Pay No Attention to the Doctrine Behind the Curtain

Saturday August 27, 2011 • 101 Comments 

 By John Immel

(For those of you who don’t care about the specifics of the SGM phenomena, give me a minute. This is going somewhere.)

 Ding Dong! The Witch is dead.

Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!

Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.

Wake up – sleepy head

Rub your eyes, get out of bed.

Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead.

She’s gone where the goblins go,

Below – below – below. Yo-ho,

let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.

Ding Dong’ the merry-oh,

sing it high,

sing it low.

Let them know

The Wicked Witch is dead! 

So some time has passed since Vicar Charles Joseph headed off to sit in the bad preacher doghouse. Rumor has it that the doghouse has traveled to other states and other countries south of the border where he is speaking in behalf of the very church he said he should not be leading. Or maybe that was just the local church he had committed grave sins against and the universal church is fair game for his metaphysical mayhem.  

Anyway, for a few days the blogging world tried to hum a few bars of the song in the Wizard of Oz: “Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead.” People seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief: “See, we really aren’t crazy!  It really is bad in Sovereign Grace Ministries.  It really is!”  

Joshua Harris, Beta big dog for the SGM Vatican in Gaithersburg, Maryland, took to the plexiglass podium and admitted that yes, there were grave sins in the church. It really was as bad as it seemed. We don’t answer fools, but God was disciplining US because He loved US.  

SGM admitting they are wrong?  Why, how could it be?  

People broke out in group hugs, speaking of grace and love and mercy and nodding sagely as people thought this was God finally showing up. Why, if the CJ Mini Me was willing to say it was bad, very bad, then surely this was a sign that the bucket of WikiLeaks in the face had really worked:  

“Ding Dong the witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!”  

Armed with ruby slippers, a flood of outrage filled articles poured fourth taking El Primo Doctrinal Mover and Shaker to task. If it wasn’t for his faulty Bible interpretation, his Bible proof texting, a host of church polity mishaps, and his temerity for seeking to place himself in the same category as John Calvin, all these thing would not have happened. 

“Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.” 

SGM WikiLeaks seemed to embolden a few more victims to take their story public: yet another story of molestation swept under the pervasive depravity rug and another parent villainized for a lack of love and grace and forgiveness showed up on www.sgmsurvivors.com. Rumor has it that this story hit very, very close to SGM Vatican home. The CLC faithful were summoned to a members’ only meeting. The women are in an uproar; the men are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to proof text their masculinity to get their theologically deficient wives back in line. The pastors are doing their gossip and slander two-step all the while woeing and tumulting about the great sinfulness of man and the great evils of human ego. 

“Wake up – sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.” 

With only a few exceptions—from those on the “Anti-SGM” side of the blogging world—Brent Detwiler was heralded as a hero with the pooper scooper for the SGM dirt and applauded for his courage to face down the green-faced villain of Gaithersburg, Maryland.  

“Don’t you talk mean about Brent! Don’t you dare remember he was one of them for decades! Brent, please come in. Yes, make yourself at home. You are one of US now.  Besides, we need you to tell us we are OK. We can’t know anything unless a pastor makes it clear for us. We can’t understand what is really happening unless a leader tells us. We are so confused. Can we get you some hot cocoa?  Yes, tell us how hurt you are. We are very hurt. So you must be hurt. Brent, tell us where you hurt. Is it in your heart? Is it in your soul?  We are hugging you.  Brent?  Brent?  Brent, aren’t you going to tell us?” 

Denigration of those dastardly bloggers in their underwear daring to speak ill of SGM leaders all but forgotten, Brent slid into the kiddie end of the cyber pool ready to take his side of the story public. Floaties firmly around his arms, like God before Balaam, the very blogs he denounced for a failure of attitude, and gossip and slander became his voice to the world.  See! I’m not apostate! I’m not evil!  I did it right! But CJ, this is all his doing!  It’s him! 

“Ding Dong’ the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.” 

When a house didn’t drop on his head for the rational larceny of joining the blogging world, Brent was encouraged to take his kiddy pool backstroke, into the lap lanes. With the debut of brentdetwiler.com, he came out splashing; the mist was felt all over the blogosphere. Tim Challies took his blogging towel to Rat Fink Brent D concerning his documents; yet another Neo-Reformed shill weighing in on the general impropriety of reading the leaky PDFs. Rat Fink Brent D defended himself by pointing out that “two anti-SGM blogs” had been in existence for years before the documents, so he really didn’t have a personal vendetta.  

I welcomed him to the pool party on his first post; I told him that blogging in underwear was fun and the water was fine. I think my comment got caught in his spam filter, ‘cause I never saw it post.

>snicker< 

Even I was caught up in the outpouring of “grace” and refrained from pointing out the sarcasm within his maiden doggie paddle into anti-SGM blogging stardom. Tone, I thought, was the end and beginning of all righteous commentary. A failure of tone means sin. And sin, we all know, means it cannot be true. Oh well, now I have two Get-Out-of-Sin free cards:

1.   If Rat Fink Brent D. can make a point with sarcasm, then so can little ol John Immel.

If that doesn’t work then…

2.   I can trot out: “God has not granted me grace to perceive that snark is a very grave sin.”  

Thanks, CJ. Hugs and kisses.

Speaking of kisses, after almost 15 years of singing “Lions and tigers and bears … oh my,” the apostle of covering Larry Tomczak gave CJ a big make-up kiss. Having visited the Wizard, Larry puffed out his chest displaying his badge of courage in a letter published for the entire world to see.  “Puttem uuuuup… puttem uuuup!  I’ll fight you all together if you waaaaaant. CJ and I have put everything on the table and reconciled. So you just never mind.”  

Confused, the blogging world wondered why the reunion tour was starting now?  But they kept humming the song, only to be caught on the yellow brick road by Al Molher’s support for der Vicar Charles Joseph. Somehow a secular Louisville rag published his kudos for the Sovereign Grace bearer of Miter and Simar. 

“Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead???  He’s gone where the goblins go… Huu?  Oh, it must be the money. That is the only explanation for Al Molher’s support.”  

And that was closely followed by Ligon Duncun of Presbyterian Church big dog fame tossing his rather weighty academic creds behind the Mahaney legacy. As an aside, with an academic vita that reads like an English Thoroughbreds General Stud Book for Geneva-philia Theology, one is inclined to wonder what he sees in a high school graduate with the academic pedigree of a Rouncy?  Sinfully suspicious minds want to know. 

“Below – below – below. Yo-ho, let’s open up . . .  Another one?  This can’t be happening.” 

These men were followed by a cavalcade of endorsements from many quarters with head scratching perplexity at all the hubbub and a general disdain for that un-submissive Dorothy and her co-blogger Toto.   

“Ding Dong … ?????  Hey, we were singing!” 

Everyone was sure it was all a bad dream, and if they just kept clicking those ruby slippers and chanting: “There is no doctrine like Orthodoxy, no doctrine like Orthodoxy,” they would all land back in Kansas—oops, Geneva—safely tucked in bed, surrounded by friendly faces, and very sure they shouldn’t venture beyond the safety of their backyard. SGM is an aberration after all.  They are the outlier in the data set. It is their polity!  It is their polity! They are the bad apple in a very large barrel of right-thinking Christians. 

“Pay no attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…” 

And this is the problem. With very few exceptions, people reduce this down to the common denominators of personalities, or faulty ecclesiological structures, or some esoteric internal religious squabble. The morality play unfolds before our eyes something like this: 

Fade in–Title

 

Close Up—Blogosphere—Dorothy and Toto to splash around it leaky documents.

BLOGGERS IN THEIR UNDERWEAR

“See, we told you.”

 

Long Shot—plexiglass podium– with green face and broom.

CJ MAHANEY

“I have committed Grave Sins. I’m melting. I’m melting.”

 

Medium Shot—in front of the castle wall. Flying Monkeys poke at the carcass. The freed creature proclaim victory.

FLYING MONKEYS

“Hail Dorothy! Hail Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead.”

 

Long Shot—yellow brick road—Blogging world merrily dancing back to Oz to see the wizard for vindication.

BLOGGERS IN THEIR UNDERWEAR

 (Singing)

“We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

 

Fade to Black—The End

 

And here is where the made for TV movie comes crashing to a halt. They get back to Oz very sure that they understand the villains and motives, and fully expect vindication. But once granted an audience with the Wizard, they find he is not at all willing to vindicate, or even help. As time passes, the players involved didn’t melt, and they don’t even seem to think they have done anything wrong. The Wicked Witch and flying monkeys are subtly defiant. And when pushed, even though they smile a lot, they start sounding like the belligerent wizard and demand to know why you dare make them mad. Here is what the blogosphere expected. 

SGM’s Marauding Ways + SGM WikiLeaks = Proof.

Proof = Vindication

Vindication  + Big Dog Authority = X.  

Exactly what X was supposed to look like has remained an algebraic variable, circumscribed by different flavors and shades of the concept of “Grace.”  

Here is what they got. 

“Well, my little pretty, I can cause accidents too…” 

Almost no one has dared utter the word “justice” and SGM in the same sentence. Probably because SGM has been very adept at creating the equations in people’s minds: If God executes justice to US, then he will have to be just to YOU!?  And since justice in this context means damnation, everyone gets polite and full of “Grace,” and moral relativism wins the day. Over the last few weeks, consternation has turned to mostly tepid incredulity in the face of the broader Neo-Reformed movement coming out in DEFENSE of SGM in general and CJ Mahaney in particular. Not only has exoneration failed to come—beyond some early SGM lip service to humility—those caught with their hands in the munchkin cookie jar are trending toward their usual position of studied indifference. You don’t answer a fool in his folly after all.  See, it’s in the Bible. And Bible authority is all we really need. 

“Pay no attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…” 

To explain the smiling self-deprecating belligerence, the logical inconsistencies, the bizarre twists of logic, the horrific manifestation of moral ambiguity, the endless anecdotes of pastoral mistreatment, the utter callousness of SGM apologists to the spiritual roadkill, and the general presumption of THEIR spiritual superiority . . . everyone seems to have concluded that Sovereign Grace Ministries is merely an aberration. So the problem must be the personalities, interpretive errors, and governmental peculiarities of THAT specific group of men.  THEIR actions are a stain on all pure righteous Bible faith. THEIR government structure is in error and failing to emulate true Christianity. THEY are playing fast and loose with definitions and doctrines and shaping them for their own selfish use. See how THEY proof text?!  See how THEY ignore context!?  Someone needs to hold them accountable to believing right things!   

And like Dorothy with her three friends standing before the disembodied head after having acquired the token of their commitment, they are perplexed by needing to beg the “Wizard” to keep his promise. It isn’t supposed to be this way. How could so many other men in “positions of authority” turn such a universal blind eye to what is before them?   

Here is the answer. People fail to see the real machine, the real animating power behind the curtain of these events.  CJ Mahaney is not the wicked witch. He is not a Pied Piper theological mastermind.  He is many things and has many specific traits that have brought him to the forefront, but he is not the animating power of the SGM juggernaut. He has managed to surround himself with like-minded people willing to be utterly consistent with a specific set of ideas. But make no mistake. He and the broad list of names and personalities connected to the specific SGM drama are fully irrelevant to the much broader picture. This is no absolution for their conduct and their specific metaphysical mayhem.  I am only drawing your attention to where it really needs to be focused.  Notice the curtain off to the side?   

It is time for us to take up the advanced studies of Christian thought on which this Blog focuses.  It is time for us to pay attention to the doctrine behind the curtain.  

It is true. There is a host of doctrinal redefining and meaning-nudging. There is a storm of proof texting. There is an ocean of Bible verse contextual indifference. There is a sea of theological and philosophical license being demonstrated that is producing a tidal wave of mutually exclusive conclusions breaking across the Christian landscape. But the deviation is not with SGM or their theological peers (in as much as they grant anyone the privilege of sharing that title). They are executing flawlessly the Platonist/Augustinian worldview, also known as Luther-based Reformation theology, also known as Calvinism. SGM is utterly consistent with the historic Orthodoxy. They are masterful in their execution of historic interpretive methods. And this is why—as far as the broader Neo-orthodoxy movement is concerned—YOU are the problem. 

“…  if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.”   

The first thing that attracts so many people to the Neo-Reformed movement is security. The glossy brochure says that if you believe what the true church has always believed, then all will be well with your life . . . sort of.  And more importantly, if everyone would believe right things, all would be well with the world . . . sort of. Then preachers set out to organize life into neat hospital folds. And when life refuses to be look flawless like Glinda with her fairy wand and glitter, the wire brush of the doctrines forces everything to lay in the right order.  

Church leaders are the keepers of the gate against the spiritual barbarian horde, and the price of Christian authenticity is a rational subordination to Eldership edicts. We are all members of the true faith after all; what is the big deal? We agree on the major points of the ‘orthodox’ confession, so it isn’t like those preachers are ever going to do anything to US. The problem is all those Charismatics with bad attitudes believing bad things, taking Bible verses out of context, teaching heretical doctrines, committing a crime by not reading Holy Scripture correctly, doing bad things with body parts, and causing all the chaos. We believe right things, but would someone make those empty-headed scarecrows get their mind right! 

The moment that happens, the game is afoot. As John Locke observed:

“For whatsoever [all] people boast  . . .  of the orthodoxy of their faith — for everyone is orthodox to himself — these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another than of the Church of Christ.”  

Of course, some man says, “Sure, I’ll be the authority wielding the sword of the state—oops, sword of the spirit.” He jabs a finger at a Bible passage and says, “This day, this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears,” and he is forever authorized to defend your delicate mind against bad ideas. Everyone sings “We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz,” very sure that the wizard is their source of answers. 

When men declare themselves the intellectual keepers of the gate and the defender against the barbarian masses, they conceded the very premise of the barbarians: force as the deciding factor of existence. The only difference between the Barbarian and the Bishop is that the first is using his force to obtain his physical wants; the Bishop uses force to rule the mind because he wants to rule the definition of TRUTH. 

“Do not arouse the wrath of the Great and Powerful Oz!  I said come back tomorrow!” 

To paraphrase Von Mises: when a man says there should be a law, he means to say that armed government men should force people to do what they do not want to do.  When a man says the law should be better enforced, he means the police should micromanage the outcome in greater degree.  When a man insists that people must submit to authority, he means that men must abandon rational self-appointment. When man declares the church God’s power of earthly government, he deifies select men who adorn themselves in the titles Apostle, Elder, and Bishop.

Considering that America has as a foundational assumption of freedom of worship and religious tolerance, the ancient superstition is taking over our minds with speed; Americans are growing in their suspicion of freedom of thought. That distrust is merging with the primordial mysticism that assumes human freedom is the source of God’s determination to destroy us all. As a result, with no sense of impropriety, or even a blush for the American constitutional inconsistency, Christians demand what amounts to coercion and threat against those who do not advocate their definition of religious “orthodoxy.” Here is what this schizophrenia reveals. The SGM drama is not bad because it is wrong in principle, rather the SGM drama is only bad proportional to being on the other side of “orthodox” police powers.

Everyone wants to applaud cultural warriors who defend pure Bible faith and “stand for something” in the public square. And if the names suffering the condemnation are Copeland, or Bentley, or Warren, or a list of other not so Reformed preachers, then it is just desserts. But when it is a fellow Neo-Reformation groupie?  Why, how dare they? How could they betray their comrades in arms? I am a co-laborer in the People’s State of Heaven! Don’t they understand I’m one of you? 

This is exactly what happened to Larry Tomczak. He had the better part of six years to see the rise of Calvinism during the “Doctrinal Refocus.” Four months after being put in the bad preacher doghouse, he decides the problem is the doctrine. Are you kidding?  How very convenient. CJ was right.  In that context, it can’t be about the doctrine. 

This is what happened to Rat Fink Brent D. According to the “non-biblical whistle blowing” documents, Rat Fink Brent D. has been leveling his charge about CJ and the broader SGM issue for years. Here is how he defended himself to Tim Challies:

“What you fail to realize is the pervasive and profound nature of problems in SGM. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been mishandled and mistreated.” 

How does a man who was a leader of this “pervasive and profound nature” become a hero since he effectively tolerated the outworking for the better part of 15 years? How is he suddenly an innocent bystander? OK… so he wrote some e-mail. Big whoop! It is the self-declared social contract of these men, to—somehow—“cover,” that is to alter a course of action by the force of their lofty pastoral position. Where did Rat Fink Brent D. demonstrate that power to alter bad action? Besides pissing off the Witch of the East, he still doesn’t have his broom. And now he can’t even walk on the yellow brick road back to the hallowed halls. 

This is exactly how SGM church members react.  When they are part of the exclusive “Sound Doctrine” club, they are onboard with condemning gossip and slander. When their friends are being chewed up and spit out in the name of “Sound Doctrine,” it is the just dessert of a sinner’s un-submissive pastoral authority executing church discipline. They turn a blind eye and a deaf ear, and close the doors of their hospitality so none of the bad influence rubs off on them like cooties. They run away like little kids on the playground when the pastors are romping through someone else’s life. They want the benefit of the Reformed Theology fraternity, but when that wild animal turns and nibbles on their backside, they swiftly get a blog alias and wail and moan at the great injustice. 

Suddenly, a 28-year-old protestor driving around Montgomery County, Maryland distributing a self-published book doesn’t look crazy at all. Suddenly, those bloggers in their underoos don’t look so disreputable. But don’t you dare say it is the doctrine. No, don’t you dare tell us that our Bible-believing is wrong. Don’t you dare challenge our ideas, because our ideas are unassailable! See, it says so right here in the Bible! It is SGM, I tell you. SGM are the flying monkeys in Oz. If you don’t be quiet, we will . . . we will . . . just  . . . ignore you! 

“Do you presume to criticize the Great Oz?  You ungrateful creatures!” 

And this is the second thing that attracts so many people to the Neo-Reformed movement. People get to feel smarter because of the Neo-Reformed claim to be THE intellectual tradition of Christianity. When you are competing with the likes of the “intellectual” traditions within the Charismatic movement, the average HS senior can stand out in that crowd. But the issue is not the Reformed tradition’s intellectual power, but rather its philosophical power. 

As consistent readers of my blog, you know that philosophy is the comprehensive system of how ideas integrate together. To be sure, the driving factor for embracing Reformed theology ideas is not stupidity. Quite the opposite; the body of this ideology tends to suck the very intelligent down its destructive path, because as a rule, the very intelligent are looking for a comprehensive place to hang their thinking. 

Very intelligent men and women get some of their greatest pleasure from the exercise of their rational and cognitive efforts. And they should, because this is how we were built. Many of them are professionals attracted to the sciences and the echelons of higher learning. Unfortunately, for the better part of the last 30 years in modern Christianity, there has been almost no place for such people. In the Charismatic renewal, these men and women of rational interest were starved, their rationality condemned, and their aspirations to fully developed philosophical integration equated with the highest spiritual treason. No man or woman can sustain themselves in such a cognitive vacuum, so they go looking for someone, anyone, who can help them fill the void. 

The Neo-Reformed movement gained its initial power from this vacuum; they rode in on a passive/aggressive high horse and daggled the most comprehensive philosophical system known to humanity before the unsuspecting eyes of hungry minds. Like a child beguiled by a confectioners store, the mind candy tasted good on the palate. They never knew they were being kidnapped. 

With no alternative turnkey “Christian” philosophical solution readily available, men and women of rational cognitive interest are defenseless against the Platonist Augustinian seduction. One small bite leads to another small bite, leads to a river of rational sweets and never once do people notice it is rotting their cognitive, self-appointed, self-defining will in their heads. To be sure, the doctrines ultimately demand rational subordination. But who cares? We are elite. We are not like other churches. We have sound doctrine.  

From the presumption of rational superiority, combined with the notion of theological superiority, combined with a foundation of doctrinal authority, it is micro steps down the path of Ecclesiological Autocracy. Men in charge of these ideas are by every measure superior, so of course they should be in charge.

For all the denigration of Pride and Arrogance, when challenged for their “rational” conclusions, they are insulted that you dare imply they are automatons. Why of course, they are original thinkers. And what is this temerity to suggest otherwise? You must be proud! You must be arrogant. You must be a Heretic! 

Reformation Theology’s foundational appeal is its comprehensive construct. But the dirty little secret of the theology’s structure is its implicit Platonism. Or more precisely, the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus as integrated into Christianity by Augustine in the early 5th century. Because Christianity had been merged with the power of the state, a little less than 80 years prior, St Augustine’s doctrinal conclusions stood almost unopposed for the next 800 years. It was not until after the canonization of St. Thomas Aquinas that Aristotelian thought began to permeate the minds of men and challenge Platonism’s implicit collectivist oligarchy. It wasn’t until Aquinas that many of the ideas that held Europe in tyrannical grip started to suffer real challenge. 

Unfortunately, for all of Protestant Christianity’s self-applause over the split with the Catholic Church, for all of our insistence that we represent the True Church and pure Bible Faith, we remain metaphysically Catholic. That is to say, we hold as foundation the same tenant of Catholic Orthodoxy. That is to say we remain philosophically Platonist. At the core of Platonism is a fundamental disdain for human existence. At the core of Platonism is a primary rejection of human rational effectiveness. And this is the very core of Calvinism.

“Think yourselves lucky that I’m giving you audience tomorrow, instead of twenty years from now?” 

The foundation of the unfolding fight with SGM (and the broader Neo-Reformed movement) is over rational equality. 

This is what every anti-SGM critic presumes… and what SGM leadership NEVER concedes. 

And this is the crux of the problem: Rational self-appointment and Pervasive Depravity cannot live in the same metaphysical world. No matter how many definitions one tries to amend, no matter how often they try to cobble together a “biblical” interpretive equality, if the metaphysical starting place of human existence is Plato’s worldview, man is forever incapable of knowing and obtaining TRUTH, the only logical conclusion is a group of Oligarchs uniquely qualified to dictate GOOD to the barbarian masses. 

At the root of every fight with an SGM pastor is the premise that no matter what council they give, no matter what action they take, it is superior to any objection and purer by the imputation of Grace to govern God’s church. And how dare you challenge, how dare you accuse, how dare you fail to make their lives a joy? How dare you challenge their authority to do what God has appointed? 

Dear Spiritual Tyranny reader, this is utterly consistent with Platonist Augustinian philosophy.  Yes, the contemporary marketing and packaging likes to talk of the grand fraternity of believers, but that fraternity dissolves the moment someone outside leadership starts challenging interpretive conclusions. Indeed, SGM has appointed themselves the keepers of the gate against the barbarian spiritual masses. 

When Ligon Duncun weighs in on behalf of CJ Mahaney and tells everyone that they don’t have the authority to look into what are the issues of authority, he is serious. His disdain for your rational equality is unapologetic. You find it offensive. He merely sees it as a hard but necessary truth. 

When you hear CJ Mahaney thumping the pulpit for a return to the “Great Doctrines of the Church,” he isn’t kidding. This is no grand hyperbole. This is a declaration of a return to the days of yore when the world breathed heavy under the “benevolent” yoke of God’s kingdom, an era when civil powers trembled and sinners quaked as the God of Heaven and Earth presided in undisputed rule, carried out by His faithful but benevolent servants. Mahaney is holding up as ideal, the era before a representative republic, government by the consent of the people, and our ontological certainty of freedom of religion. 

What we see playing out in the SGM microcosm is the conflict of the ages: In the metaphysical world of Election and Limited Atonement, there is no such thing as self-appointment and self-determination and self-governance, because you don’t own you. Taken to its “logical” conclusion, in the metaphysical world of Irresistible Grace, there is no such thing as private property, private possessions, or even personal boundaries, because whatever GOOD you have is a manifestation of Grace. And all Grace is administered by His stewards of Grace. In a world of Predestination, there is no right to inquire or human sensibilities for which to account; there is only the sovereign appointments of God’s mysterious intent and man’s meddling sinful suspicion to pry into things above his pay grade. 

In this metaphysical TULIP world, there is no real justice. Everything is a great big fat sin before God, because the nature of man is utterly offensive to God. If you happen to be part of the group that gets picked, it is all good. But the threat of damnation hangs over your head like a sword of Damocles. Your sin violates God, so who are you to demand recompensing for violations of you? You don’t own you!  How dare you speak of justice?  True Justice is eternal torment. So you would do well to just walk in God’s “grace” or maybe God will condemn you to hell after all. We are all just sinners.  We are all suffering from our sin nature.  And besides, who are you oh man to even challenge what is obviously God’s sovereign appointment? It is regrettable that your daughter was molested, but who are you to questions God’s purpose? 

It was this religion that the American Founding Fathers put absolute barriers in place to restrain its advance. They understood how much a menace it had been to the world.   

“Pay no attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…” 

And this is what is really offending our modern minds. The doctrines carried to the “logical” conclusions ARE offensive to our human sensibilities. We implicitly recoil from the immorality of the assertions. We implicitly flinch at the contempt for human existence undergirding these ideas. But in a fit of moral cowardice, we let these Demagogues of Dictated Good use a master stroke of philosophical magic. Like alchemists of old with the wave of the wand and a Bible proof text incantation, they transform this natural reaction to the implicit evil of these ideas into the telltale sign of their TRUTH.  

In the days when man’s mind was shackled by superstition and arguments were solved by judicium dei (trial by ordeal) or where “Logic” was the possession of saints’ bones, man’s capitulation to this moral assault was understandable.  

But as living heirs to the legacy of man’s rational power, living in a time where we hash out debates on a “blogosphere” that leverages quantum mechanics, where preachers fly on machines south of the border that fully exploit the laws of nature, where one nation of 350 million people can almost single-handedly feed the world, where almost all human knowledge can be accessed (and verified) by the power of one word: Google, where the free and unfettered power of man’s rational power has been displayed and lifted man’s quality of life by any and every measure . . .

there is no excuse! 

The outcomes and practices based on the metaphysical presumptions of Augustine, and subsequently Luther and Calvin, ARE what grate on our Age of Reason souls. SGM and the broader Neo-Reformed movement are not the aberrations. In historical context, their “orthodoxy” has persisted for millennia. The content of SGM preaching is an absolute quest to reinstate all of the metaphysical assumptions of the Middle Ages so they can advocate the government structure of the Dark Ages.  

If we let them win, we will get what we deserve. 

“Pay no attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…” 

People pay lip service to the Bondage of the Will, but you will cry out their injustice if they prohibited the smallest personal freedom. People will wail out their great worm-hood in Sunday service, but if they get stepped on in the grand rainstorm of life, their indignity rises to the heavens. People will thump their ESV’s in pious outrage for biblical purity, and then by small logical steps deviate from Dordrecht and Westminster, endlessly smuggle Wesleyan assumptions into Bible interpretation, or flat out hijack Charles Finney’s rebuttals to the Puritan construct when the strictures become too oppressive. But here is the greatest of all dogmatic ironies, the greatest of all Orthodox treasons: The anti-SGM blogging world is really showing their true paternity. They are really children of the Enlightenment. 

It sounds like a churchy theory to advocate Pervasive Depravity and the great sinfulness of man. But at the end of the day, modern American churchgoers are presuming the rational assertions of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas and John Locke. All you fine folk objecting to the fundamental disdain for human existence pouring out of SGM by the bucketful are the odd duck in this philosophical soup: You are sons of the Enlightenment and participating in the tail end of the Age of Reason.

• Every time you make an appeal to cognitive identity—when you insist that A is A, and not some other worldly form—you are leveraging the rational mechanics of Aristotle.

• Every time you transcend a precept with a concept—when you use abstract ideas and (not impressions of some special revelation) to form operative principles—you are leveraging the rational mechanics of Aristotle.

• Every time you point out a logical fallacy—when you point out contradictory thinking—you are leveraging the rational mechanics of Aristotle.

While many of you do this habitually—but certainly not all of you—the most important part is every time you presume to leverage the broad tool belt of rational mechanics, you are defaulting to the Aristotelian metaphysics: man’s nature is an implicit effective rational being. It was this presumption that started the hard climb out of the primordial ooze of medieval unreason, barbarism, mysticism, and despotism.  It was this presumption that led to the Enlightenment. It was this presumption that led to John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington and the U.S. constitution.

 But this is not limited to the outworking of civil authority or American social political organization. The philosophical challenge of Platonist Augustinian thought reverberated down the ages in biblical studies. Doctrinal absolutists could not defend the house of card they had presided over. Without absolute force, they could not defend against the power of human understanding as it succeeded in wresting interpretive methodology out of the superstitious hand of Church authoritarians.  

For the first time, men found the freedom to challenge the myths that could only be defended by threat of force. Men like Thomas Hobbes were able to focus their mind on the scriptural conundrums perpetuated by the contradictory claims of church leaders. And this was only the barest beginnings radiating down centuries and growing concentric ripples throughout Christian thought. Debates produced further debates, produced greater research, produced academic hairsplitting, produced academic atom-splitting, and finally, landed in the hand of men like Friedrich Schleiermacher, who was the first to formulate the main hermeneutic task: discovering biblical author intent. Every time you raise the concept of “context” in a Bible argument, you are cashing in on the rational capital of the Enlightenment. 

If you doubt me that “context” is a modern addition to Bible interpretation, take a fast look at say, Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies and tell me how often he successfully argues interpretive conclusions by the force of authorial intent. Try to count how many times he asks the fundamental hermeneutical questions. Then contrast Luther with the substance of say David Bivin, Steven R. Notley, E.P. Sanders, Richard A. Horsley, or even a modern Eerdmans New Testament Survey. Then if you dare to continue the advanced studies, dig into the understanding that has come to light from the scholarship developed from Nag Hammadi and Qumran. 

So here is what this means. Let me give a couple of metaphors. For you accountants, could you do your job without two arithmetic developments, the invention of the concept of zero and double entry bookkeeping? For you rocket scientists, you could not put a man on the moon without Copernicus foundational assertion of the earth revolving around the sun, and the Wright brothers?  

What if there had been a bunch of shamans with the governing force who forbid the invention of zero? What if there had been a bunch of witch doctors who forbid the understanding of the earth revolving around the sun?  

You get the point, right?  

The historic names above don’t mean much to many of you, nor are they specifically important. But the similarity for modern biblical understanding is exactly the same. The evolutions of thought that have been introduced in the last 300 years, the advances of human understanding that have long since exceeded the unreason and superstition of the 16th century are what make many of our contemporary realities possible.  

Not long ago, if a man not consecrated to ecclesiastical authority had ventured to challenge “scriptural meaning,” his temerity would have placed him in danger of the halter, or the rack for his heresy. And if a woman blogger had dared challenge the masculine superiority of the church hierarchy, she may likely have been burned at the stake for her “theological deficiencies.”

This is important: The reason there is REASON in biblical interpretation, the REASON we can even fuss about scriptural “context” and Hermeneutics, the REASON we don’t decide interpretive conclusions by who holds the saints’ bones, is because of the Enlightenment. 

Here is the philosophical farce played out before our eyes. Men try to steal Aristotelian logic to defend Platonist mysticism. Men seek to demagogue Aquinas’s Summa Theologica to defend Augustine’s assertions of epistemological bankruptcy. Men hijack the cognitive products of the Age or Reason to defend the superstitions Of the Dark Ages. So, the next time you hear a bunch of Puritan groupies pounding the pulpit for their interpretive superiority and voicing their snide assurance that everyone ELSE reads Scripture out of “context” based on 15th century interpretive methods, just giggle.  

It is time to “Pay attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…” 

The lens that makes the Sovereign Grace Ministries anecdote come into focus is the doctrine behind the curtain. You are witnessing the logical progression of these doctrines played out in every story, and action from those within leadership and those who sit in the pews. The common thread running through it all is the Calvinist constructs held up as the ONLY Christian ideology.  

But know this, however appalled you are at what you see currently, the sequence is far from fulfilled. This is merely the infancy, and we are already reeling from the stories. To date, all that has happened is enough people have begun to voice their objections. They have gained enough confidence to come out from underneath the indoctrinated fear far enough to start explaining their treatment under the dynamic. But they still want to evade the relationship to underlying doctrines.    

Historically, as these ideas have risen up in fits and starts, America has been mostly immune to their advance. The biggest deterrent is the inability of their advocates to succeed in dominating the public forum. In America, they have never been able to make full inroads to acquiring civil power. These doctrines cannot prevail without force in the face of rational adults unmoved by superstitious threat. To be sure, I submit that Calvin’s specific intent was to create a philosophy that gave moral justification for Protestant Theocratic Autocracy. The logic to this end went like this:  

Human Depravity = Mass Incompetence = Dictated Good.   

Therefore,

Dictatorial Good = TRUTH = God = Authority = Force

 And this leads to the inevitable question: Who are those in charge of beating the barbarian masses into submission to the greater good?  

If man can’t do anything, who then amongst us is qualified to do something? Hence, the rise of the Oligarchy, the First among Equals, the Ubermenschen: a group of men who are, immune—somehow—from the very Mass Incompetence that condemns everyone else’s self-governance. The rationalizations and justifications are many, but the sum is a presumption that they are qualified because, well, they just are.  So if they have an idea, it is just better. If they take an action, it is superior. If they are moral, they are perfectly moral, well, until God grants them grace to perceive their grave sin. And then they are just wretched old sinners like everyone else. Alakazam! Poof! Who are you to judge? You are sinfully suspicious and don’t have the authority to pry into things above your pay grade.  

And now you can understand how Rat Fink Brent D can blog without a blush of inconsistency. Why, of course, he is blogging better and more righteously than those evil armatures in their mommy’s basement. Like a church shaman of old armed with saints’ bones, he stacks up Bible proof text to win the “rational” argument. And how dare you challenge his interruptive conclusions? How double-dog dare you challenge his interpretive methods? 

Now sit down and shut up and maybe he will commend you as a worker of God. While you are waiting, be a good servant and get him some hot cocoa. He’s hurt!  

And now you can understand what is really animating the SGM is pathological defense of their authority. In their mind, TRUTH and authority and governing force are all the same thing. They must defend their authority because a challenge to authority is a challenge to TRUTH. A challenge to TRUTH is an assault on the Bible.  And assault on the Bible is an assault on their justification to govern.   

When governing power is tied to the definition of TRUTH, there is no possible world where another interpretive conclusion can be achieved. That is why Europe was awash with bloodshed for a hundred years after the Reformation. 

Pay no attention to the doctrine behind the curtain…. At your own peril. 



Spiritual Crack

Wednesday January 20, 2010 • 15 Comments 

By John Immel

For Audio click here

“We doubt you, why don’t you doubt yourself?” This gem of saint-equipping counsel was said by my favorite spiritual tyrant. On the surface it looks like he is trying to convey the general opinion of his partners in tyrannical pastor-ness about moi. I don’t remember the specific conversation, but I do remember this was a response to my confidence. But in actual fact, his words are really an implicit doctrinal statement. His words sum up many Christian leaders’ ministerial assumption:  the quest for Indoctrinated Self-Doubt.

Notice that my favorite spiritual tyrant’s pithy statement IS the logical conclusion of Augustine’s Pervasive Depravity. By Orthodox standard Humanity’s greatest transgression is self-will. Self-will is the sum of our corrupt appetites, desires, and aspirations that get lumped into the general category lusts. Corrupt human nature requires a sanctification then that is little a more than confining that nature, binding it, placing man in an ever more sterile circumstance to incarcerate his action. The logic being if he is not near bad things, he will not be tempted by bad things. Holiness becomes the absence of temptation enforced by a community of busybodies holding each other accountable to the social standard of the church leadership.

Therefore, a man’s greatest humility is self-doubt. Because only by self-doubt, by the power of that self-subordination, can he peaceably inhabit the jailhouse called the church. This self-doubt destroys any self governance because man is universally incompetent to do GOOD. He needs someone to tell him what GOOD is and then compel his lawless nature to that GOOD action. This means that man’s greatest ethical action is obedience to authority.

From the Pastoral perspective, the Platonist/Augustinian world view makes crushing out any ability or self-inclination a good thing. Said another way, my favorite spiritual tyrant thought he was doing me a favor. Crushing my confidence was the goal of his counsel, because my confidence was evidence of a lack of sanctification. I wasn’t dead enough. Under Platonist/Augustinian assumptions, the fivefold ministry is really nothing more than a bureaucratic spiritual death panel ever advocating that man’s lot in life is inability, insufficiency, and inequity. Their job is to police those who are smuggling too much life into their life and browbeating them for their selfishness. This makes Fivefold Ministry an endless appeal to individual self-destruction. How can we know if people are succeeding in self-destruction? The answer is to measure increased levels of subordination. What does this living death look like? Since Christians frown on the bullet to the head brand of suicide, the Christian definition of death means “Equipping the Saints” to ever increasing surrender.

To whom?

The current Church marketing and packaging says it is surrender to the Cross, surrender to God. But since He isn’t holding office hours and since you are incapable of getting to Him on your own, that leaves those He charged with governance in His stead. Men who stand in the very Stead of God are the manifestation of God’s Grace for your civil and spiritual life.

Man must subordinate his action to the guiding assertions of ‘authority.’  This seems sort of right. What better yardstick of human action than governmental authority that God appoints? But this yardstick makes the definition of right and truth the sensibilities of men, who feel it is their God-given duty to squash any dissent from those they lead. And never forget: Government is force. So put this together and you have defined Christian sanctification as death by bureaucrat: unelected and unaccountable authorities who by force crush those they administrate. In any other context, this would be called Despotism.

But in the Platonist/Augustinian world view, this Mystic Despotism is the logical progression of ideas. The progression gets called Biblical and everyone who is anyone knows that if it is in the Bible, man is supposed to believe it. To defy the idea is to defy God, and no one wants to do that. So man caves to his spiritual insecurities and accepts the premise unchallenged. This is the definition of Mystic Despotism:  the use of man’s spiritual insecurities combined with governmental force to control those ruled.

A Fivefold ministry of Mystic Despots are nothing more than bureaucrats of destruction responsible to drive people to the cult of Death that has become the cross. They beat people down the path of self-abandonment until there is nothing left to abandon. Individual destruction suppresses every desire, every want, every inclination, holding up as an ideal a man so stunted in restriction that he is unrecognizable as man. The individual–if it could even be called that–becomes a squat, square, rigid, sexless curmudgeon suspicious of any unapproved concept or pleasure, rabidly evangelistic against elements of human individuality.

The product is inevitable: a meek social conformity to all ‘authority.’ As John Stewart Mill correctly commented about the cultural effect of this doctrine perpetrated by one of Augustine’s leading intellectual heirs:  ”I don’t mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination except what is customary.”  Carl Marx referred to this narcotic-induced state of human existence as: “the Opiate of the masses.”

I call this Spiritual Crack.

Crack is cheap. The doctrine of self-doubt is cheap. It takes nothing to undermine a human soul by manipulating their spiritual insecurities. It takes no pastoral skill to rip out a person’s confidence. Supply the brute force of authority to crush ambition and turning a man into an empty husk of inert self-restriction is matter of course.

Crack is highly addictive. The outcome of Mystic Despotism is highly addictive. “We love you, so we care for you. You belong, so make our work a joy. If you don’t, God opposes the proud. Your self-assurance is a measure of your pride.” This is the beginning of the addiction as people go to bed feeling the warm heady rush of inclusion. The words “You belong,” inject ecstasy into their souls. The price of hearing those words over and over and over is just a tiny bit of self-doubt. Just a bit more surrender. And self-doubt is really humility, right? Surrender is spiritual, right?

Like the crack addict revisiting the street corner, people go back to the church building to get their fix of pastoral ‘care’ deferring one small choice, and another little assurance, chipping away at SELF, trading it for pastoral validation. At first the need for injected affirmation is infrequent. But as the SELF is eroded, the junkie jones grows until one day there is nothing left to exchange; the addiction complete, leadership opinions are the only opinions. Leadership passions are the only passions. And leadership’s mannerisms are the only mannerisms. Having lost track of their identity, they adopt the group personality. And then the collective. The hive mind is complete.

Man cannot live without an identity defined by a coherent world view because his world view is the source of his outward action. The fuel of outward action is values and a world view is the internal combustion engine of values. So when man is told that his inner world view is corrupt–and he chooses to believe that–he looks for something outside to fill the emptiness. He cannot help this drive any more than he can help needing to breathe. Left without power to originate anything, he turns to whomever will fill the void. Whoever supplies the coherent world view, the most compelling integration of values is who wins the empty person’s heart, mind, and identity. The result is an endless cycle of dependence driven by an indoctrinated addiction.

Any preacher teaching spiritual dependence is as much a drug dealer as any South American cocaine lord. His drug is Spiritual Crack. And the effects are equally horrific. People are robbed of everything that is dignity. The disaster is harder to see because people appear ‘respectable’ in their Sunday best, and live in neat and tidy houses, and retreat to the very sterile safe haven of steepled buildings.

But underneath the good church boy and girl façade is a destitution and spiritual squalor that makes a crack whore look noble. Indeed, we have all met these putrid souls, automatons of sanctimony, poster children for Paul’s “filthy menstrual rags” righteousness. For all of their insistence that by virtue of their submission to authority they have mastered life, terror rolls off them like a stench at the thought of venturing beyond a very narrow controlled environment.

They hide behind crosses like Bram Stoker’s Vampire hunter and spice their talking with scriptures like so much garlic, as if to ward away evil by the power of their talismans.

Hardship sends them to their knees in penance for the smallest perceived sins.  They cower and quake at the capricious god of the universe who piteously drubs them about the head and shoulders for his great ‘mysterious’ purpose. Every hardship is some divine effort to teach dependence and inability, a WWF smack down with God doing flying elbow drops from the turnbuckle, eye gouging and biting until man taps out.

Sinners in the hands of an angry god, more loathsome and vile than any serpent might be in man’s eye. This truth from the pulpit makes people detest their reflection, and sends women into campaigns of intentional drabness, ruining their beauty with all the energy of a flail-ripping flesh. Heaven forfend that they make their pathetic, weak, incompetent, hopeless, useless brother stumble with the skin of a shoulder or the flesh of an ankle. This self-detesting, self-loathing doctrine so castrates men from their drive to prevail that the smallest choice sends them to the to the pastor’s office to facilitate a decision. Should I nap or is that sloth? Should I watch G-rated movies or dare I see PG? Is it sinful to use a spoon or should I only use a fork? This produces men so absent that their ethical power is atrophied and cannot stand against ANY moral seduction. Their world is a bewildering endless dark tide of destructive hostile gremlins of bad that they are incapable of mastering.

Is it any wonder that the overriding emotion of that life is fear? Is it any wonder that they look at the sky in terror expecting it to fall? A life addicted to spiritual crack inevitably produces this outcome. The addiction is the affirmations and sensibilities of other men. Indeed, addicted souls were force-fed a substance more consuming than drugs. Drugs bind the body. Spiritual Crack binds the spirit and mind to a putrid state of anonymity that needs filled with any confident and able person pretending authority. Without this crucial substance, the world tilts and the boogie man of bad stalks in the shadows of insecurities.

How dare you miss church? Without a man measuring right thoughts, how will you know what to think? Without a man defining right actions, how will you know how to act?  Oh wretched man, who can save you from this world of death?

The answer: only those appointed by God to shepherd your stupid and ignorant and degenerate soul through this life of justified woe and pain and suffering.

Is there a way to Rehab? Don’t be absurd. In the Platonist/Augustinian world view, to even ask this question shows the measure of your deception. Your choice maker has been so atrophied, so shriveled, so bent and corrupt, that such an action is impossible.

Or is it?

Dear Spiritual Crack addict, here is your first choice.



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