Baptist in a Protestant Bookstore – Interesting Conversation I once had

Dear Jerry:

I am writing a short letter to thank you for approaching me in the bookstore yesterday to talk, and to make a few comments on our earlier discussion.

As always it was fun talking with you Jerry. I always look forward to such times; they are a high point in my week. I am always intrigued that you claim not to be a “Protestant”, though within one minute of our greetings you were in the thralls of protesting.

Your method of protesting also reminds me awfully much of my many encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses in which they can’t stick to one topic for more than a minute or two, but bounce all over the place as soon as they fail to make any inroads or their “questions” are adequately answered.

Talking with you for an hour makes me feel like a tired cottontail rabbit— darting through a maze of rabbit trails and never quite getting anywhere. You, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, have your pet verses and arguments and you bounce from one to the other in no apparent order.

It would be nice sometime just to sit down and exhaust one issue. But, that probably won’t happen until we meet in Glory someday. One thing though Jerry, talking with you sure makes me glad I found the Catholic Church. When I spend an hour with you I remember how sad the Fundamentalist tradition really is.

I used to say that Catholics followed tradition, but I believed the Bible. This was self-deception since no one comes to anything objectively without a background of experiences, preconceived ideas, filters, language barriers, biases, theological conceptions, and a proclivity to be influenced by others in various sociological situations.

People, including myself, would regard you as much more genuine Jerry— much more responsible—if you were willing to admit that you too are a product of religious tradition, and not pure, unadulterated, objective, Spirit-led truth.

In other words, why not just admit that you were influenced by Campus Crusade and their “tradition” before you came to a new “understanding” of John 3:16? Yet you try to imply that you, apart from any bias, tradition, influence, or help from others, read John 3:16 completely on your own and came up with the Fundamentalist doctrines. Come on; let’s be honest….

For the rest of my letter to the Baptist in the Bookstore, click here.