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.