Sorry I'm late to the forum on this one, saw his original post and something didn't sit quite right on a quick skim through, was hoping it was just me missing something.
A lot of us here do not speak rashly, and go quiet when we see some things that are odd, even if we do not know how to explain them yet. I didn't respond to him initially either; as you can tell if you go look at the timeline. That is usually how you know that a number of us see something wrong with a new member; days go by and no one says anything, typically because they're waiting to see what someone else might say to them, or what the new member might say or do.
I'll give you an example. His first post was on Nov 28th. Tonya responded to him on Dec 5th, a week later, and he responded later that day, indicating that he was checking the forum daily that whole time. No one said a word for an entire week. Of course, you will have to ask everyone else their particular reasoning for that, but the first major red flag for me was his response to her, in which he started out saying:
"Thank you for welcoming me, Tonya"I would presume the average person would not see anything wrong with his response. However, I thought about my perspective if I were joining, and I would wonder if anyone was active on the forum after a week of hearing nothing. Maybe there were not many people on it. I might even think that I did something wrong, or perhaps no one saw my post. However, those thoughts are analytical to factual data (i.e. objective thinking), and also inward judgment that I might be the cause of a problem.
These were
NOT Scott's first thoughts. His first thought was more along the lines of,
"It is wrong for these people not to welcome me in. Don't they understand how great I am? I will compliment this woman who did, so others will feel bad for not doing so." And the results of his attitude were seen the second he was challenged on something. Just look at my first response to him and tell me if you saw anything that was rude or unreasonable. In Scott's mind, he is holy, righteous, and intelligent, and if someone pulls the red carpet out of from under him by daring to question him, he will look down his nose at them as unholy people that are not worth his time.
Think about this for a moment: What if I am a false convert? What if there are others here who are false converts? Why would he not want to reason with us in order that we might be saved? However, people like Scott do not think like that because, typically, they do not carry understanding of the Word of God like they claim to.
He then did a lot of grandstanding, in which he was trying to make himself out to be some intellectually superior person that all of us should respect. He ended his (faulty) definition of repentance with the following words:
"I prefer to have my faith built up in accordance with the knowledge of God's words."To me, that was a strange addition. Instead of looking to see if Tonya agreed with his explanation, he started talking about his "preferences." We are called to following the doctrines of Jesus Christ in His Word. It is
NOT a personal preference issue, so why would he say that he "prefers" it?
Furthermore, it was really weird because if you are coming to a place where everyone else claims to adhere to the Word of God, why would you need to say that? Would not your words and actions reflect that automatically? For example, if you went to a restaurant with a bunch of friends, and one of them said,
"I prefer to eat food at this restaurant," would you not be confused by that statement? Is that not the reason you all came to the restaurant?
Scott speaks with a lot of pomp. So, to me, it was fairly clear from the start what he was doing, and I was not sure if he was just going to leave on his own because, often, someone who does not get attention will just depart to a place where he can get more of it. However, he kept pushing with us for a reason that I could only guess, but never know for sure (nor could I ask him because he is a proven liar).
We are typically more welcoming to an atheist than we are to a "Christian" who feigns humility. At least the atheist is more forthcoming with what he believes, even if he deceives himself. Each one of them thinks we cannot tell who they are by what they say, but we practice patience with them anyway in hope that they might be willing to hear the truth, just as the Lord has been patient with us. It is only when they start lying and railing that we have to cut things off.
