Family Member Tomczak Responds

Saturday February 27, 2010 • 5 Comments 

Poster Anonymous has identified herself as a member of the Tomczak family in comments on Women and Children First.  I am going to accept that premise.  Their actual identity is irrelevant.  What is relevant are the themes underlying Anonymous’ comments: they speak volumes to the ongoing tide of Mystic Despotism within American Christianity.  I have touched on many of these themes throughout articles on www.SpiritualTyranny.com.  These comments present me with another teachable moment.

Here are the two comments in order of post:

To whoever writes these articles… I am a member of Larry Tomczak’s family and we left a long time ago from SGM. We were the pioneers of leaving SGM. Please post something that is correct. No offense but it makes me sad that you have to post things that are not any longer true. I would also like you to respect everyone even if they are wrong. C.J. did hurt our family very badly but we have forgiven him and gone on with our lives! SGM, yes, indeed is not a good place for everyone but yet there is much healing that has come about when it comes to all the people who have left. I happen to be a poster for SGM survivors and we have been in contact with the heads of the group. They are great people.

 

To this I have to say Che and Larry haven’t been connected with SGM in over 10 years. Please be respectful even to people who don’t agree with you. Using the word for male anatomy is not a good turn of phrase. All I ask is respect is due everyone. No, I do not like C.J. but I respect him as a man!

 

You post the following: “Larry Tomczak, where the Hell are you in all your Apostolic Glory? Che Ahn, where are you in all your submission and authority magnificence?”

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One more thought… you post that Larry turned a blind eye… in fact I saw him work tirelessly to change SGM’s abusive power but was unsuccessful. He cried and wept bitter tears over this whole debacle. He has counseled others that have left as well. If you are interested in hearing about this, please feel free to post something here and I would be willing to get in touch with you to discuss it.

 

Also, please go on Larry’s Facebook page to get in contact with him. We never left those who needed healing from SGM. In fact, many have contacted us. So, please, do not think that Larry or Che just up and left. They have thriving churches who have helped heal these wounds. You are not alone in your anger, but please, I would request that you do it respectfully! Again, I do not like the leaders in SGM but I respect them as men who are albeit a bit confused!

*     *     *

Since I am empathetic, I can understand why you are saddened by what you read. You are in emotional solidarity with a family member: you love Larry.  I would do the same.

You glance through a diatribe that does not square with your definition of respect or accurate. You are confident in your own sincerity: both in your actions now and Larry’s actions over the last ten years.  You have a hard time wrapping your mind around where my commentary is coming from.  You caught an inkling of my point because you commented “… so please do not think that Larry or Che just up and left,” but you didn’t stop to digest the source of my implication.  You should have paused, put aside your kneejerk reaction, and thought.

Your sincerity and emotional reaction notwithstanding, be forewarned. I am going to put a very fine point on my response.

“Please be respectful even to people who don’t agree with you.”  Uh… Anonymous, this is not a playground fuss over Strawberry or Vanilla ice cream, or who is the greatest basketball player in the world: Kobe or LeBron.  (Of course, it is Strawberry and LeBron. And whoever doesn’t agree with me is a punk.)

>snicker<

Let us review so we can discover a sense of proportion.

By many reports, this is no isolated incident of Pastoral insanity and horrific doctrine-driven conduct.  The Noel story merely sets a new low for a prevailing trend. Noel’s little girl is molested by a 15-year-old recidivist with testicles.  In a stroke of insanity, SGM leadership spends roughly a decade trivializing the boy’s (with testicles) actions and elevating Noel and Grizzly’s response to the boy’s (with testicles) gross injustice in a mad tide of moral equivalency and character assassination.  According to Noel’s story as originally posted on www.sgmsurvivors.com (see link above), over time the molester with testicles is elevated to some form spiritual leader within the SGM organization. 

Let us continue our review.  Larry Tomczak (ostensibly with testicles) is booted from PDI circa 1995 because of lying, and pride, and blah blah blah-the usual litany of SGM disqualifiers.  Or depending on who is talking, he pioneered leaving.  Since that time, Larry has been stumping through the US advocating his Apostle-ness with sidekick Che Ahn (also ostensibly with testicles.)  The function of this Apostle-ness is something called covering.

What is that covering?  Hang on a minute… I’ll get back to that.

“We were the pioneers of leaving SGM. Please post something that is correct.”  Larry Pioneered leaving SGM?

pi·o·neer (p -nîr ) n.

1.One who ventures into unknown or unclaimed territory.

2. One who opens up new areas of thought, research, or development.

3. A soldier who performs construction and demolition work in the field to facilitate troop movements.

 1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of early settlers.

2. Leading the way; trailblazing:

 a. To open up (an area) or prepare a way

b. To settle (a region).

Really?  This is the credit he’s giving himself?  Or is this the loving mythology bestowed by a family member?  By definition, that would mean Larry left first but here is “something correct.”  As a member of the family, I can understand why Charles Schmitt doesn’t even get an honorable mention.  But if leaving is the definition, Charles pioneered an exit from CLC/PDI (or whatever other acronym they call themselvesy) by 1982.  Math is hard but that is over a decade BEFORE Larry followed.

Here is something else correct: Che Ahn pioneered an exit before Larry followed.  These two pioneering examples leap to my mind.  I am confident some SGM historians could easily offer a list of others that pioneered an exit from PDI/CLC/SGM long before Larry followed.

And this all presumes that Larry would have followed if he were allowed to persist in his comfy submission to authority office.  Are you honestly going to advocate that Larry was planning an exit when he got called to the carpet for lying?  The fact that Larry had been mothballed by El Primo Doctrinal Mover and Shaker for four months (with no end in sight) had nothing to do with Larry’s decision to remove himself?

I get that SGM wanted something from Larry and their punitive actions were a little more than extortion.  What was the price of staying?  Shaving his head?  Sharing his M&Ms?  Declaring fealty to the great Reformer of Geneva?

I’ll not mince words.  The cultural methodology that bit Larry in the backside is the same cultural methodology that had been employed on our previous two pioneers, and a host of others who did not have the national reputation or local following to sustain them after getting the boot.  The grand symbolic reconciliation with Charles and Che Ahn came because someone figured out they had been wrong in method and practice.  I’m a little fuzzy, but whose method had suddenly changed?

Had SGM central not been driven to infect EVERYONE with their “Doctrinal Refocus,” what exactly would have motivated Larry to pioneer an exit?

You and I both know that Larry couldn’t care less about the “Doctrinal Refocus” as his booklet What do You Believe abundantly illustrates.  Here is something else correct: that booklet shows virtually no mastery of the historic doctrines or their subsequent outworking.  He didn’t even master the KNOWN territory so how can he claim scouting out unknown territory: definitely no pioneering there.

Which leads nicely to this next point: Pioneering is not merely about chronology.  Pioneering, by definition, is creating a trail for others to follow.

So, Anonymous, what is the trail?  What is the path exactly?

Did Larry Tomczak lay out a path for Noel and Grizzly (or anyone) for that matter, to actually leave SGM?  Where has Larry Tomczak provided the information on how to respond to the tyranny?  Where has Larry Tomczak specifically illustrated how to overcome the doctrine/teachings that bind people’s souls?  Where are the tools to help refugees and survivors identify the source of their fears?  Where is Larry Tomczak’s provision for clear moral clarity for resisting oppression?  Where is his participation in the ongoing conversation on sundry blogs concerning  SGM insanity?

Did he leap to the defense of Noel’s daughter and help them navigate the onslaught of moral relativism and pastoral council bankruptcy?  That whole debacle was happening over the last ten years:  Uh… the same ten years that you saw Larry crying and not being associated with the ministry.

This pioneering effort is displayed for all to see, for all to hear?  Where is it exactly?  A Facebook page?

“We never left those who needed healing from SGM. In fact, many have contacted us. So please do not think that Larry or Che just up and left. They have thriving churches who have helped heal these wounds.”  This makes me scratch my head.  What church doesn’t try to help the hurting?  Why is that specifically unique?  There are scads of churches receiving SGM casualties.  I talked too many hand wringing, bromide touting, presiding over the flock. Churches “thriving” because the pew sitters are pounded into the seats with an endless: “Make sure you are here on Sunday sinner.  Pay your tithes you God robber and submit, submit, submit!”

Hey, here is an idea: the goal is not to heal the wounded.  The goal is to END THE WOUNDING!!!!!!

Dare I point out that everything listed above can be found here?  Dare I point out that I was one of the first to openly, publicly, formally write a criticism of the PDI/CLC/SGM doctrine and practice?  Ask your family member.  He knows it’s true.  He got a copy of my first book.  That book sparked a dozen or so conversations between Larry and me over about 18 months.  Those conversations created the introduction to Charles Schmitt and a dozen other leaders’  (ostensibly with testicles) where I sat agape while they detailed their own stories of spiritual tyranny perpetrated at the hands of PDI/CLC thugs, but no, they were not really interested in getting involved.  They didn’t feel “called,” to any specific outward action.  These same ‘men’ pound the pulpit with regularity portraying themselves as champions of Spiritual fortitude.  Their purpose as a pastor is to be a defender of the weak; they are a spiritual: “Covering.”

What a bunch of gutless frauds.

How about giving credit for real pioneering work?  Kris and Guy at www.sgmsurvivors.com are pioneers for creating the first public forum where people could begin to realize they are not crazy; where people could begin to see that their treatment was no isolated incident as SGM is always inclined to portray conflict with their vaunted leadership.  Or, how about Jim over at www.SGMrefuge.com who has spent the better part of two years OPENLY detailing the SGM injustice and mistreatment: a man who has OPENLY reached out to a number of other denominational leaders in an effort to galvanize people towards bringing this path of destruction to a close?

That is pioneering work.

And I am not done pioneering my response.

“All I ask is respect is due everyone. No, I do not like C.J. but I respect him as a man!”  This … makes no sense.  So you respect CJ?  Really?  Then why have you left?

re·spect

1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.

2. To avoid violation of or interference with.

3. To relate or refer to; concern.

n.

1. A feeling of appreciative, often deferential regard; esteem.

2. The state of being regarded with honor or esteem.

To respect the man necessitates that you respect the sum of his actions.  Seeking to parse a distinction is to offer a truly meaningless division.  If the encompassing relational standard is respect, how do you decide where to draw the line on deference?  Evidently, you don’t respect him enough to remain submitted to his considered judgments. So, by definition, you dis-respected CJ when you left.

And this is at the core of the whole SGM fraud.  Everyone seems endlessly preoccupied about showing these men deference but absolutely vacant in evaluating the content of SGM’s actions driven by their specific doctrine. In a bizarre, insane double standard, these thugs can pound the pulpit qualifying their authority by their unique great character - the accumulated good of their actions - and in the next breath absolve themselves of any bad outcome of those actions: “because all churches have their problems, and we are all just sinners.”

And no one wants to offend them by pointing out the insanity???!!!!  People will bend over backward, make ridiculous distinctions, all in a vain effort to maintain some fictional sense of propriety.  This is insane.  This is absolutely morally, intellectually bankrupt.

Somehow the level of disaster is not sinking in.  Let me reiterate the report that sparked the original article Women and Children First.  Noel says that a boy, with testicles, molested her daughter (and potentially more little girls).  Over time SGM elevated that boy with testicles to a leadership position.  CJ has touted fealty to the charismatic papacy that is SGM.  CJ sits as vicar over the Holy Sea, standing in the stead of God.  The buckaroo stops with CJ and thereby, he cannot pass off the responsibility of TEN years of pastoral psychosis.  What in that equation is respect-worthy?  What in that equation qualifies for deference?  At what point should we feel appreciative?  What there is honorable, or esteem-worthy?

By definition, respect is a subjective expression towards something of value.  So what someone gives respect reflects their sense of values.

Respect is NOT due everyone.  Respect is not an entitlement.  Respect is not a content independent bestowal.  Men do not have an ethical requirement to embrace all people, in all action, equally.  What you are advocating is nothing more than thinly veiled moral relativism.  I will never value tyranny.  I will never value bondage or oppression perpetrated in the name of God or righteousness.  I will never respect tyrants!

If that is what you value, then you have found one man with testicles who rejects your value.

Nothing spiritual exists in clement, patient, handwringing, and obsequies speaking. SGM’s actions are despicable.  For far too long, national leaders have treated SGM method and practice like a polite secret: like the inner wrangling of wayward children against a strict father.  They are far too eager to close an already blind eye to the tyranny.  How SGM burns through people’s lives is available for anyone to see who will actually look.  And in Larry’s case, he LIVED it.

We are so infected with Leaven that we are like the Pharisees able to look at the sky and understand rain is coming but utterly incapable of seeing what the response should be.  We are so preoccupied with some ill-conceived effort at methodological precision that we making the very failures of Jesus’ warning: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.”  And the result is a stunning impotence in moral clarity and an utter inability to resist tyranny.  Remind your family member of that sentence.  He heard that entire discussion from me almost a decade ago as I drove him around Georgetown.

“One more thought… you post that Larry turned a blind eye… in fact I saw him work tirelessly to change SGM’s abusive power but was unsuccessful. He cried and wept bitter tears over this whole debacle.”  Okay… I’m empathetic to the pain.  The onslaught and personal assassination that comes with having a conflict with SGM is a brutal path to walk.  And what is more, he should have cried (past tense) for stunning tyranny is being perpetrated in an organization that ostensibly bears his name and authority.  But this at no point absolves him of the subsequent ten years of comparative silence.

Here is the focus of my original article Women and Children First.  Larry has been stumping through the US, since his ouster, claiming Apostolic authority and advocating that correct church government requires that Pastors and Evangelists, and Teacher, Prophets, and pew-sitters must come offer their gifts and callings to apostolic central planning.  This is in exchange for the vaunted ‘covering.’

Okay, so where is the covering?  Or maybe a better question: What is covering?

PDI was his brainchild.  He called himself Apostle and demanded submission to his authority-ness.  He used that authority to remove, at minimum, the pioneers mentioned above.  Where is the other side of this vaunted social contract?  How does an apostle earn his keep?  Covering?  What bad things is he shielding people from?  What does he safeguard?  The prophesy mic?  Keep demons from attacking?  How utterly trivial.  How ridiculously subjective.  

What could an apostle actually do that is worthwhile?  How about defending the women and children being run over by SGM doctrine and practice?  And let us not leave out the men who have been sucked down the path to sacrifice their wives to Pastoral affirmations.  Those little boys need protection from their weak minds.

The fact that he pioneered an exit or got kicked out is irrelevant.  Larry started the mess: the tyranny that was PDI and is now SGM.  He started that group and called himself apostle over that group.  At the very least, he called himself a leader and demanded submission.  People gave their submission in exchange for covering.  So he got kicked out?  So what?  How does that mitigate his responsibility to his self-proclaimed social contract?

The very Pauline writings that Larry stacks up like so many Legos for the submit, submit, submit part are the same writings where Paul kicked some serious ass when churches he’d founded started trotting off the theological and methodological deep end.  It didn’t matter that the churches didn’t want Paul around, or that he had been defamed in the minds of the local church.  Paul refused to remain silent.  He got out his trusty pen and waged relentless persuasive warfare against what he considered error.  Paul had the onions to stand against those with whom he unequivocally disagreed.  He was not shy.  He took his argument public and would not back down.  If Paul is your measure, then-IF-apostolic covering is anything, it is at least a pair of… testicles.

So, where is he in all his Apostolic covering glory?  I guess this comment answers my question:  “To this I have to say Che and Larry haven’t been connected with SGM in over 10 years.”

 The problem is his ABSENCE. 

“They are great people.”  Well, you and I are quantifying greatness different.  To my mind, Great Men identify objectives and achieve outcomes.  Great Men don’t quit!  Great Men work in the light of day to realize goals.  Great Men speak openly of their ideas.  Great Men galvanize others to effective moral and philosophical clarity.  Great Men defend the weak.  Great Men resist the tyranny of Mystic Despotism with every fiber of their being.

There is no middle to mediate.  I am stunned at how often people try to play at being the broadminded, holier-than-thou, can’t we just all get along, kumbaya, kumbaya hippy peace retreads.  I marvel at the effort to balance despotism with trivialities.  I stand slack-jawed at the displayed sense of proportion.  I am in awe at someone being more fussed about the word testicles than the utter bankruptcy of SGM leadership’s actions.

The moral equivalency deeply embedded in pervasive depravity has made all sin disqualifying, and thereby everyone is culpable but no one responsible.  The smallest trivialities are as great a sin as the most destructive slaughter.  This mindset has so pervaded the whole of Christianity that we are not salt and light but rather a bunch of soulless nattering nannies fussed over what someone does with body parts.  We say morality and mean “Don’t cuss, smoke or chew or have sex with those who do.”  We think it an extraordinary moral stand to put on our Puritan hats and boycott movies that mention testicles.  We get agitated when someone is blunt, but conciliatory when tyrants advocate all manner of despotism.  We can stab each other in the eye as long as we smile and heaven forefend the victim complain about ill treatment with any passion.

If this repugnant trivialization doesn’t illustrate my point, I don’t know what will: “I respect them as men who are albeit a bit confused!”  The sum of the SGM problem is a little bit of confusion?

Un-freaking-believable!!!

Anonymous, get a clue, a sense of proportion, and a spine; and you must respect me for not agreeing with you.  I’m a pioneer who cries; and I respect you as a person, but don’t like what you say, even when I didn’t say testicles.

 

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Related Articles: Blog Apostle



Paul Balluff-The Final Lesson

Wednesday May 27, 2009 • 186 Comments 

I actually haven’t deviated from my stated intent to file three posts following specific themes. It just turns out I get to make one of the same points using a different object lesson. This should be the last lesson from this source.

*********

Be arrogant if you must. Be ignorant if you must. But don’t be arrogant and ignorant. This is a John Immel original aphorism. I accept royalties.

In some Christian circles, the accusation of arrogance is worse than the charge of misogyny in a National Organization of Women Conference. This stems from the fact that in these circles, Pride and Arrogance tend to be synonymous, and Pride becomes a catch-all spiritual failing: tossed within an utterly erroneous notion that humility is manifest in self-deprecation, self-doubt, and self-destruction. Whatever… This all ends up being “Method and Manner” fraud.

Arrogance is nothing more than the assumption of superiority and anyone who has worked to achieve any level of expertise or mastery, by definition, has earned that assumption. This does not preclude weakness, or inabilities, or failures. Indeed, someone who sets out to be a true master of any discipline works relentlessly to be aware of their weakness so they can remedy and overcome. The road to mastery is nothing more than an iterative process of increasing self-awareness.

Self-AWARENESS is an encompassing state: a macro vantage point over the sum of self; the ability to place all of one’s abilities, skills, talents, expertise, greatness, weaknesses, ignorance, lacks, intemperance, and ignobility in context to reality.

By way of contrast, self-ABSORPTION is a prohibitive state: a micro vantage point with no sense of the sum of self–a willful ignorance of self in context to reality.

My aphorism is designed to identify this state of self-absorption. Being arrogant and ignorant is the worst of all worlds. If one does not know what they don’t know because they are unwilling to ask (or more insidious, willing to HEAR), they can never, ever, find an effective solution to any life problem. This kind of SELF is narrow in perception, and indulgent in action.

We all know people like this. To some degree, we were all like this: think teenager. Think adolescence. Most parents know to bite their tongue and wait out the stupidity, praying to God that eventually self-awareness will spring eternal. If not, maybe God will let us eat our young.

We tolerate such self-absorption out of teenagers, sort of.

  • Their willful ignorance: the belief that they know everything while making no effort to know anything.
  • Their belligerent evasion: purposely hiding behind hostility and indignation when confronted with error.
  • Their argumentative legalism: playing the strict literalist game when linguistic games suit, and flat ignoring the violation of basic principles and common communication intent.
  • Their lip service to forgiveness: the demand for moral absolution while demonstrating no willingness to change conduct or attitude.
  • Their conduct blank check:  the fundamental expectation that others must pay for their moods, intemperance, laziness, inability, and lifestyle.
  • Their relational presumption: the belief that they can act however they want because Mom and Dad are obligated to suck up their intemperance.
  • Their moral equivalency: “Well, yes, I’m sorry but you did THIS. So you are no better than me.”
  • Their petulant emotionalism:  the endless manipulation of feelings-criticisms are catastrophic hailstorms of excrement and compliments are disproportionate sonnets of love, beauty, and butterflies.

We grant grace to all of these self-absorbed failings because we understand it to be a developmental stage–a finite period of time where young psyches work to get that macro vantage point on self. We wait for the emerging self-awareness because we believe the developmental cost will be far exceeded by the relational value a healthy, productive, valuable adult can contribute. In this environment with this expected outcome, love, and forgiveness, and grace, and mercy spring from a deep, deep well.

It is from this expected outcome, this deep, deep well, that God approaches us.

Inasmuch as we see people seeking the path to self-awareness, we are willing to embrace them on the path. But our energy shrinks to a dull ebb when we realize that arrogance and ignorance are combining to create the perfect storm of self-absorption and the inevitable self-indulgent outcomes.

Injustice grows exponentially when the self-absorbed, self-indulgent soul can demand moral absolution in the name of Christianity. When “Forgive Me” is uttered in belligerent command and moral absolution is the required response, mercy and grace have lost their meaning. When any person can write a moral blank check with the expectation that someone else MUST cash it, values, and justice, and proportion, and boundaries have been reduced to ash.

This is exactly how Christian Forgiveness is currently being taught: that the magic words of “forgive me” are sufficient to the cause. And if that doesn’t get the immediate moral absolution, the next bit of sanctimony is the moral relativism of “We are all just dirty rotten sinners.”  The overt proposition is “You are not any better than me, so someday you will need someone to wink and nod at your bad stuff too.”

Any unwillingness, any hesitancy to immediately declare all actions pardoned, any intemperate outburst exonerated, and all intimacy restored is met with sanctimony: “How un-Christian,” or “How unloving,” or “How hardhearted.”   The result: people are browbeaten into accepting circumstance and relationships that are vicious, unhealthy and destructive.

As a brief aside, it is this doctrinal insanity that keeps women in marriages where their husbands are self-absorbed, violent scum who repeatedly commit adultery: who alternately terrorize their families or abandon them with impunity. He stands in a pastor’s office and speaks the magic words, “forgive me.” With this enchantment, the woman is placed in an impossible position.

No matter how many adjectives we try to apply to this woman’s plight–loving, long-suffering, merciful, gracious et al–to make ourselves feel better in the face of profound injustice, she is further victimized by the self-absorbed, self-indulgent, useless piece of humanity, and then incarcerated by doctrines that are dehumanizing, unjust, and destructive.

It is true that God granted divorce because of the “hardness of people’s hearts,” but we have misunderstood who’s hardheartedness is the culprit. Divorce for “biblical” reasons is an act of self-preservation and self-defense against the violence of hardhearted action. (Make no mistake, adultery is personal violence of the most brutal soul-wrenching kind.) If the hardheartedness manifests in the person seeking divorce because of adultery, abuse, abandonment, why grant divorce at all?

Did I go to far afield with my last two paragraphs? Maybe, and then again, maybe not. The underlying theme of this post is what relational boundaries are people required to keep in the face of self-absorbed, self-indulgent, arrogant, AND ignorant conduct?

It is to this I will now turn my attention.

For those of you just tuning in…I’m not going to detail the sum of Paul Balluff and his wife, Me Love You long Time, interaction. You can find the bulk of their comments on Who’s Your Daddy, Reform or Not to Reform (in the last hundred comments), and Paul Balluff Lessons.

On May 25th, Paul Balluff found a pingback on the post Arena of Ideas. Here is what he said.

Paul B on May 25th, 2009 7:00 pm

Hey - I thought this using of other’s names was a ONE time thing, John?

Paul Balluff Lessons | spiritualtyranny.com on May 8th, 2009 3:28 pm

[...] adding their 38 cents worth. They don’t agree. They say so. No biggie. This is the Arena of Ideas where it is more rough-and-tumble than other living rooms. Someone might hand me my ass in my [...]

How, pray tell do you have the gall to add my name to such a vile statement and call yourself a Christian. Oh, my mistake, maybe you aren’t.

Leave the profanity to your members and keep my name off these–if you want to toss out a pithy statement, please refrain from attaching my name to it.

For those of you who don’t know, a “pingback” is a blogging thingy that lets blog owners know when someone has referenced a post. Any time a hyperlink is posted, it “pings back” to the original. I do a lot of internal linking because so many of my thoughts are interconnected. Hence, the pingback from the post Paul Balluff Lessons to the post Arena of Ideas.

Anyway, onward…I of course was mystified by Paul’s reaction and comments because everything in the pingback was in the original post and presumably Paul had already read said post with said profane reference. A post with his name on it????

Ah, yes…silly me presuming that Paul actually read the post. He has repeatedly said that he makes no effort to follow the details of the conversation. Here is what he said when called to account by Juli.

Paul on May 26th, 2009 9:52 am

To Juli-  I do not live on this or the other sites dedicated to those with a gripe to pick over life in or out of SGM. Therefore, I missed the Arena of Ideas and in a quick scan, thought that the above saying was attributed to me. I am man enough to say that I jumped to a conclusion that it was something that I had supposedly said - I was wrong. I hope you are woman enough to see how impolite you were in your response. (”you won’t get your ass kicked…”)
On a side note to all on these blogs- Had a good three-hour talk with Jim (SGMRefuge) last night. We left on excellent terms. As I hope can be said here.
John - same apology to you here -my bad
In Christ,
Paul

There is soooooo much here.

Your bad? Your bad what? Your relational incompetence? Your intellectual ineptitude? Your blogging presumption? Your utter lack of self-awareness? Your admitted willful ignorance? Your horrific doctrinal deficiency? Your nonexistent critical thinking skills? Your endless intemperance? Your ridiculous attempt at apology? Your feeble attempts at manipulation? Your pathetic sexist appeal?

Which bad thing are we talking about, Paul? The list is growing and growing and growing.

Frankly, I’ve seen teenagers with more self-awareness, and if not self -awareness, enough embarrassment at their own ill conduct that speaks to some self-consciousness.

Let’s see…am I saved? Hmm…well, if I’m not, maybe that explains a lot. But here is the thing. I’m not sure I see how that works out better for you?

If I am not saved, does that mean I get a moral and ethical pass? Does it increase YOUR obligation to overlook my conduct? So, as an unbeliever, does that mean I get to shoot you in the head and it’s just all good: leave your wife to forgive and forget? My conduct can’t be helped after all: I’m just an unsaved sinner? Right? It is by the Grace of God that such things don’t happen more often? Right?

Paul, you won’t follow this to save your life. You have shown no ability to follow a progression of thought, so I am confident this will sail right over your head. So, I am going to say it for those pastors sent to keep up with subversive material.

You guys suck at teaching your own body of doctrine. How is it that you can have a true SGM believer that can utter such inane doctrinal words? Come ON guys…my salvation demonstrated in using the word ASS? And not even jackass or stupid-ass or ridicule-ass.

How is it you have been so incompetent at teaching the doctrine of election? How is it you still have pew-sitters who CANNOT, for one second, remain consistent in their intellectual grasp of “Sound Doctrine”? How can comments, like Paul’s, be a criticism? If I am not saved, if I am not a Christian, there is not ONE thing I can do about it. So, my reprobate conduct is part and parcel of God’s Sovereign will.

He can parrot the SGM doctrine of pervasive depravity pretty good. He has absorbed the corresponding moral relativism that you all use to absolve yourselves of any and all relational failures…so how is it your pew-sitters fail to get the REST of the doctrine? From the way you advertise your doctrinal purity and monolithic presentation, this should be unacceptable. These pew-sitters should be getting demerits or something because they are NOT paying attention.

Anyway…

See, here is the insanity embedded in this whole dynamic. When it is something I’ve done, you get to rail about the quality of my salvation. Paul, when it is your manifest relational incompetence, you get to put on a Roseanne Roseannadanna act: “Oops…Never mind.”

Hommie John don’t play that game.

I can tolerate a lot. I have been more than generous with this platform. I have let you rail at liberty against the people and the content of this blog. I’ve let you and your wife accuse me of all manner of nefarious motives and actions. I have even let you justify yourself in an argument with Jim and Carol at www.sgmrefuge.com. That would be like me going to Dale O’Shields’ church and co-opting his mic to justify myself to SGM.

In all of this I have been (mostly) magnanimous.

I gave you ample time to explain the content of your lesson. I realize now you have none.

I even had flashes of letting you hang around for the comedic entertainment: as Jim is fond of saying: “That is almost funny.”

But what I cannot and will not tolerate is you presuming to give etiquette lessons to Juli. The irony in your thinking to define “impolite” is rich. And the further irony in your determination to make self-awareness a measure of your “man hood” makes me howl with laughter.

But comedic relief withstanding, that is the last straw. That is the single greatest manifestation of arrogance and ignorance that I can imagine.

You are not welcome here, Paul. There is no reprieve. I have no interest in further interaction. You are tedious, and have shown yourself willfully ignorant, arrogant, and thus irrelevant. Go co-op another blog to justify yourself if you must. But you have posted your last here.

The price of admission to this blog is both cheap and expensive. The price is self-awareness. You have no coin of the realm.

****

To all, If a comment sneaks through, ignore it till I get it deleted.



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