Dear Christian Chicken Little

33 comments

You’re scared and you don’t know why. You remain scared after so many years have gone by. And now, finally, after all these years, you are reading the stories: they differ in detail but the elements, the arguments, and the outcomes are eerily, unnaturally similar.

People (like you) who did what they were told, listened to Pastoral counsel, gave over profound amounts of personal transparency, and admitted flaws as a matter of doctrinal course.

People (like you) who found themselves required to obey counsel that was flawed, even catastrophically dangerous, or ridiculously heavy-handed.

People (like you) who bought into the Matthew 18 ethic as the essential conflict resolution process only to find that when called to account SGM leadership, replaced transparency with a stonewall of authoritarian posturing, ruthless character assassination, and a machine dedicated to personal marginalization.

People (like you) describe the aftermath with blunt similarity: profound confusion, heartache, and despair.

A variation of the same refrain lingers in the air melancholy and ominous. They are your words too: “I thought I was crazy….”

Your breath freezes in your chest: realization dawns bright and slashing like a knife across a matted wound: “I’m not alone!”

Yet what does this mean? What can it mean? The reality that there are others, many, many, others with the same story isn’t satisfying. It brings up so many pains, so many hurts, so many confusing feelings — feelings that you thought were long buried, long dealt with, but are most emphatically not reconciled.

The force of emotion is frightening. Have I really not forgiven? Am I still guilty before a Holy God for failure to live up to yet another standard? The experiences with Sovereign Grace Ministries was harrowing enough the first time around do I dare go back into that head space–that soul-crushing heart space? Maybe it is best to just leave well enough alone. Maybe it is best just to let bygones be bygones. Forgive and FORGET! Walk away. Don’t think about it. Besides, the fear, I can’t shake the fear.

The fear is sooo deep that the mounting evidence of Sovereign Grace Ministries’ catastrophic bankruptcy of judgment and practice still does not free you to utter a harsh word aloud.

You read the Bible for comfort and find only words of condemnation. You hear the pastoral voices drumming through your head, the accusations of sinfulness and pride, and pride and sinfulness. You measure your life against the SGM yardstick and find yourself endlessly short. You cannot throw away the yardstick because you accept the premise that it is a “Biblical” standard. Your ever-present, nagging, pressing, hurting, foreboding suspicion is that the departure from Sovereign Grace Ministries is ultimately a failure of yours, not a failure of theirs. That is what they told you to believe and that is what still dominates your mind.

Yet, you cannot find the path of reconciliation. If you could have, you would have. You loved them. You devoted your soul to the calling. You abandon yourself to the church passion.

If method existed to resolve yourself to the despicable treatment, you would have long since reconciled yourself ultimately back into their good graces. Indeed, you walk into every church with the desperate hope that all this will be SGM without the name and the oppression, only to find the people infused with every social ill SGM railed against. This seems to prove the assertion that every church has its problems: and the concurrent thought–maybe SGM isn’t really so bad.

Yet you cannot find the path through the suffered wrongs, the twists of logic, the exploitation of personal boundaries, and the subtle, soul-crushing condemnation.

You read the blogs and you shake and you weep for the tyrannies that you see on the printed page, and  for yourself. And you wonder why it happens. You wonder how it is possible. How can this evil persist? How can people let it happen?

And then you remember your own fear. Your own utter inability to say out loud what happened to you: to tell your story, to make yourself and your pains plain. You find your eyes traveling skyward in the silent hope that it is not really falling. And prayers laced with admitted sinfulness cascades across your lips. Hopefully, God will withhold his justifiable wrath for the list of sins attached to your soul. You hedge your bets, staying quiet;  if you refuse to call for justice and righteousness, that will keep you out of God’s mind, away from the path of the boogieman of bad.

So you sit inert in the torment of your fears. Filled with conflict between the injustice and your own impotence. Left to ask one question: how can someone (else) let this happen?

I’m going to tell you how it is possible. I’m going to tell you the fundamental reason, and it really isn’t all that complicated. I am going to point to the foundational thought of your fear. It is the heart and soul of Sovereign Grace Tyranny’s manipulation. It is the heart and soul of ALL Spiritual Tyranny.

This foundational thought is the foundation for the Shamans of old, the child sacrifice by Molech Priests, the power behind the witches’ Evil Eye, the gargoyles of the Middle Ages, the underlying threat for the Charis-costal “Touch Not God’s Anointed,” the energizing force that kept David Koresh in the comfy embrace of adolescent girls and cult wives, without a word of protest from fathers or husbands. This foundational thought is the Demagogues of Dictated Good tool of extortion. This foundational thought is essential for the philosophical premise that Man is a sacrificial animal. This foundational thought is the lake that feeds the rivers of blood throughout all Religions in history.

Before I tell you what this is, I am going to tell you a story. I want you to know that this is no academic muse but a realization that was lived in the face of real life, soul-sucking pressure.

It had been three days since I’d last talked to my father. I am standing in the Potomac Police station and for the first time I let myself say my suspicions. “I think my parents have been killed.” I vividly remember how I started crying and how the police department went silent. I expected my parents to arrive at my house some three days prior.

What started as a few curious phone calls back to family and friends and parental cell phone, to account for their tardiness, slowly turned into an ongoing campaign to contact law enforcement in every city from their home town to my place in Potomac, Maryland. From calm, affirming conversations with my grandmother and sister and aunts, to endless prayers and frantic mini trips to check all the potential places they could have ended up.

Day three and four of their absence were grueling exercise in patience between updates and very long nights spent pacing the football field at Churchill High School praying for every good outcome and blessing I could think. But I had a nagging dread that I struggled to shake: something bad had happened to my parents. As the human mind tends to do, I started trying to create cause and effect with the unfolding events. The timing was too spooky to describe. I had very recently distributed one of the early copies of Blight in the Vineyard, detailing my interaction with then CLC/PDI pastoral “care.”

My commentary is scathing now, and so it was then. In the foreword of Blight in the Vineyard, I wrote these words to sum up my relentless critique.

Some will suggest that my frank, open commentary is just eloquent vindictiveness. The following begins my response.

“I have indeed inveighed sharply against impious doctrines, and I have not been slack to censure my adversaries on account, not of their bad morals, but of their impiety. And for this, I am so far from being sorry, that I have brought my mind to despise the judgments of men, and to persevere in this vehement zeal, according to the example of Christ, who, in his zeal, calls his adversaries a generation of vipers, blind, hypocrites, and children of the devil… The ears of our generation have been made so delicate by the senseless multitude of flatterers, that, go soon as we perceive that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretense, we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our adversaries. What would be the use of salt, if it were not pungent? or of the edge of the sword, if it did not slay?”

Just a week or so before my parent’s disappearance, I received a letter rebuking me for my “eloquent vindictiveness.”  How could I dare speak against these “Men of great character?” It was the stiffest admonishment to date, a capstone on a list of judgments against my character and conduct, and another event in a growing list of church “friends” scrambling to the shadows deliberately distancing themselves from me, for fear that my “deleterious influence” and my disfavor would rub off on them.

My paranoia ran away with me on those long nights. Breathtaking fear gripped my soul. Was it true? God was disciplining me through events perpetrated upon my parents? My mind was a tidal pool of torment as I heard the words condemn me:  “God opposes the proud.”  Was I proud to reject the treatment that I’d suffered? Was I arrogant for presuming to take action and voice my criticisms? On and on the doubt and the questions churned inside me until finally I came to a resolve.

This is what I said. “I refuse to be tyrannized. If the New Birth, and the Adoption of Sons, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is not sufficient for you to speak to me as a man…if you have to kill my parents to get my attention, then you murdered your Son for no reason and humanity is lost. If you have a problem with what I did…you need to talk to ME!”

Actually, I shouted those words at the top of my lungs: dogs barked and doors opened.

God’s words came back to me that night: “John, your parents are fine. You will see them tomorrow. What do your fears really say of me?”

I know… the irony here is too much: an overt advocate for rational objective truth claiming a conversation with God. But hey, that is no more ironic than advocates of Kantian philosophy bemoaning the lack of intellectuals in the world, or Calvinists railing against the lack of moral character in humanity.

Day four waxed long, as minutes refused to become hours. Police were beginning to coordinate an effort between  jurisdictions across three states; a hunt was about to start in earnest. I was on the phone with law enforcement when my parents walked through the door.

They were indeed fine. My mother said that for three days she’d had a nagging thought to call me but the cell reception at Gettysburg national battlefield prevented a signal, and she’d forgotten when they’d been near a land line. Ten years ago, to my parents, cell phones were a curios extravagance to be kept turned off at all times. As it turned out, my father’s memory of meeting times and dates was dramatically different than mine…or my sister’s or my grandmother’s or my aunts, for that matter. My Grandmother had a lot to say about that later.

“What do your fears really say of me?” Excellent question this. One that I have spent the last decade, give or take, unraveling in my own mind.

Main Entry: ca·pri·cious
Pronunciation: k&-‘pri-sh&s, -‘prE-
Function: adjective
1 : governed or characterized by impulse or whim: as a : lacking a rational basis b : likely to change suddenly
2 : not supported by the weight of evidence or established rules of law -often used in the phrase arbitrary and capriciousca·pri·cious·ly adverbca·pri·cious·ness noun

3: determined by chance or impulse or whim rather than by necessity or reason; “a capricious refusal”; “authoritarian rulers are frequently capricious”; “the victim of whimsical persecutions”

Dear Christian Chicken Little, here it is. The source of the fear and the starting point of all Spiritual Tyranny–The gods are capricious. Shamans the world over, since the beginning of human existence, have sold this idea to the masses. Demagogues of Dictated Good use divine capriciousness as their primary extortion tool.

Only one way exists to deal with people: Force — Ideas or Violence.

The force of ideas is the power to persuade, to aim an argument at someone’s head. Assuming they are capable and interested in thinking, truth has an amazing capacity to bear itself out.

Violence is the point of a sword or the point of a nail, robbing a man of his choices, ultimately robbing his mind, his capacity to think, rendering him vacant, empty, mute, and robotic, without consent or embrace. Extortion is really force, aimed at a valued hostage.

In spiritual matters, the force is always the disposition of divine pleasure and the hostage is always the future state of one’s soul. Refusing to obey the shamans is always met with roaring, hazy coercion, or quiet foreboding implication. Demagogues of Dictated Good love to let their flock stew in the terror of their own minds, filling in the disaster and retribution by the endless gremlins of bad. Demagogues of Dictated Good predict all manner of misadventure at failed compliance to their considered opinions. They beam magnanimous smiles as reports of disaster affirm their assertion.

God help us when the Demagogues of Dictated Good join forces with history’s Hitlers drunk on bloodlust and despotism: combined, they use fire and sword to enforce “GOD’s” will. The result is the carnage of the Aztecs, the immolation of  Witches by the Catholic Church, or the endless string Islamic adolescent suicide bombers.

To appease the  capricious God, Man is laid with his throat bare for sacrifice. Mystic Despots proclaim Human life cheaper than trees. Mystic Despots use force to subordinate Man’s well-being below the lives of snail darters, or snakes, or cats, or whatever other twisted figure he chips out of stone to compel humans to prostrate before.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, your fears, your torment hinges here. You believe God is capricious: that He does not deal with men rationally, with knowable intentional purpose, but perpetrates upon them pain, and suffering, and hardship, beating them about the head and shoulders for daring to aspire to…much of anything. You believe that God only deals with man by force. You believe that His primary method of communication is piteously drubbing man about the head and shoulders with the circumstances of life.

You are inclined to object, telling me that it isn’t capriciousness but mystery:  “His ways are above our ways; His methods past finding out….” He loves us, whatever the great mystery of His knowledge, His purposes and motives are love.

Yes, I know. Capricious implies that God is unloving. Mystery makes it sound so much more benevolent. But that intellectual distinction is really no distinction at all: it amounts to the same thing. “You don’t understand me!” Whack! “You are sinful” Whack! “I love you!” Whack! “You are confused!” Whack!

Capriciousness eradicates cause and effect wisdom and understanding. Capriciousness destroys the concept of values and obliterates a standard of measure. And so does the fictitious appeal to God’s manifold mystery.

It is in this valueless, cause-and-effect vacuum that the Destroyers rise. The Destroyers are the Demagogues of Dictated Good. They thrive because YOU believe only THEY can bring order to divine will. Because YOU believe  THEY are uniquely qualified to point out the cause-and-effect of God’s intent. Because YOU believe they are the REAL source of value.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, your fears, your torment hinges here. Until you believe deep down in your soul that God fully intends for you to know His intention and wishes you no ill will, that He conceives no arbitrary harm against you, you will forever cower before Him like a medieval villager before the Gargoyles.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can preach endlessly of hope, and freedom, and faith but the words will fall dead on your ears.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can point out to you that proportional justice i.e “… an eye for an eye…” is a God idea. I can point out to you that specific justice i.e. “… if an Ox gores a man, you shall kill the Ox…” is a God idea. And yet many of you read my thoughts about my parents suffering for my temerity and genuinely believe it a reasonable execution of divine justice and judgment.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can point out that “God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble…” doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with submitting to a pastor. And you will not hear me.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that the Gospel was the proclamation of an anointing that set people free from sickness, pain, emotional bruising, economic bondage, and raised the dead; that the function of the New Covenant was for the express purpose of giving all of humanity access to the Blessing of Abraham and the Covenants of Promise. But when you hear the word Gospel, your mind speeds down the path of the cult of death that has become the worship of the cross. To your mind this means that we are all, like Jesus, sacrificial animals.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that man’s natural state is pleasure and blessing and you will cringe at the temerity and selfishness, and wonder how long God will allow me to persist in heresy.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I can tell you that the Destroyers have always risen as a result of your LACK of Ego. They rise when men are not fully defined selves with the ability to identify wants and desires and aspirations, with the expectation that naming them too God, their Father, aids and abets the fulfillment of the very same. They rise when men Lay Down their Minds and quit defending themselves. You will hear my words and think them full of all manner of presumption, too wonderful, or too selfish to be believed.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I could try to explain the error in the doctrines that make God capricious, but your eyes will glaze over with yet another theological conversation and you will justify your lack of intellectual focus because a capricious God does not really need rational  understanding or any explanation for His actions: so why does it really matter? Your excuse notwithstanding, that does not change the fact that a choice stands before you.

The same choice that has been before humanity from Adam’s rebellion till now: how does man deal with the fear that plagues his soul? Run and hide–try some feeble effort to cover up? Or run to God and see how He fixes the problem. I can say this with certainty. Man was not a sacrificial animal then. He is not one now.

I am not offering a panacea. No single magic prayer exists. Utopia, a place without hardship or life’s challenge, does not exist.  One cannot escape the rigor of life by bunkering in a church, submitting to a pastor, or reading my blog posts.  An entire air castle has been built in your mind founded on one premise. No quick fix to your fear exists, because the fortification is built deep in your soul.

Dear Christian Chicken Little, I am only putting my finger on the source, the foundational premise.

If God is NOT capricious, that means He IS interested in making His will, His purpose, His intentions known. From this foundation, it is profoundly easy to destroy the house of cards the Demagogues of Dictated Good have built.

So maybe start with a prayer, low and quiet, of your own timid choosing.  Or maybe you start with what I said:

“I refuse to be tyrannized. If the New Birth, and the Adoption of Sons, and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is not sufficient for you to speak to me as a man…if you have to kill _________  to get my attention, then you Murdered your Son for no reason and humanity is lost. If you have a problem with what I did… you need to talk to ME!”

Dear Christian Chicken Little, then run outside to see if the sky is falling. I promise you it will be right where you saw it last.

John Immel


He's a generally ornery pot string iconoclast that loves to make people think. He's harmless (well, mostly harmless). And don't forget lovable in an affectionately blunt sort of way. Whatever your first feelings, read and listen long enough and you will come to agree with him.


  • John,

    Wow. This post says alot. I had to comment on the first part.

    “God’s words came back to me that night:  What do your fears really say of me?”

    This reminds me of something God spoke to me when He set me free from SGM. I was reading Max Lucado and he was writing on the parable of the talents and God told me I was the person with one talent. I knew God to be a hard man. I hid myself away from other people for fear of being misjudged again. I buried any good He did in my life and became more and more fearful. But is God a harsh taskmaster? No way. He is my Father and I am His daughter. I was terribly wrong to compare Him to SGM leadership.  

     

  • “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind”  I see that SGM gets a lot of credit for instilling fear in its members. This battle shouldn’t be against SGM but against the enemy, satan himself who would seek to divide us. the war is not against flesh and blood.

  • WOW   brilliant post!  I love the part about the new covenant, you know, that good news stuff!   One of the most frustrating thing to me about my friends in SGM is their utter refusal to believe that the good news is really GOOD!  They believe that God’s idea of  ‘good’  means all manner of suffering and disease, they believe that it is more godly to accept “God’s will” that he want their child to be sick, than to grab onto Jesus and his promises with both hands and give the devil and his lies the boot. 

    Anyway,I think the earlier part of your post was so well done, anyone still in or just out (or maybe even longer out)  would be able to relate very well, if they’re honest.   

    Anyway, keep at it…maybe if everyone keeps yelling the truth it might get through to some even if it only gets through as a whisper.

  • Stein… Welcome.  I edited your comment … it originally had SGC in the third sentence.  I changed it to be consistent with SGM in the Second.  

    As for your observation about the battle and who plays what part… I will address this entire issue at a later date.  

    But I will offer this tidbit… Think a bit about what you said God gives and then observe what I AM doing.   “… Sound Mind…”  I advocate sound thinking.

    much nore to say,

    moi

  • Julie … that would be the one with an (e) on the end.  >snicker< 
    (Thanks for you both being out there… I usually have to tell you apart by the gravatar.)

    Anyway… thanks much for you kind words.  Brilliant is really good for my ego.  As for those folk who read.  … tell your friends who are out there to tune in … same bat time… same bat channel.   Whisper or shouting… truth has the ability to bear itself out. 
    : )

  • Stein,

    So, since every good and perfect gift comes from above – SGM gets no credit for the good they do either -right? Sad to tell you that not everything can be blamed on the enemy. There is accountability with God or else there wouldn’t be a judgment seat. Also, scripture wouldn’t have given any requirements on the character of a pastors because they could do no wrong that would harm people – right? Sorry, it does give requirements and there is  a reason why. And, don’t you think that Jesus had hard words for the Pharisees because they were harming God’s people. So yes leaders can do harm – one harm is fear. Jesus gave clear rebuke to the Pharisees and not the Pharisee’s victims.  Sorry, but the devil made me do it is not scriptural. Yes, these men made me fear them more than God – and they will be held to account, if not in this life then before the throne of God. I repented for being afraid and they need to repent of controlling abusive leadership…it happens…and can be easily addressed. Why is it so hard for men to say, “I was wrong”? Especially men that talk so much about total depravity. Come on – resolving all this is just isn’t complicated.

  • Stein,

    Also. Maybe you missed this comment of John’s, “I can tell you that the Destroyers have always risen as a result of your LACK of Ego. ”

    What that spoke to me is that the men of SGM had power over me only because I did not know who I am in God. It was my lack of faith in the wonder of being God’s child, washed in the blood, holy and dearly loved…my lack of understanding of God’s love and acceptance of me, and who it is that makes me holy; that gave them an opening of fear in my life. They couldn’t do that today. So you missed what I think John was saying, unless it was me that misunderstood … it can’t be all on SGM – I take responsibility for the fear I had. But, at the same time, I also don’t want to see others that are still at SGM and see themselves as being “little” living in fear of man.    

  • Oh Stein,

    In case all that isn’t clear enough you must have really missed this,

    I was terribly wrong to compare Him to SGM leadership. …

    I —- meaning me.
    was terribly wrong —- I did something terribly wrong….
    I —– meaning me.

  • BF… interestingly enough, Stein’s comment is rather poignant.  While I understand his subtly pointing out what he sees as misplaced combativeness, he really has put his finger on the source of fear.  Well… the underlying source.  God’s adversary does rule by fear.  So… it follows that FEAR is the primary hindrance to one’s actions.  If one finds they do look at the sky for fear that God might fall on them…
     
    >shrug< that might be a clue that something is wrong about what they believe.
     
    And yes… you have understood me right, Butterfly.  It is the lack of personal definition that leads to this kind of fear.  A man/woman who has a solid sense of who they are cannot be tyrannized.  They don’t need someone to absolve them of the rigor of their own life.  And neither will they accept a theoretical guilt that disarms their capacity to respond to bad ideas and bad actions.
     
    I was sucked down that same path.  And I know it is hard to believe, but I’m not a timid soul.  So think that says something.  : )
     
    As for who gets credit…ohh… SGM has earned the credit whether Satan stands in all his pitchforked glory in the pulpit or not.

  • John,

    You might be right about fear. I know that I struggled in a big way with fear my entire life, I think from growing up in so much fear daily of my father. Once I forgave SGM the fear left me. It is great to be free from fear, something I never worked for, or asked God for; so you might be right. That freedom came at the same time, and I couldn’t forgive SGM until I knew God’s acceptance, love, grace, and that my freedom was in Him not in SGM’s acceptance. That He alone is Holy, that He alone truly forgives sin, His holiness amazes me now and it is a very personal thing to me. I think a solid understanding of who you are in God does disspell fear.  It is interesting because I once heard someone say the opposite of faith is fear-so maybe…you are on to something with this post.

  • John,

    First, a little background info. I’m currently attending an SGM church. I’m new to SGM, having gone through several denominations… mainly Presbyterian. I am a student at Reformed Theological Seminary (a seminary linked to the PCA, a Presb. denomination). I’m not a charismatic by nature… I have serious qualms with how supernatural gifts are practiced in various settings, but I also cannot ignore their place in the church. I have close friends within many different denominations (Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, etc) as well as non-denominational churches. I’ve been hurt by churches and by other Christians. I carry those wounds with me. I identify with those who have likewise been mistreated by the body of Christ.

    Now I’ll get to my point. I’ve spent the last hour or so on your website reading your articles on SGM. I can tell you honor frankness, so I’ll be frank myself. Take it for what you will. Dismiss it if you think I’m a madman and if it’s not my place to share my thoughts with you.

    You have sincere grievances with leaders and members of SGM, and it is obvious you’ve been wounded too. You need healing that only God can provide. Perhaps you are pursuing healing, but I don’t think running this website and writing your articles is really helping you. If anything, it may be propagating more of your bitterness against SGM and individual SGM members.

    I notice you have a link to Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. In his 4th book, the chapter heading for the 1st chapter says: “OF THE TRUE CHURCH. DUTY OF CULTIVATING UNITY WITH HER, AS THE MOTHER OF ALL THE GODLY.” Similarly, Augustine once said, “The church is a whore, but she’s my mother.” As a member of God’s family, you are one with other believers including those members of SGM who also belong to Christ. That is, unless you’re willing to say that SGM leaders and members are not truly his (you seem to infer this with your wolf terminology).

    SGM is obviously not the right church network for you. In a sense, it’s not the right one for me as well. I am and will always be a Christian before a SGM member. I will always subscribe to the essentials of the faith — the Scriptures of the OT and NT, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, etc. But I encourage you to find a denomination, church network, or church where can belong and find healing, so that you can see your estranged brothers and sisters at SGM and love them with the compassion of Christ! You have a union with them that goes far deeper than the bitterness you harbor against them. I hope you’ll one day be able to see them, acknowledge your differences with them, forgive them, and celebrate your common and shared faith in Christ.

    Please feel free to e-mail me if you’d like to dialogue about some of this stuff. I’m no expert on SGM, nor am I a pastor or counselor. I’m just a brother in Christ who stumbled upon your site and thought I could encourage you in some way.

    Brian

  • Brian,   
     
    Welcome … and thanks for posting.  I appreciate your sincerity.  I can tell that you are genuinely seeking to extend what you consider to be compassion.   
     
    As an aside, the SGM big doggies have known about my commentary for a long time.  Assuming for a moment that my commentary is merely symptomatic of bitterness, it is curious to me that they have NEVER reached out to this bitter soul to help towards health.  You, on the other hand, after reading a few thousand words of my commentary are moved with compassion to extend some form of mediation and encouragement towards my better health. 
     
    Very, very, curious indeed… 
     
    Anyway… let me not get sidetracked.
                             
    Let’s talk motives.  I am going to summarize your comments like this: “you are bitter and you are not healthy, you need to get healthy and you won’t get that way by being a hater.” 
     
    That is a rather stock Sovereign Grace Ministries response to criticism.  You have offered the criticism as politely as I’ve heard, bypassing the spoonful of sugar to a whole cup full.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it is still an Ad Hominiem argument, implying that the nature of what I say is minimized by the heart motive—bitterness.  This is all predicated on the assumptions that pointed, blunt, harsh commentary can only have a malignant source. 
     
    What IS the source of my motives?  Maybe you didn’t read where I talked about motives: why this blog exists.  If you didn’t, by all means, keep reading. Eventually, you will stumble across them.  But I suspect, even if you read my motives, you will disregard my commentary.  I long ago learned that trying to justify/explain motive to leaders or followers within Sovereign Grace Ministries is utterly futile.
     
    By definition, their body of doctrine is suspicious of any personal representation.  They don’t believe ultimately that people can actually see the internal motivations that reside within.  And as a result, any clarification on motive is seen as defensiveness, which is part and parcel of the overall fundamental deception, and therefore further evidence of implicit guilt.
     
    So, here is my stock answer to my motive: chicks and money.  If bitter is important to you, then okay, a bitter man who wants chicks and money. 
     
    >snicker<
     
    I mean, Brian, if you’re going to make a psychological evaluation of a man after reading a few thousand words, at least make the right one.
     
    Ehem…
     
    Your observations are really an effort to reduce my commentary to catharsis.  That seems simplistic by comparison to the complexity of my arguments.  If all you did was read the last three or four posts—which have been primarily addressed to the Sovereign Grace Ministries phenomena—there is nothing simple about what I’ve observed.  The nature of my commentary is far too complex for it to be reduced to catharsis, on par with ranting, raving, frothing at the mouth, mean-driven diatribe. 
     
    I will leave the utter hilarity and implicit irony of advocating John Calvin’s exhortation to unity alone for the time being. 
     
    I want to address this:
    SGM is obviously not the right church network for you. In a sense, it’s not the right one for me as well. I am and will always be a Christian before a SGM member. I will always subscribe to the essentials of the faith — the Scriptures of the OT and NT, the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, etc. But I encourage you to find a denomination, church network, or church where you can belong and find healing, so that you can see your estranged brothers and sisters at SGM and love them with the compassion of Christ! You have a union with them that goes far deeper than the bitterness you harbor against them. I hope you’ll one day be able to see them, acknowledge your differences with them, forgive them, and celebrate your common and shared faith in Christ.
     
    Let me see if I can summarize your comments:  I and SGM have more in common than we have in disagreement. We all share the common proclamation and a common source: the church.  All churches have whorish problems.  I should put away my bitterness, forgive them, treat them with compassion, and move on.   
     
    That about sum it up? 
     
    The biggest reason that Sovereign Grace Ministries made the move from their Charismatic-ish roots to Reformed Theology is to make their body of doctrine unassailable.   They wanted the vaunted adjective of Orthodoxy to shield them, to immunize themselves from doctrinal criticism.  They were looking for a theological cover story.  And it worked.  No matter how misplaced, SGM seems to get the benefit of the “orthodox” corporate identity.    As a result, people like yourself advocate the classic Rodney King Christianity:  “Can’t we all just get along? They are just good men, teaching what the church has always believed most often, by the most people.”
     
    Here’s the thing, Brian.  And maybe you’ll eventually see this, or maybe you won’t.  I observe that most average folk within Sovereign Grace Ministries pay very little attention to the actual content of their doctrine.  Whatever these men would like to pretend, they really have a smorgasbord of various ideas and thoughts and doctrines.   But more significant, their ideas have one function: to establish and insulate their claim to authority.  And here is the source of their tyranny.
     
    I have no intention of ever getting along with tyranny or perpetrators thereof, whether they are Demagogues of Dictated Good or History’s Hitlers, or my terribly mislead Christian Brother.  
     
    At some point you advocates of “No criticism at all costs” will have to answer these questions:
     
    When does loyalty to the councils, creeds, and sacraments cease to be a shield against criticism?  How many people do you have to burn at the stake before you can’t hide behind the vaunted title of Orthodoxy? 
     
    I know… they haven’t burned people at the stake.  >big eye roll<  My questions go to a sense of proportion.  How much bad are we obligated to accept before we comment about the outworking?
     
    The entire premise behind “The Church is a whore…” is that we are somehow stuck with her gross imperfections so we might as well make the best of it.  Nonsense!  Even if I accept that my mother is a whore does not mean that I am obligated to accept her reprobate conduct. 
     
    For heaven’s sake… apropos of nothing, you pony up a doctrinal disagreement over the speaking in tongues and sundry gifts of the Spirit.  Should I tell you to get over your bitterness and treat your tongue-talking brothers with compassion? 
     
    Or do you see a problem with the ideas behind the doctrine of tongues et. al. and have an interest in addressing what you see as error? 
     
    How is your criticism a righteous intellectual pursuit and my commentary about SGM (and their MANIFEST insanity) a function of bitterness? 
     
    If I am obligated to link arms and sing Kumbaya with SGM thugs out of a sense of unity, how is it you don’t have an obligation to speak in tongues out of the same sense of unity? 
     
    If I were railing against the doctrines and practices of the Mormon Church, would you be so magnanimous toward the Latter Day Saints Leadership?  If a string of similar abuses chronicled on this site and others that came out were posted about the Church of Scientology or Islam, would you decide that my intellectual commentary was the function of bitterness?  If I were reproving Kenneth Copeland for the Faith movements’ various doctrines, would you raise the pausing hand of compassion?  The insulating fact in your mind is these men claim fealty to the Orthodox Church God?
     
    Hummm…. 
     
    Of course, I am being absurd.  But I am trying to illustrate the absurdity behind your appeal and to point out a profound misplacement of proportion.  
     
    You are advocating that I have compassion for these men.  I say where is your sense of compassion for Noel and her daughter?  For Free Bird?  For Jim and Carole?  For the ever growing list of people who have come forward to describe their treatment at the hands of these men: despicable displays of failed judgment and twisted justice? 
     
    On some level, I could care less about their Reformed Theology or their (mythical) claims to orthodoxy.  But the content of SGM ideas, Brian, as it plays out, crushes people in their spiritual pursuits.  If their actions and conduct make them poster children for Wolf Religion, then I say pay attention.  It is their practice that I openly rail against and for that, I am soooo not sorry.   
     
    Brian, as much as it would vindicate me, it is my sincere hope that you never have to come to back to this blog and post and say, “Oh, I see how right you are.”  But if you are the kind of man I think you are… ???  I will be curious to see how you fare. 

  • I feel like I’m being tested right now. “Is he going to respond in anger? Or is he going to be passive-aggressive and smile through his teeth? Or perhaps he’ll quote more Calvin.” Is this how you treat all your guests, John?

    I run into your type all the time. Intellectual, verbose, sarcastic… a modern Luther of sorts who seeks to win arguments by humiliating the competition. I’m sorry, but I never intended to debate you! Nor did I come here to give you a mere psychological evaluation (though you do invite by the way you write).

    Perhaps your regular guests and others will visit here and recognize my intentions. Let me be clearer.

    I’m not here to defend SGM. I could care less about what you think about SGM. I’m concerned with what you think about God the Father, Son, and Spirit. I’m concerned with whether you’re experiencing the Father’s love freely lavished on all sons and daughters in Christ. I’m conerned with whether you’re growing in deeper union with Christ as your King and Redeemer. I’m concerned with whether you’re enjoying the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, who applies the riches of God’s grace to the hearts of God’s people. That’s the kind of stuff that matters.

    You can rant all you want about how evil SGM is and how much it is like all those other cults out there that control people and shield them from knowing how much God loves them… but ultimately it’s not going to help anyone or help yourself to come to him in continual repentance and faith.

    I’ve read all the blog posts you’ve written under the category “Sovereign Grace.” You don’t really say much about what God is teaching you now that you’ve come out of SGM and how you’re now experiencing so much more freedom because you’ve found refuge among other believers who embody Christ’s love toward one another and toward others.

    I’m not doubting the possibility that those things are happening in your life, but why not share about those too?

  • Brian said:

    I feel like I’m being tested right now. “Is he going to respond in anger? Or is he going to be passive-aggressive and smile through his teeth? Or perhaps he’ll quote more Calvin.” Is this how you treat all your guests, John?

    This is why I quit long ago trying to address motive to folks in SGM.  It really never occurs to them to take folks at face value.  What I said, I meant. When I was being absurd, I said so and why.
     
    I seek to win arguments by offering up a superior argument.  I happen to love irony and satire, hence the schtick. If folks are humiliated, maybe they should check the argument they are offering… possibly it is a very bad argument.  This is the arena of ideas.  I am offering my ideas to the arena for the express purpose of persuading folk.  And if nothing else, to give food for thought. This blog is about that pursuit.  If one is not inclined to debate/commentate/add to the ideas … then I’m thinking it’s not the place for them. 
     
    As for your other concerns… by all means, if those things are important to you, you have a blog… have at it. 

    When I have something to say in that regard… I’ll write about it.

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

    Get your copy here!

    >