Family_Faith_Football

You say you post this out of love, but you chose a grieving family’s rawest moment to publish your theological indictment of the man they just lost. Love that expresses itself by using a man’s death as an occasion to broadcast that he died deceived is not love in any form Christ would recognize. Something deep down in your heart needs everything to be about you. I have a feeling this is a character flaw those close to you have brought up before. Paul wrote what love actually looks like: it “suffereth long, and is kind… seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked” and “doth not behave itself unseemly” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). Standing over a fresh grave to remind everyone why YOU are “more determined” in YOUR opposition is the definition of behaving unseemly. Jesus’ sharpest words for self-proclaimed religious experts who were confident they alone held the truth and saw others the way you see this man (Luke 18:9–14). “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1) came from the same mouth you’re quoting. So did “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16) — and the fruit of your post are hurting friends and family made to feel their loved one is a cautionary tale only you are courageous enough to tell. You frame silence as the real cruelty. You do not know the Bible. There is a time for everything, including “a time to keep silence” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). Job’s friends did their real damage not just by being wrong about theology, but by lecturing a suffering man about doctrine. “To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend” (Job 6:14). Like them, you have knowledge without wisdom. Have there been times your life, pastor, in which your wife or your children have not responded well when you cared “too much” to stay quiet? Take time to reflect on their unspoken pain. Paul teaches that the loving thing is to actually be quiet — to mourn with those that mourn (Romans 12:15), not to preach at them before they’ve chosen a casket.