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But what about the second question? Granted that God does indeed want me to forgive any and all who are in need of my forgiveness, what if I won't – or can't – forgive them? On what I take to be an adequate Christian theological understanding of human existence, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that, notwithstanding God's call to each of us, in some mode or modes, to live as God's beloved children – which very much includes God's wanting us to love our neighbors and to forgive without limits any who may have offended against us -– notwithstanding our all having been thus called by God, we have each always already rejected God's call, freely choosing to live contrary to it. Consequently, it's true of everyone of us that we won't -– i.e., will not -– love our neighbors as ourselves, including our enemies, and hence will not forgive any of them who stands in need of our forgiveness. Moreover, as long as we persist in our disobedient choice, we not only 'llrill not love and forgive others; we also can not love and forgive them. Because we won't love and forgive, we can't love and forgive, either. But, of course, the good news of the gospel, as Christians understand it, is that what is impossible for us is nevertheless possible for Godthat because God has always already loved and forgiven all of us, each of us, despite her or his persistent disobedience, ever remains God's beloved child who, as such, ever has the possibility of trustfully accepting God's love and loyally loving in return. In other words, each of us, although a sinner, is always already a forgiven sinner, who therefore needs only to accept her or his being forgiven through obedient faith in order to be able to love and to forgive others, as God wants us to do. In this sense, God's dem.and is but the flip side of God's gift. And not the least of the ways in which we accept God's gift is by obeying God's demand that we forgive one another as God has forgiven us all.

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The question here, I take it, is this: Is it possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the Christian gospel?

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My answer -– again unhesitatingly -– is, Yes, it certainly is possible that those who hijack the name "Christian" do more harm than good in communicating the gospel. I'm assuming, naturally, that what is meant in context by "hijacking the name 'Christian!!' is claiming explicitly or implicitly that one's own way of being Christian is the only way rightly so named. But you'll have noted, I'm sure, that both my reformulation of the question and my answer to it allow for the possibility-which I trust the questioner, also, would wish to allow for-that "noisy fundamentalists" are by no means the only, even if, perhaps, the noisiest, Christians who make or imply any such exclusivistic claim.

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