Rick,

>My witness and faith has cost me many jobs and relationships. It still does ... every day. People don't want to hear about Jesus because His enemy, also a spirit, is operating in this world, literally inside of people. He inhabits all manner of false teachings, false foundations, falseness with regards to the necessity of things being as God decreed. God says "this way is right," so God's enemy says every or any other way is right.

not wanting to argue, just offering my POV once:

Having [strong] beliefs is ok - most of us here have some area of irrationality.
Read exactly: Irrationality does not imply untruth - only inability to argue it with logic.
A little fencing on your irrational ground during thread drift is also ok - happens often,
and I would be flabbergasted if Bill went to Mekka to pray or Craig praised Google intentions -
I might meet Dragan at a Tull concert, but not in a religious ceremony, even if they offered great wine.

But if you want to elaborate on a religious topic, I think Dragan's hint early on to create a separate thread
would be the better way to go. Give the readers a chance to skip your preaching side if it is consistent in
being off-topic to the thread at hand.

I realize that not everybody defines the border between sticking up for your beleifs and preaching to convert the same way -
but IMO some others also find that this border was crossed in this thread, which some of them found aggravating.

Ultimately the reader can still skip just by recognizing names, which results in more of your text unread.
I doubt that this is the effect you hope for.

regards

thomas