**Revisiting** Generation Gaps and the Moral Imperative of Totalitarian Niceness

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 25Jan09

The following list describes the desired traits that non-Christian young people desire to see in Christians, particularly among their elders as compiled by the authors of “unChristian: What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity....And Why It Matters.” When I presented quotes from this book on my blog last year, I suggested that we as believers should extend the same considerations to those who follow patriarchy as well as to young unbelievers. I would like to use this list (from pp 194-5 of the book) as a point of departure for relating to young adults in general. Those interviewed suggested that these considerations would improve their receptivity to the Gospel message from Christians, both young and old.

1. Listen to me.
2. Don't label me.
3. Don't be so smart.
4. Put yourself in my place.
5. Be genuine.
6. Be my friend with no other motives.

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Defining Theistic Existentialism: PART II (The Consequences for Emergents and Patriocentrists)

I’ve made reference to this passage from Sire’s book in a previous post because I think that it captures something very important and is almost a litmus test of how postmodern the emergent church really is and how postmodern and self-oriented the patriocentric belief system proves to be. Individuals in both groups become intensely personally offended if not threatened when their ideas and beliefs are criticized. I have not found this to be true of most modernists. It is not a personal offense to them if you reject their truth. They may call you a bigot or a fool, but it’s been my experience that your rejection of their ideas does not really become a personal thing for them. They don’t find their personal integrity to be at risk if someone rejects their beliefs. Such is not true with patriocentrists or emergents, because it is my impression that most of those in each group perceive a challenge as quite personal.

I advance this thesis: That when a Christian’s beliefs are not truly rooted and grounded in the Word of God and when their beliefs are not resting in faith in God’s integrity and truth, defending faith becomes a personal matter. I believe that when beliefs are built on shifting sands of man’s ideas apart from God, only drawing some elements from the Word of God, challenging those beliefs that are believed as a matter of personal preference only apart from some external evidence, postmodernists perceive criticism and challenge as a deeply personal offense.  The postmodernist perceives rejection of their beliefs that are validated only by their preference as tantamount to saying "You're stupid for believing such a thing."  The more personal the nature of the idea (such as sexuality), the more personal and offensive is the challenge, something perceived as a denial of that individual's personhood.  This is certainly not the only cause for FEELING threatened or personally rejected when beliefs are challenged, but for some fringe groups within in patriarchy and the emergent churc, I believe this postmodern response is the primary motivator of their aggression.

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Defining Theistic Existentialism: PART I (The "Cure" for the Emergents and Patriocentrists)

Traditional, secular existentialism arose to solve the inevitable problems of nihilism as an adequately workable philosophical view of the world which arose to solve the problems of naturalism, all philosophies which seek to solve the problems of mankind without having to rely upon God and the Blood of Jesus to do so. As Blaise Pascal once wrote, every man has a God-shaped void within him that only God can fill, and when it goes unfilled, man experiences not only guilt but a sense of this “loss of transcendence.”

As a consequence, any philosophical viewpoint that does not acknowledge God, sin and the forgiveness of sins will inevitably result in unanswered questions. If these views could be represented as a set of mathematical equations, there is always an error, and there are some elements of the equation that can never be solved. Existentialism developed as a means of solving the equation for nihilism, but in the working out of existentialism’s equation, it still produces errors. It may be able to solve for “X,” but in the summation, you may find that in solving for “X,” the philosophy opens up into a new inability to solve for “Q” and “P.”

It ends up "solving" theological and philosophical problems by scapegoating and demonizing the alternatives, merely shifting focus away from the dilemmas themselves.  This is just a form of avoidance of the mysteries and those aspects of belief that we cannot prove objectively.  In effect, it doesn't "sovle" problems of belief by offering logical views towards a solution but rather avoids them by creating a different set of problems as a distraction.  People often criticize patriarchy for this, creating a crisis and false dilemmas by scapegoating something, then marketing a ready made set of ideas and practices to solve the drastic problem.  In reality, they just create different problems.  At least in terms of pragmatic considerations, followers of emergent theology are generally much kinder and more pleasant to one another and to others than are the patriarchalists.  Yet both are man's attempt to use man's influence and means to overcome the problem of the loss of transcendence -- the idea that mankind is okay with God and the universe.

Theistic existentialism did not develop from the same roots as secular existentialism, though they make similar errors. The Christian version of existentialism works back to Kierkegaard who was trying to solve some of the problems of the dead orthodoxy of Danish Lutheranism (according to Sire) and “holes” in Immanuel Kant’s ideas. Each man answered the dilemma of his day. Kierkegaard’s philosophy separated the realms of faith and reason, making them separate matters. In the wake of anti-intellectualism in Evangelical Christianity around the turn of the 20^th century and the morality focus of the social gospel, Kierkegaard’s ideas found a new usefulness. Simply reduced, theistic existentialism is more concerned with human nature and man’s relationship to God and the world as opposed to the nature of God as the focus. It is man-centered, not God-centered.

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The Theistic Existentialism of the Emergents and the Patriocentrists: Revisitng Worldview as One Recovers from Cultic Christianity

Before moving on to new territory, I want to finish up some loose ends related to both patriocentricity and the emergent church. Both groups share a foundational problem from my perspective, one that also sometimes challenges my own life by virtue (?virtue?) of coming of age in what was quickly becoming a post-Christian culture. That problem is “Theistic Existentialism” by virtue of the fact that their religions see man as central to life rather than seeing God as central to life. It is a subtle distinction but an important and an original one, dating back to “You shall be like God.”

These matters discuss issues related to “WORLDVIEW,” and I am almost reluctant to use that term anymore. I’ve talked with several mothers over the past few years who feel that the term has been used to barrage and berate them within the patriarchy movement and within patriocentricity. One mom told me that she said she hates the term now and cringes when she hears it. This “hijacking” of so many other terms like this, terms that have been turned into though-stopping clichés or buzz terms that shut down critical thinking through the cultic technique of loading the language. Terms like worldview have become cult programming for some, much like seeing the Queen of Hearts or like hearing one’s full name spoken in a particular way in the two film versions of the “Manchurian Candidate." The stimulus (the word “worldview”) becomes associated with punishment, an expected response or shame induction for many people who have escaped and renounced patriocentricity. (And note that the term “patriocentricity” came about to differentiate it from the legitimate term “patriarchy” and all that it represents.)

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Evaluating Deconstructionism Using Responsible Hermeneutics

Five years ago on this very date, I sat with a now deceased laptop computer in the University of Texas Library, writing an essay. I'd been asked to present how thought reform played into the Vision Forum mindset from the vantage of one who attended a Presbyterian church with the followers of Doug Phillips and, on rare occasion, with Phillips himself.

I believe that I watch the world from an interesting and unique vantage. Though I was born in the first year of Generation X, I don’t bear all of the same qualities as most Xers. Perhaps because my parents missed the hippie mentality by what probably amounts to a few months and owing to slower life in a rural community, both my parents and I think much differently than our peers of the same age. I identify more strongly with Baby Boomers born later in that generation, as though there is a bridge period between Boomers and Gen X that theorists never define or capture. My most comfortable niche places me in an category with those born roughly somewhere between the early fifties and mid-sixties. I tend to march in tune to that drum rather than the drum of my same-aged peers. Though I am Christian first, I think like and communicate best with a modernist and tend to relate to others like a postmodernist living in a postmodern world.

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More Thoughts About the Role of Transcendentalism and the Social Gospel

Though I do not even remotely assign his writings to a level of importance as equal or necessarily within the same category as the Word of God, I do appreciate aspects of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. I enjoyed his style, his appreciation for nature, his encouragement to be good stewards of both land and government, social responsibility and stewardship, and particularly his love for solitude. He may have embraced evolution (a point that I would enjoy arguing with him as I have with many a professor and friend), but he alluded to all sorts of Scripture in the process, something I noted and greatly appreciated. (We share knowledge of the "borrowed capital" of a Christian society.)

“Simplify, simplify, simplify” should also offer a strong appeal to those who follow agrarian idealism. Held in balance with the Word of God and as a general outworking of “the golden rule” (Christ’s second commandment of doing unto others as we would have them treat us), I find the social gospel principles to benefit American society. For those who do not hold to a Calvinistic or Reformed view, it offers a climate of cooperation and general Christian principle within which all Christians and even agnostics can find common ground. It is however, no replacement or rival to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the full counsel of the Word of God. I also find that the social gospel does hold it’s own concepts of moral and social superiority. It promotes its own type of caste system that results in its own variety of paternalistic arrogance.
T
he “bleeding heart liberal” can feel the same type of superiority and paternalism that the “Patriarchal Servitude” of the South promoted, but out of a sense of self-salvation. It is a man-centered view, it’s own special variety of Christian existentialism. Ultimately it’s up to man to carry out God’s will, and it has a very high degree of confidence in man’s own ability apart from God. Again, it is a gospel with Christian elements, but it is no substitute for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I offer here another perspective that challenges the views of Transcendentalism that were held in the South, views that many still carry today in one manner or form or other.

I’m not a big fan of Mark Twain, not necessarily because I disagree with him so much as I don’t find his writing style easy and natural for me to read. Maybe I was dropped on my head when I was young, but I find the writings of the Russian Moralists much more easy to digest. I’ve plugged through Twain out of necessity but did not click with his style and therefore really developed no opinions about his work from a philosophical or theological standpoint. I became interested in the subject however, following a discussion of the topic on Mars Hill Audio. I do find his work to be quite essential to the American landscape, both from a religious perspective and an historical one. We do live in a pluralistic society, one with which our founding fathers entrusted us.

  From the Book Jacket of Harold K. Bush, Jr.’s “Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age”:

Mark Twain is often pictured as a severe critic of religious piety, shaking his fist at God and mocking the devout. Such a view, however, is only partially correct. It ignores the social realities of Twain’s major period as a writer and his own spiritual interests: his participation in church activities, his socially progressive agenda, his reliance on religious themes in his major works, and his friendships with clergymen, especially his pastor and best friend, Joe Twichell. It also betrays a conception of religion that is more contemporary than that of the period in which he lived. Harold K. Bush, Jr. highlights Twain’s attractions to and engagements with the wide variety of religious phenomena of America in his lifetime, and how these matters affected his writings. 

Though Twain lived in an era of tremendous religious vigor, it was also a time of spiritual upheaval and crisis. The rise of biological and psychological sciences, the criticism of biblical texts as literary documents, the influx of world religions and immigrant communities, and the trauma of the Civil War all had dramatic effects on America’s religious life. At the same time mass urban revivalism, the ecumenical movement, Social Christianity, and occultic phenomena, like spiritualism and mind sciences, all rushed in to fill the voids. The rapid growth of agnosticism in the 1870s and 1880s is also clearly reflected in Twain’s life and writings. Thus Twain’s career reflects in an unusually resonant way the vast changes in American belief during his lifetime.

This reminds me of discussions of men like Kierkegaard who were criticized as miserable modernists and existentialists who rebelled against God. I’ve heard R.C. Sproul, Sr. defend Kierkegaard as one who earnestly wrestled with the problems and thinking of his day, writing honestly about the religious challenges that these dilemmas posed.

Many are quick to label these men who write honestly and with the logic that Gallileo once esteemed as God’s gift and not a curse. Those who lived in the Antebellum Period also confronted the challenges of their own day and were just as subject to the influences of their generation. Twain was no different, and we miss a significant perspective of American life if we dismiss him and cover our eyes and ears as he took on the dilemmas of his time. In defense of faith in God’s providential work that is ongoing over the course of the life of a believer, I often remind people that Martin Luther was once a willing and zealous participant of the Catholic church.

We’re all on a learning curve, and if we dare be brave and honest, we all traverse serious tensions in our times. Many of these tensions will not be resolvable – one such example of this is the poor that the Word tells us we will always have with us. To wholeheartedly discredit the Transcendentalists with a broad brush in their earnest struggle to make sense of God, themselves, and the world is not Christian and is far from American. A wholesale denouncement of any group proves fallacious and demonstrates the arrogance and the insecurity of man’s carnal nature something to which we are all subject.

Though the North may have wrongly been caught in the sensational trappings of the slavery issue and thus exploited by those with the greedy interests of economics, the South was certainly guilty of stereotyping and dehumanizing their brethren in the North. We all have a starting point, and I believe we should rejoice if that starting point includes godly principle. We should be ever mindful that our hearts, beliefs and our very societies are also sovereignly governed by the Holy Spirit’s guiding Hand and under the care of our providential God. We must start somewhere, showing tolerance and God’s love and grace to those who believe differently, remembering that our nation requires that of us. We must also yield to God’s providence, something that may not make sense to us or yield to our expectations.

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Blogging the Matrix

Wake up, Neo!
Right-brained creatures like me like to find analogies to explain and convey information, understanding, connotation and emotion to others.

When communicating what the realization of my spiritual abuse experience was like, I identify best with the “Matrix” films. Like “Neo” was before “Trinity” and “Morpheus” make contact with him, both my husband and I knew something was desperately wrong with our church, but we just didn’t have all the adequate language to articulate it in its fullness.

It was, as Morpheus describes, the “splinter in the mind” that drove us mad. As time progressed and as we sought out help and wisdom, our first visit to our Exit Counselor together was very much the “taking of the red pill” and awakening in a world that seemed bleak and colorless for quite some time.

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Eternal Procession Does Not Equate to Eternal Priority

From Bruce A. Ware’s

Tampering with the Trinity:

How the Trinity Relates to Gender Roles

An Mp3 audio download from CBMW

(Quotes from the audio are 

displayed below in blue text)

Speaker Bruce Ware:

"But is it not obvious that Jesus said over and again throughout His ministry that He was sent to do the will of the Father -- over thirty times in John’s Gospel, this is the case… " "Clearly a central part of the notion of Father is that of Fatherly authority. Certainly, this is not all there is to being the Father, but while there is more, there certainly is not less or other. 

[Blog Host says “????”] The masculine terminology used of God throughout Scripture portrayed in masculine ways had authority over His people. 

"While the early church clearly embraced the full, essential equality of the three Trinitarian Persons, nonetheless, the church has always affirmed likewise the priority of the Father over the Son and the Spirit.

[Blog Host says “????” This is a logical leap of presupposition and an all inclusive statement that the speaker’s own definition is not even true of the “egalitarian feminist church.”] 

"Since this priority cannot be rightly understood in terms of essence or nature, -- Why? – Why does the Father not have priority in terms of essence or nature to the Son or the Spirit? Whose nature does the Son possess? The identically same nature as the Father. Whose nature does the Spirit possess? The identically same nature as the Father and Son. So this priority cannot be in terms of essence, because they are equal in essence more than my wife and I are equal in essence."

[Blog Host says: Certainly if, by the speaker’s own profession elsewhere, women are the indirect image of God!]. 

My wife and I are both image of God – we are both equal in essence but we’re equal as “same kind of things.” We’re both human beings, image of God. The Father, Son and Spirit are equal in essence because of identity. They have an identically same essence. Not just same kind – Same. Same essence. Okay?" 
"So. The early church fathers could not speak of priority in terms of essence, so it must be in terms of relationship. Not essence, but relationship. As Augustine affirmed that the distinction of persons is constituted precisely by differing relations among them, in part manifest by the inherent authority of the Father and inherent submission of the Son. This is most clearly seen in the eternal Father-Son relationship in which the Father is eternally the Father of the Son and the Son is eternally the Son of the Father."

[Blog Host says: But this is not assumptive or inextricably bound to hierarchy or an eternal command/submission paradigm but is a description of relationship that might not be characteristic of a father and son at all ages. Is Christ eternally a young, innocent who lacks wisdom and the shrewdness of experience? This statement neither supports nor denies an eternal, vertical hierarchy of authority. This is a logical leap of presupposition.]. 

But some might wonder, does this convey and eternal authority of Father and the eternal submission of the Son?" "Hear how Augustine discusses both essential equality of the Father and Son and the “eternal-functional” subordination of the Son. This is Augustine’s words now, quote:"  

"'If the reason why the Son is said to have been sent by the Father, is simply that the one who is the Father and the other is the Son, then there is nothing at all to stop us from believing that the Son is equal to the Father and con-substantial and co-eternal.' So they are both equal in essence and yet that the Son is sent by the Father not because one is greater and the other less but because one is Father and the other is Son. So it’s the relational difference between them not their essential difference.” 

[Blog Host says: But their essential difference is not limited to nor need it be defined by an eternal hierarchy. This is a logical leap of presupposition.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~

ETERNAL PROCESSION DOES NOT EQUATE

TO ETERNAL PRIORITY

This was my thesis before I found the writing of Giles and the cry of my heart. I offer it here for those who call me misinformed. Bruce Ware is making three Gods of the One by shoving God into his own finite ability to understand and comprehend the infinite wonder of God – He who is so beyond the capacity of the creature who can only see in terms of human relationship. We know in part and see through the glass darkly, yet we rest in faith – that faith which God imparts through the miracle of spiritual discernment. 

We understand the relationship of Father to Son and Son to Father, and through the limitations of the analogy of being. We can only comprehend that which we know, for that which is greater than us is beyond our comprehension. James Sire discusses this at length in “Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling.” 

We can only describe what we know and have already comprehended, like A Square in Flatland. In finite terms, like a small child describing the wisdom of his parent concerning the most complex tasks of the human understanding of the adult, we come to the Persons of the Godhead with the limitations of our being, like Job when God asked him “Were you there?” I place my hand over my mouth before Him. (I am not willing to do so before those who subordinate my Savior, however.) 

It seems that Dr. Ware cannot comprehend God beyond a relationship of hierarchy and a vertical order of succession, but love, compassion, empathy and sacrifice can easily replace these hierarchy and roles. He offers the example of roles and relationships as the distinctions, and the distinctions are in such human terms that they demean the Lord Jesus, making Him much like a human child of a “supreme” Father. Yet he claims also that the Divine Persons are equal in all respects while in terms of authority and primacy he describes them as not equal at all. 

I assert that these anthropomorphic limitations confine the infinite, bound by the limits hierarchy. They are the Three in One, they cannot be Three apart from the one --neither in authority nor in essence. Our Brother Ware offers arguments and paragraphs of many sentences and builds an argument, but always, there is a sentence that leaps back into the presupposition of a hierarchy, that which is unrelated to the arguments. In my reading, these topics all begin with the a priori assumption of hierarchy and they end with it. There are some lovely prose and rhetoric in between. 

The Divine Three are not in fellowship and harmony of fluid dance in his view but are only in a performance-oriented perception in very human terms. He quotes absolutely sound statements of Augustine that acknowledge the con-substantial and co-eternal relationship of the Father and the Son and repeats their relationship to one another, but this neither supports nor disproves an hierarchy authority of performance-focused and role-focused value. 

It as if, to me, he says “The sun is warm and the day is clear therefore this proves that the sun is golden and the sky is blue.” Post hoc ergo propter hoc. 

Each separate morsel of evidence offered is lovely and true unto itself, but they neither proceed to nor support his thesis in my reading or hearing. Ware offers Augustine to validate his thesis of human hierarchy, and I would use this very same statement of Augustine’s to support the relationships of the Father and Son in their fluid, mutual submission dance out of love and honor and respect within the very heart of God (Themselves) as the very nature of the Divine Three. 

It is, oh, so subtle, but this is man’s sophistry to me. Dr. Ware’s arguments contain many Scriptural principles and many true statements, but he cannot escape the presupposition of hierarchy that weaves these things together to support his initial presumption. He has not proven anything with Biblical evidence but has built an argument that, for me, is full of holes of eisegesis. He might well say the same of my view, but I am not risking the Deity of Christ Jesus in the process. Augustine wrote at the end of his preface as he endeavored to understand the Trinity:

“Let us hold fast to this rule, that what has not yet become clear to our intellect may still be preserved by the firmness of our faith.”

I do not have all the answers and only finite boxes into which to put them. But I have sufficient grace through the Word that God has written in my heart and mind by the Spirit and through the study of my Love, the Word. As Augustine’s own motto declares, I have “faith that seeks understanding.” I do not have understanding that then seeks to find faith which is the dilemma of the Christian existentialist, so prevalent in the church today. 

This human analogy is certainly lesser than the full realization of the mind and perspective of God, and I am like a small child on the lap of my Abba, the Mind of the Ages. I will not, as I believe Van Til once described, dare to presume to crawl up on His lap and proceed to slap Him in the face. 

I offer here another quote of Augustine that transcends the anthropomorphic concept that Jesus is one with no authority to hear prayer, who by role and relationship is like a mere “special purpose God,” powerless to do anything other than that which He is hierarchy-bound to do. I fall prostrate and undone before the Holy, Holy, Holy Throne, in awe of Him, of That which is joyfully beyond my finiteness but yet still my substance and evidence through faith.

From Augustine's preface to Book 8 , De Trinitate

Thus the Father is God, The Son is God, The Holy Spirit is God;
The Father is good, The Son is good, The Holy Spirit is good,
And the Father is omnipotent, The son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; But yet there are not three Gods,
nor are there three goods,
nor are there three omnipotents,

But one God, one good and one omnipotent,

the Trinity itself.

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On Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics: "The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text." (American Heritage Dictionary)

How do we properly understand what the Scriptures Mean? I find the fact that the Word of God can speak to me on so many levels throughout so many years of my life one of the most wonderful things about study of the Bible. Though the foolish things confound the wise and the wise things are made simple through the Spirit, certain texts require a great deal of discipline. How do we go about determining what the Bible meant when it makes a certain statement in a particular way?

I believe that it is the great challenge of the Christian to rightly discern the truth about what the Word actually says (and means). If we use sound methods to investigate the truth, we are more likely to arrive at a sound doctrine and sound meaning. Just to put some of this into perspective, let me offer two examples of why a good hermeneutic bears importance to accurate meaning of a text. One of the more telling examples in literature came to me while attending a Catholic college as a born-again Christian. 

I took a literature class called “The Theological Quest” wherein we read a great deal of the existentialist writers as well as the Russian moralists. We read a book called “The Fall” by Albert Camus, an atheist who hated God, but I found in that book more references to Scripture than I find in most Christian books today. The class was taught by a former Baptist minister turned philosophy professor, so it was an interesting experience.

In reading Camus, the protagonist is named Jacques le Baptiste, though I doubt if I’ve spelled it correctly here, wherein the he laments the fact that he is subject to sin and subject to the Scriptural standard of righteousness. Any Evangelical Christian could pick up the symbolism: that of John the Baptist, but one without a savior to for whom to prepare the way—a man without purpose in life. Each page of the small paperback had at least three direct references to a Scripture, indicating the deeper meaning of the text. My previous knowledge and study of the Bible set me apart in that class because of my understanding, so the literature was easier to interpret and held deeper meaning. 

Most of my classmates lacked understanding of the Word and did not comprehend the meaning of the text without additional instruction from the professor and without considering informed commentaries on the book. 

 Fast forward a couple of years to a missions trip I took to Russia. On the plane ride home, I spoke with a Russian with whom I discussed the Karamazov. I loved the book, and I still refer to it as one of the best pieces of literature ever written, so complex and concerned with the deeper meaning of life. I barely started talking about the book, and this Russian gentleman explained to me how my limited understanding of Russian life made my deeper understanding of the text very difficult. The names of the characters were well chosen, and he spent a great deal of time with me, discussing why a particular name was used and the specific meaning it conveyed. I felt rather like those other students in my class where I first read Camus and Dostoevski! 

I lacked the cultural understandings that conveyed deeper meanings to the characters. (For very obvious example, if I wrote literature and I named a character Clinton or Lewinski, it would take on deeper meaning and would convey and connote meaning beyond my actual words.) Such is true when we study the Bible. When I studied Greek in seminary, I had the wonderful advantage of learning the language from a believer who grew up as an orthodox Jew. In addition to learning the language, I also learned how the Jews of the day used the Greek language from a unique and broad perspective. I developed a great appreciation for the perspective that this understanding brought to the text. 

I found that aspects of this study were much like my experience in medical research, following a logical and well-informed process of investigation so that one can have the broadest perspective and understand the most accurate information about my life’s greatest passion: the study of the Word. 

Stay tuned for a review of the principles of the grammatico-historical method of hermeneutics

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Getting Back on the Same Page

[Late entry/addendum 21Dec07 AM: I have been asked to make a qualifying statement, so as not to misinterpret the and make false associations regarding the League of the South. My point in mentioning specific groups or individuals who argue for Dominionist or Christian Reconstructionists views as a source for knowledge about the League was meant to highlight that the knowledge came from a source that was viewed by us to be completely reputable and reasonable. It was because of our trust in the integrity of certain key persons or organizations that we trusted in the integrity of the other organizations that they would have recommended many years ago. I am now of the conviction that one is in error to argue slavery or to use other statements from those who advocated for slavery such as RL Dabney without a qualifying statement that repudiates the practice of slavery. Gary DeMar is one example of someone who does so online in qualifying articles about Dabney. Many of these groups or affiliated individuals many actually do so. My germane point references the Dominionist and other Chiristian Reconstructionists as trustworthy sources and not to imply racial related impropriety. My apologies to not stating this more clearly initially. /CMK]

Coming out of spiritual abusive systems is not an easy process. I spoke with someone a few weeks ago who mentioned to me how she and her husband are on different pages in their process of recovery. After writing my last post here, I find myself thinking about that conversation with her.

My cultic church loved Gothard’s material, but they were also strongly influenced by Christian Growth Ministries and New Wine magazine. The church had an elder who participated in Bob Mumford’s ministry (one of the Ft. Lauderdale Five), and Bob participated with Chalcedon. We already supported the Tax Payers Party and American Vision through listening to Marlin Maddox on the radio. I enjoyed some of the Chalcedon material to which our elder introduced us , but when we left that Shepherding/Discipleship church, I wanted to stop support of Chalcedon. I didn’t want anything in our house with the word “Covenant” written on it, quite frankly.

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Exposing Error Results in Virtual Assasination?

A few months ago, a para church organization called a few critics "internet assassins" and threw around all sorts of other connotative terms. (I'm assuming that the term "internet assassin" refers to one who makes unfavorable comments about another on the internet.)


Perhaps I'm naive, or getting old, but I remember a day when you could passionately debate with someone without the debate becoming personal in nature. I suppose this is more of the way Modernists confronted controversy, and now those rules don't work in our postmodern world.

James Sire in "The Universe Next Door" states that for the existentialist, because truth is grounded in one's experience, "knowledge becomes inextricably bound to the knower." Criticize my knowledge and you've criticized me. Push me towards the logical conclusion of my argument, and if I lose the argument, I've been mortally wounded somehow - literally. Because knowledge is based in my experience, then truth is based in my experience. If my experience is insufficient, then I lose worth and value on a very personal level. The inexperience of a novice becomes a personal flaw and a shameful thing rather than an opportunity to come into greater understanding of truth and maturity. Nihilism is the only logical and ultimate end.

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