One of the more difficult things to respond to are near misses. What I mean by this can be understood by a story I sometimes tell. One of my daughters as a 2 year old picked up a phrase from our neighbor. The phrase was "Jesus Christ". Now the words were fine - the problem was the inflection. Our neighbor often swore using the Lord's name. Our innocent daughter imitated it exactly! It took us a while to separate the phrase from the inflection for our dear daughter.
A lot of teaching I hear today, as well as in the past, is good but the emphasis or proportion is wrong. It is out of balance with the rest of scripture. In order to develop a biblical teaching ALL the verses that relate that concept must be considered. Now, that is a lot of work and takes a lot of time - years in fact. It is much easier to find some verses that say what you want to say and then just teach it. Except that distorts the biblical message.
So I find myself often in the spot where what someone is teaching or asserting is sort-of right but out of balance or proportion. Fortunately I need not respond to it all. But when I do, it is as difficult as getting my young daughter to stop saying "Jesus Christ" with a very wrong tone of voice.
