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.)
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 forth 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.
Hey Gracie,
I just got of a golf course and I’m sitting my favorite pizza joint mulling over an answer to your question. It is a very good one. However the answer is … uh… long and I’m trying to decide how to condense this into something short and manageable.
Not that I shy away from long … obviously right?
The problem with trying to dissect the specific theological evolutions of PDI to SGM is they have never been all that internally consistent. For all their bluff and bluster over theological precision they have been all over the doctrinal map. They like to call these evolutions of though “seasons of teaching” or some such euphemism. They have often preached mutually exclusive ideas and pretty much reconciled the inconsistency with a wave of the “I’m a pastor and old enough to be your father,” wand. This combined with the fact that they are very, very good at rewriting their own history, it is impossible to hold the SGM leadership to a doctrinal plumb line. There have been some prevailing themes, but for the most part, if CJ decided he didn’t like the implications of a given set of ideas, he has been masterful in nudging the intellectual ship in the desired direction.
(CJ’s gift, beyond being a world class communicator, is his immeasurable ability to make those who associate with him feel important. His affirmation, for many people is the defining measure of their Christianity so they toe whatever mark he is drawing in the sand at the moment.)
Anyway, I am digressing.
Let us take this out of the specific event of SGM for a minute and I think you will start to see the mechanics.
You said this: “The parallel with this SGM stuff and the current discussion/battle in the secular, public arena is striking. Clearly this is a battle that is not limited to the church pew.”
And you are exactly right. These are parallel’s: almost perfect parallels.
If I had said, oh, 20 years ago that a committed Marxist would be the President of the United States, what would you have said? Some would wonder “what the heck was a Marxist?” Some would have scoffed at the absurdity dismissing my comment as the ranting of the delusional hatemonger calling people names. And in the next breath they would make the case that the government should tax the “rich people” so that the poor can have food.
But if you pressed those scoffing people to justify why should the “rich” be compelled to give to the poor, they would offer a moral argument: Somthing along the lines of the moral inferiority of the “rich.” they are “greedy.” They are “selfish.” They “stole” the money.
These are moral judgments. (remember this point please)
20 years ago, was it any less Marxist to advocate the plunder of the Haves, for the express purpose of giving it to the “Have Nots”? Of course not. The distinction was merely one of degree, but the moral assumption remained exactly the same: the “rich” are morally inferior because they have money; therefore they need the force of government to compel them to moral action.
I am going to write this equation a couple times. Bear with me please.
Principle:
Metaphysical premise (determine) Epistemological qualification (defines) ethical standard (proscribes) government force.
Plato:
This world is a mere reflection of other world FORMS (determine) Man cannot know TRUTH, because he experiences the imperfect shadow world (defines) only select men of the highest character and longstanding study achieve enlightenment (proscribes) Philosopher kings should govern the barbarian masses.
Marx:
History is a fight over resources (determines) The community establishes TRUTH (defines) all members of the community must work for the common good (proscribes) each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Augustine:
Original Sin means the Fall of Man (determines) Man is corrupt in his very nature and can know no GOOD (defines) Man has no ethical standard because he has no GOOD (proscribes) The Holy Mother Church as God’s bearer of correction to a wayward humanity.
Here is how I described this progression in past posts: Universal Guilt = Mass Incompetence = Dictated GOOD.
· Universal Guilt is the Metaphysical presumption
· Mass Incompetence = the epistemological determination
· Dictated Good = the proscribed function of Government.
Now let us roll this back to the SGM phenomena and I will pull Lin’s comment in now. The PDI/SGM leadership has always presumed everyone else was incompetent, but how much incompetence people have has been proportional to the various “seasons of teaching.”
When Larry was in ascendancy they presumed a lot of spiritual equality because Larry is really a motivational speaker in sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately equality does not translate into governmental control, so the pendulum inevitably swung towards ideas that disqualified people from authority. Who knows how many times they danced back and forth across that line.
The underlying question of the SGM doctrine has universally revolved around why they are specifically authorized to preach and run the show. For those of you wondering where I get the source for this assertion, read Larry Tomczak’s Clap Your Hands. I recommend you read both, versions, the 1977(?) version and the 1986(?) version. Both books are an effort to justify why a Catholic boy and a pot smoking jokester are morally justified to start a “New Testament” church out of the loose confederation of believers who were coming out the Jesus Movement and the emerging Charismatic renewal. When you are a non Denominational Church, what is the validation for your existence? God called me? Yea…. Says who?
The answer to this question drives most of our modern Chrsitian fuss. This is why Lin has had the same experience from a different organizations. The underlying equation above is the constant that justifies why some select group of men are empowered to compel intellectual or social outcomes. All you have to do is plug the specific values into the algebraic variables. In her instance the group used “Relationships and Evangelism.” I was briefly part of Ed Duphrene’s church back in the late 80’s and they did it with “Walking in the Power of God” and “paying the price for authority” which meant submitting to the apostle or prophet preaching behind the podium. And in the long since defunct Living Word Church in Middletown Ohio, the elements of the equation were “the authority of the Believer” and “spiritual warfare” which required a submission to “apostolic authority” In the Word of Faith movement it was the “Authority of the Word,” coupled with the assertion that “you shall not touch God’s anointed” and failure to abide by the preachers teaching meant you would not get what you were claiming by faith. The power of the Shepherding Movement was that Bob Mumford et. al. successfully created a mini authoritarian philosophy that turned discipleship into a morally justified force.
And the list goes on.
The bottom line of all these dynamics is the moral justification to compel outcome. This is why SGM works so hard to establish their moral superiority. This is why they work so hard to advocate doctrines that presume mass moral inferiority. This gives them an absolute monopoly on governing force. Notice, they only tangle with people who accept this presumption. They don’t even acknowledge the existence of those who challenge this foundation.
Calvinism’s roll in this dynamic is its full philosophical power to offer a complete justification for Protestant church autocracy. Or said another way, it offers a turnkey solution for some men to justify their right to use (religious) force. It is an entire, complete system of thought on par with Marx and Kant and Islam. And this completeness is what makes it so dang hard to argue against. The bulk of human intellectual energy has been used in its defense. But its central weakness is in fact the weakness of Marx, Kant and Islam: the Aristotelian metaphysic.
All right, this will probably read like rubbing sand paper on your arm… a bit rough… but I think you can get the point.
To answer Gracie’s question, I think these clowns find the theologhy dejour to fit their teaching rather than the other way around.
Think about it, if you’re an Alpha Male, why not believe in apostilic positions, trickle-down authority and call it people of destiny until you want to impress pseudo-intellectual hypercalvinistas (whose theology would make an Alpha Male feel warm and secure,) change it to Sovereign Grace (even if it takes CJ a couple of rounds to get the spelling right.) CJ is soon to be restored to his former popish position and trickle-down authority will continue in SGM land uninterrupted.
John, Excellent comment explaining this succintly. The decided upon moral justification is used to compell and control people. Is that right?
What I find interesting about all of this is that Brent presupposed equality within the leadership of such a movement. Amazingly he still does not get it.
“Calvinism’s roll in this dynamic is its full philosophical power to offer a complete justification for Protestant church autocracy. Or said another way, it offers a turnkey solution for some men to justify their right to use (religious) force. It is an entire, complete system of thought on par with Marx and Kant and Islam. And this completeness is what makes it so dang hard to argue against.”
Yes! Debate with a Calvinist long enough and you will soon discover it is always a circular debate. It is maddening. “Turnkey” is a great way to describe it.
Thank you all for taking the time for these thoughtful responses.
Hi Lin. I had never thought about Shepherding being so easily connected to Calvinism. It has been many years since I explored Calvinism, never really buying into it. Back then, I sort of came up with my own take on Sovereignty vs. Free Will. Probably neither Calvinists nor Armenians would like it!
John, thanks for taking your pizza time to formulate such an interesting response. I had never connected the dots between these ideologies or even had a real understanding of a few of them! It is fascinating and somewhat alarming to see how persistent and pervasive this Platonian approach has been throughout history.
So how to turn the tide? The only thing that comes to mind is education. Best be learning a few things myself.
Hey DB! Nice to see you here!
John, is there a way I can contact you offline? I have something I’d like to send you.
Gracie, In the seeker mega’s I was involved with guess what was said over and over by the leaders with a big smile and slap on the back:, “Trust positive intentions”. I started looking for the handbook with that saying in it. :o)
What they were really saying was: Don’t judge our actions because our “intentions” are positive. (In other words, don’t judge fruit)
They were training people to ignore behavior as if there as some greater good buried they could not see concerning the great leaders.
It took me a while to figure it out because I was not reading John back then. :o)
“The decided upon moral justification is used to compell and control people.”
Yes! Lin, this is exactly right. Man implicitly resists a direct and arbitrary use of force against his life. But man can be persuaded by moral argument to subordinate himself to a direct and arbitrary use of force. This is why I said, in a comment above, that tyrants need the permission of the people to persist in tyranny. The SGM phenomena succeed because people indulge the leadership dictates. But they indulge the leadership dictates because they have been persuaded it is the moral thing to do. What you see emerging in the stories is the inevitable outcome of the philosophical death cycle. Moral condemnation = ethical subjugation = individual abandonment = the increase of government mandate = increased moral condemnation … and on and on.
The fight comes when people finally say to themselves “But I have moral worth… and because I have moral worth I am entitled to think for myself and contribute to the meaning of TRUTH.” This is the assumption that SGM and their clones never ever, ever concede.
As for Rat Fink Brent Detwiler… you are correct in the observation that he doesn’t realize his presumption of moral equality was his “sin” against CJ. This is the underlying expectation throughout the SGM wikileaks documents. He fully presumed the moral authority to call CJ to account and this is what CJ evaded and rejected. Brent presumed to tell CJ to dance, and CJ in his ever so sly way refused.
Of course from where he is now, he can never impact SGM. First, because he is fully morally disqualified in their minds; he might be considered a step above me on the legitimacy scale, but only barely. >snicker< Second, he concedes too many of the root assumptions to gain argumentative traction. Any argument that concedes the premise is really an argument about “how much.” Third, the intellectual brain trust of SGM is really the likes of Dave Harvey who doesn’t have a coherent thought unless it has been written down by someone else a couple hundred years ago. Brent’s arguments are lost in the vacuum.
I figure, at best, in a year or so, Brent will “reconcile” with the powers that be, but he can never lead any genuine reform. At worst, he will start yet another SGM clone church (if he hasn’t already) and be one of the million other preachers who say to themselves: “This is TRUE Christianity, the right people just haven’t done it yet” and of course, HE will be the right people.
Gracie… how to turn the tide?
Very good question? One that I have been asking now for a very long time. Finding an answer to this question has been my greatest challenge and what keeps me up at night. Of course it is education but more importantly the issue is self motivation. I am content to connect the dots for people, but you will notice that I merely invite people to engage these ideas with me. I do not presume to spoon feed. To be sure I deliberately leave things unsaid waiting for people to do the work themselves, to seek to solve the problem the arguments pressent. To date… that has happened very little.
None-the-less, I am encouraged. Since I walked the path out from underneath the SGM brand of Mystic Despotism, I have a fair idea where one needs to be to finally seek the ideas I offer. For most people the fight, the fear and pain is too fresh–too new–and they teeter too close to despair and resignation. This emotional fall out, this open grieving process, is what we see on SGMsurvivors and SGMrefuge. I know many of them think I am some brand of heretic, but that is ok. I am demanding rational equality against a world view that condemns such things. I am challenging the most deeply held traditions in Protestant Christianity without the slightest caveat. I am refusing to concede the interpretive standard: I have no moral or intellectual responsibility to dead men’s ideas. For someone fully immersed in the SGM world view this is a LOT to swallow. So I get where they are coming from.
But eventually, many of those people will go looking for a way to rethink the nature of their Christianity. And when that happens, there will be people like you and Lin and me offering the necessary critical thinking tools for them to be able to do that very thing.
So how to turn the tide… I came up with ten key ideas that must be successfully presented to the masses to roll back the foundations of tyranny. There might be more, but this is what I came up with while watching the Steelers crush the Titans in the local Buffalo Wild Wings.
1. The axiom of human existence is human existence.
2. Man was created an end in himself.
3. The moral starting place of human existence is sovereign individuality.
4. Man was created to bring order to and subdue an unruly cosmos.
5. Man is entitled to the sum of his life, wife, work and property.
6. Man is a rational creature, fully capable of understanding the world in which he lives and morally obligated to identify TRUTH.
7. TRUTH and FREEDOM are dynamically related to each other.
8. TRUTH is NEVER dictated by the Force of Government.
9. The force of Government is used solely to defend the individual against all encroachments.
10.Freedom includes the right to succeed wildly and the ability to fail miserably.
And you can send anything too me at John@spiritualtyranny.com
I have often wondered who so many people seem so willing to subject themselves to the level of micromanagement that is required of people at sgm and………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………….
Wait for it………………..
They *want* to be controlled.
See, it is also human nature to assume others think the way that you do so people like you and me and most of the regulars here are puzzled when we see perfectly sane adults let sgm leadership parentify them but it makes them feel secure (these are the S’s in the DISC paradiagm and phlegmatics in the older 4 temperaments upon which DISC was based. This basic temperament is the most popular one numberswise. So security is more important than autonomy or even doing what is right.
Some people want to be told what to do, it is easier than thinking or praying for that matter.
They like obeying and being patted on the head and told how good and easy to get along with they are.
They would need to overcome this part of their nature to rise up and sgm leaders are counting on it.
Oh, I wondered where the vacume in the previous post was centered and it took me a moment but the vacume was created when D. Harvey was trying to have an original thought. Ha, good one.
“I figure, at best, in a year or so, Brent will “reconcile” with the powers that be, but he can never lead any genuine reform.”
That is exactly what I think, too.
“They *want* to be controlled”
I totally agree with this, too. In fact, so many want to be controlled that I rarely engage them. But those who have problems with certain leadership decisions or start questioning things…I will engage them. I usually start in the area of authority and the problems of that from a NT perspective. I beg them not to be so quick to give up their birthright of having the same indwelling Holy Spirit, a brain, and ability to study to show themselves approved.
One reason I find it so hard to read over at survivors is because it seems like so many are hoping and waiting around for their leaders to act like Christians. I find the irony to be too much! That train left decades ago.
DB… you make me smile… you such a brainiac
Well, I am ashamed to say, but I wanted to be controlled. I wanted the security and confidence that came along with it, at least as it was advertised. I wanted someone to tell me if you do thus and so, then your earth life will be smooth sailing. I wanted desperately to believe that my children would not have to stray or suffer. So, stupidly, irresponsibly, I deferred to them. Over my own intuition, my own instincts, sometimes even my own logic and faith. What a disaster.
Thank God He redeems. Thank God I eventually did see. I am so grateful to Him.
John, please be gentle with the sarcasm.
lol… ok… when i am sarcastic … I’ll tone it down… but in the last comment I was enjoying your comment. Your notes on the DISC paradiagm and phlegmatics were brainy… love that.
Well, blushing, it is a step up from my usual scatological humor.
We have begun to get our fight back – at least in our own abusive situation of speaking about the doctrine behind the curtain! http://keystonestatecollege.org/