I see these behaviors in this forum. I don't want to pick out the topics/threads that I see these behaviors in - that's not my goal. But I do see them in very particular threads.
A lack of love and hearts not tender to anyone. And a form of godliness but a viciousness and lack of love. The passage doesn't say viciousness, it says fierceness.
It's that last verse in the passage that gets me. They appear to have a form of godliness.
When I run across them, I have great confusion. They want to be heard over and over again on one or two particular topics and they don't seem to display any love or warmth whatsoever. And yet they are here, day after day, and I have great confusion over WHY they are here.
And then there's always the thought: well..,maybe they are just young and God has not yet worked any virtue into them yet. Maybe they have not had a bad fall yet and so they can't see their behavior as being prideful and insolent and mocking and unlovely.
But when I see them daily over the course of some amount of time and I see the things growing in them that should be decreasing in them, and see their defenses of their behaviors (like calling a complete lack of love to be "tough love"), I come to the conclusion that they only have a form of godliness and cannot possibly have received the Holy Spirit because He softens hearts. He doesn't further harden them.
But I'm still confused as to what draws them here every day. I know everyone is not going to be exactly like me, but before I met God and received the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't have caught me anywhere NEAR a place like this forum. There would have been zero desire to be here...
A lack of love and hearts not tender to anyone. And a form of godliness but a viciousness and lack of love. The passage doesn't say viciousness, it says fierceness.
It's that last verse in the passage that gets me. They appear to have a form of godliness.
When I run across them, I have great confusion. They want to be heard over and over again on one or two particular topics and they don't seem to display any love or warmth whatsoever. And yet they are here, day after day, and I have great confusion over WHY they are here.
And then there's always the thought: well..,maybe they are just young and God has not yet worked any virtue into them yet. Maybe they have not had a bad fall yet and so they can't see their behavior as being prideful and insolent and mocking and unlovely.
But when I see them daily over the course of some amount of time and I see the things growing in them that should be decreasing in them, and see their defenses of their behaviors (like calling a complete lack of love to be "tough love"), I come to the conclusion that they only have a form of godliness and cannot possibly have received the Holy Spirit because He softens hearts. He doesn't further harden them.
But I'm still confused as to what draws them here every day. I know everyone is not going to be exactly like me, but before I met God and received the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't have caught me anywhere NEAR a place like this forum. There would have been zero desire to be here...