What I am about to say I have no doubt will surprise many. I know this because it surprises me that I would write such a thing. However, as hard as it is for me to do, I know that I must do it. I am apologizing for requiring that all names referring to God, the Bible, and Christianity be capitalized; and I will immediately delete that requirement as soon as this is posted.
After much thought and prayer about this issue, I have come to the conclusion that it was indeed unfair for me to require nonbelievers to capitalize such names. The particular atheist, Daniel, who suggested to me that such requirements are not biblical, is indeed correct. It is not a sin not to capitalize the names of God; therefore, I have no reason to require anyone to capitalize them. I was simply making a rule based upon a personal conviction; and I was wrong to do that.
In fact, making such a require was defeating the purpose of this blog--to win souls to Jesus Christ. I care a great deal for the readers of this blog, and want more than anything for each one to love Him as I love Him. However, attempting to force people to respect Someone they do not know will never make that happen.
I would also like to publicly apologize to Daniel. I forced him to resubmit his comment with the correct capitalization. I assumed that, because I did so, he would not resubmit his comment and that he would stop reading this blog altogether. However, when I logged in today, I saw that he had indeed resubmitted his comment with the correct capitalization.I underestimated you, Daniel, and I would like to apologize to you for that. I pray that you would continue reading this blog and that we could learn from each other.
Friday, April 1, 2011
2 comments:
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Hi Tommy,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say two things:
First: Maybe my comments had been hard for you, and I know you are in the exactly opposite position than me in a lot of topics, but until today, you have published *almost all* comments (except for the capitalization issue, but other for links, another topic ;-) ), so I have to recognize you have the honesty to publish them even if they contradict your own ideas. Several times I though you will not approve some of them, but (until today) I am happy I was wrong.
And second: I am glad to know your decision. If you really want to reach an atheist audience, but better, if you want to have a open dialog with people of all sides, then this is the best you could do.
Congratulations for that two points.
Of course if in your inner conviction you want to capitalize any word you believe is important in your own writings, I fully agree you are in your right.
But allowing other people to freely write what they though without censoring them by writing style is a great step.
And thank you for hearing me and taking into account that suggestion.
This is interesting to read because before I commented about the conscience post this morning I had also commented on the capitalization thing - I thought it was kind of petty myself - and had a bit of a rant going but stopped short clicking post for some reason, I thought maybe you'd take it the wrong way or it would just fall on deaf ears. I'm glad I was wrong! It's cool to see that you realized it is really no big deal.
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