bloggers around!!! (Well, Texanglican is also very calm.) If you read some of the stuff on Virtue Online and Titus OneNine (until the "elves step in") your blog seems calm in comparison.

Keep up the GOOD work my friend.

Mark said...

Well, REC CHIP, those naughty people are not *good* Anglicans.

wannabe

(JUST KIDDING!)

mousestalker said...

Amen

To the post. And also to the above comments.