Shame on you for speaking to someone who is trying to understand different doctrine in the hopes of finding unity. You remind me of the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked for being pious. Perhaps you should spend time on your knees with Jesus and listen to the Holy Spirit regarding these matters.
You remind me of the wise old man who got so angry at the donkey as to give him a beating, only to find out that the poor thing, despite the fact that he was only a beast, was simply allowed by God to see something that the wise man could not yet see.
You don’t hurt me by telling me what I already know, about my sinfulness, my arrogance, and the fact that I deserve nothing but rebuking by the beloved Lord. “My disgrace is before me all day long, and my face is covered with shame.”
However, our Lord, rebuking the arrogant teachers, did not tell the people, shame on their teachings. No, He said instead: “
do not act as they do, but do listen to what they say, because they sit on the Chair of Moses.”.
In the same way, what moved you to be angry was the way I posted what I posted,
not what I posted, because
what I posted is not my own. And nothing would have felt better than to run away and refrain from writing that message to you, or to fall into a false ecumenism and tell you all it’s good, but it is a most sorrowful duty that even a most wretched sinner like me, when given knowledge about something truthful, is under obligation before the living God to transmit the teaching and refuse the errors.
Others have already answered to your post in very enlightened ways. I will limit myself to reminding you - in all humbleness, since I am one of the worst writers of arguments - that to dismiss an argument and attack the arguer is a fallacious way of arguing called
argumentum ad hominem, in which a person substitutes abusive remarks for evidence when attacking another person’s claim or claims. This line of “reasoning” is fallacious because the attack is directed at the person making the claim and not the claim itself. The truth value of a claim is independent of the person making the claim.
Therefore I invite you to direct all your anger towards my wretched self and to re-examine what I have posted for what it contains, and only if you can dismiss my claims and answer my questions with reasonable soundness, then you can move on - otherwise, you are not doing your job well in searching for the truth.
And my “man-made ideas” come from the Apostle Paul. I don’t back my “ideas” up with what my church says because I don’t agree with them on everything. I am not a brainwashed robot. I read the Bible and test what people say to it’s teachings and if they don’t line up, I don’t accept the teachings.
I would be naive to think that everything the Protestant churches taught was Biblical. The Bible is the only solid truth we have and anything else is doctrine by which Priests and Pastors alike can make mistakes in teaching.