From the comments at Evangelical Outpost:

Actually, I think the only fair target for Christian activists is other Christians.

You’ve chosen these beliefs and these issues for yourselves, and ceaselessly advertise your commitment to them. I’d say that’s an invitation to others with similar beliefs to engage in disputes over them with you. But non-Christians have never asked anybody to come around and bug us with their foreign beliefs. We just want to be left alone.

Now you tell us you’re going to stop beating your wife in order to have more time free to go outside and beat up the neighbors.

Please. Stay home.

(Kevin Keith)

This comment just… irks me. Fisk, Carlton. Posthaste.

Actually, I think the only fair target for Christian activists is other Christians.

Activists…

I wonder what he means here.

The use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause.

Hrmm? A demonstration? I suppose. Is blogging a demonstration, Kevin?

Kudos, as always, to those who do sidewalk counsel in front of abortion clinics, incidentally. However, that wasn’t the issue at all. The issue was this:

I actually know guys who are primarily concerned with wearing wife beaters not to beat their wives but to beat up on the bride of Jesus: the church. Seriously, I know men, many men, who focus almost exclusively on fighting battles within the church and Christianity. These sick freaks think its fun to fight with other Christians about theology, church practice, etc., just to fight. That’s pretty much all they care about. This is the Enemy’s strategy to keep many gifted men out of the Great Battle. Ever read C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters?

It’s about Christians, for Christians. It’s about arguing about minute differences in theology, not witnessing to others, talking to those outside of Christianity. We have a Great Commission, not a Great Pseudo-Doctrinal Debate.

That’s the issue, Kevin.

You’ve chosen these beliefs and these issues for yourselves, and ceaselessly advertise your commitment to them.

Actually, only the seriously prideful advertise their commitment. We DO advertise what the Christian life entails, and what the goal of it is to be – but we never profess to be perfect, or to trumpet our commitment in the sort of way that is implied here. If we do, we’re speaking out of pride, not out of sound understanding of what we are supposed to be commited to. Effacement of self and exaltation of God.

Reversing the two seems to me a bit counter-productive, don’t you think?

I’d say that’s an invitation to others with similar beliefs to engage in disputes over them with you.

Problem is, if they have similar beliefs, both are commanded NOT to engage in pointless bickering over petty differences. That’s the POINT of the post, Kevin.

But non-Christians have never asked anybody to come around and bug us with their foreign beliefs.

Not exactly foreign, as they’ve been here since roundabouts 30 AD. They are hardly foreign, either, wherever you happen to live. Then, of course, there’s that little thing about that imperative in those “similar beliefs” which says that our goal is to share those beliefs with every man, woman, and child on the face of this planet.

Kind’ve hard to ignore that, as well as the injunction against petty disputes, and still think you’re being an obedient Christian, no?

We just want to be left alone.

Really?

Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” – Exodus 14:2

Hmmph.

Now you tell us you’re going to stop beating your wife in order to have more time free to go outside and beat up the neighbors.

Oooh, isn’t that just precious. An intentional play on the original play on words!

No, he’s condemning the perpetual squabbles that have plagued the church since time immemorial (and, incidentally, which you non-Christians love to throw in our faces as evidence of our hypocrisy – which is generally a valid criticism… but you can’t have it both ways) over issues which should be on the periphery of Christian efforts. Instead, he is suggesting that people attend to the real work of Christian service. Preaching the Gospel, feeding the hungry, loving the unlovely, and caring for the sick – to name a few.

Please. Stay home.

No. Staying at home is for invalids. He’s suggesting that the reason we act like invalids is that we’re poisoning our own well by our continual bickering over nothing.

Using the perjoratives like “activist” to misrepresent the subject matter is bad – but the general tone is worse. You’re a good writer. Act like it, instead of leaving throwaway comments like this that make you look like a sanctimonious turd.