The Fountain Hills Times on May 20 published approximately eight letters relating to the Christian faith.

The letters contained some substance but also contained loaded words and phrases that tend to provoke an emotional response in the reader depending on their particular bias or prejudice.

Words and phrases like: “gang preaching,” “you preachers,” persons of “the same gender, race, roughly the same age and essentially the same religion,” “faith fight,” “battle,” “campaign,” “fundamentalist preachers,” “progressive” and “attack.”

These words and phrases do little to enlighten us relative to the issues being discussed or the persons being called into question.

Someone please define for me fundamentalist and progressive. Although I can’t define one or the other in faith terms, several letters suggest that I should be one or the other. Fight and battle suggests to me there will be winners and losers. The discourse should not be about winning or losing.

“Attacked” -- it is always preferable to be seen as the victim instead of the villain.

If we disagree with someone that does not mean that we can’t love them or that we hate them. I love my wife dearly, but we do disagree on occasion. I love my children, but that does not mean I have to agree with everything they do or believe.

One writer made an excellent suggestion: you could visit various Fountain Hills churches or at the very least read their sermons on line.

I do believe we need to listen carefully to one another and examine all of the credible information so that each of us might form our own faith conviction. It is also important to fully recognize the impact the conclusions we reach will have upon our eternal destiny.