Alex: Many thanks for the welcome. I’d enjoy a rootbeer over a real beer any day, especially in this country, where you can’t get a rootbeer anywhere.

You wrote:

Although I find it difficult to come up with an example of something where a command is the apparent grammatical form while the matter of the statement is something else. Perhaps you can think of something?
If you mean a biblical example, I can’t think of any offhand, unless you interpret Paul’s Rejoice! as an encouragement rather than an imperative. If you meant an everyday example, Get well soon seems to fit the bill.
Another question: I was wondering if you could clarify what exactly you mean by “inclusive.”
I know the minute you claim to be “inclusive”, you open yourself to the charge of hypocrisy, since it is an ideal that is very hard to live up to, if not logically impossible. So, when I say my faith is “inclusive”, I mean that I always strive to include rather than exclude.
When I went to the PCUSA’s General Assembly some two months ago, this word (in my opinion a horribly self-conscious word) was bandied about with such flair and aplomb as a shibboleth for some radical liberal agenda. What I found ironic was the thinking that went thusly: we are inclusive and those people aren’t, so we’ll exclude them.
Hmm, there’s a lot of truth in that. It is a great irony that liberals, who claim to be the most tolerant, can at times be the least tolerant of all people. On the other hand, if a group of people are going to be inclusive, doesn’t that necessarily exclude those who are unwilling to be inclusive, i.e. entirely aside from a conscious decision to exclude x, y or z persons? But I hear you, certainly.

For more on why I think my fairly liberal faith is inclusive enough to make me want to hang out at BHT with a bunch of (mainly) evangelicals, read here.