Critique Time!

[Drich]

Drich, I'm new, but here are some thoughts:

What are you trying to accomplish by participating here?

from post one thread one my stated purpose was to answer biblically based question and provide clarity concerning biblical Christianity.

- converting atheists to Christianity?

not directly no. My purpose is to help anyone looking for a relationship with God lay a foundation, that will help them establish and maintain said relationship. A key part of this is helping a person find a group of like minded believers in their area.

- correcting misunderstandings about Christianity?

biblical/canonical Christianity yes.

- confirming your faith by winning arguments with atheists?

no. If I had a need to confirm anything coming here I would loose what I had.

- converting yourself to atheism?

Ah, no.

- having fun?

having fun is indeed part of it. Especially when one takes himself too seriously.

If you are trying to convert atheists to Christianity, have you ever succeeded?

in 8 years I have had a dozen or so request private study, via email or PM. Some are just single questions, others have a series a questions that lasted days. I had one lady shoot me 6 or 7 paragraphs per day for 6 weeks. Then there was a young man who asked me questions everyday for 3 years...

I have never claimed a conversion as again I hand these people off to the local church. The young man and I even discussed his preachers sermons every week till he felt comfortable enough to go on his own.. Again I will do what ever I need to do to help lay that foundation. I am a sower of seed and a cultivator of the crop. Someone else gets to harvest.

If you are trying to correct misunderstandings about Christianity, has anybody ever thanked you for the information?

Yes many times even daily in the form of kudos and even in PM.

In the christianity section I know I can be abrasive, because to me the truth of what I do here [/quote]trumps everything else. In other sections of this forum I can be more friendly, and have respect and gain the respect of some of the core members here. My rep point and their comments attribute to our mutual respect.

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Is there anything else that needs to go on my new years resolution list?

Improve your spelling. I notice that you misspell many of the same words in the same way, which means that they aren't typos, you just spell them wrong. I don't know which OS or browser you use, but most of the ones I've seen running in Windows/Linux/Mac will spell-check automatically.

The thing is if one spells the same word the same way long enough the is adapts and does not even underline it anymore.

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I know I am asking for it when I do one of these threads, but believe it or not deep down somewhere I am here for those who want clarity and biblically based answers. It would be foolish for me to assume that the way I do things fits all people, so I am asking for Constructive criticism so that I may better relay what it is I have to say..

An example is a year or so ago it was brought to my attention that some of my nick names for some of you are off putting.. So I have made an effort to stop using them.

Is there anything else that needs to go on my new years resolution list?

Yeah, I have one.

Stop going around and insisting that you are a source of "biblically-based answers". You are a source of "answers based on Drich's personal interpretation of the Bible", and are objectively are no more accurate than the answers I arrive at on my own.

If at any point you want direct book chapter and verse, I will provide it. If you want the greek or Hebrew I can provide a line by line and word by word analysis as well.

That is why I claim what I claim. I have spent a lot of time going over the texts in the English greek and Hebrew. I have found when I lead with the really technical stuff I like it puts most people off. So I break everything down to its simplist form first. Then add layers of complexity as required. Even when I source non biblical data I will start with a wiki link or something a simple Google search will dig up. But if you want to bring out the heavy bats and swing for the fences on any exegetical matter I do have a collection of really expensive book that do little more than collect dust. (Everything is on line now even the Bdag.)

Not to sound too pompous (I only want to sound pompous enough) but the source material I use is what differentiates your exegesis of scripture and my own. ?

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I gotta hand it to you Drich, asking these guys for tips is the nearest thing I can think of, to walking into my wife's kitchen closet blindfolded.

I have one of those too.. A wife who is a danger to the rest of the house. Once she put a knife down to move some cups in the cuboard and forgot she left it on the top shelf. So when I reached up for my fav cup I almost lost an eye to a falling knife.

This can be like that, if you are afraid of knives.