“We should not have Aslan for a friend if we brought in that rabble,” said Trufflehunter as they came away from the cave of the Black Dwarfs.
“Oh, Aslan!” said Trumpkin, cheerily but contemptuously. “What matters much more is that you wouldn’t have me.”
Prince Caspian
Introduction
Many of you are aware of the recent clash between Pastor Joel Webbon of Right Response Ministries and Pastor Tobias Riemenschneider from Germany. The conflict occurred about a month ago and is truly messy, and messy to such an extent that I came to believe that talking about it publicly here couldn’t make it any worse, and quite possibly might make it better—at least in some quarters. Here’s hoping.
I have delayed saying anything this detailed until after Tobias published his response, which has now done, two days ago now, and so now, here we are. This is his statement and response.
Whatever you might think of all the details in this, it is plain to me that Pastor Tobias is a conscientious Christian pastor who is not guilty of any lying slander, and that the eruption of public vituperation directed at him was grossly unjust. Speaking for myself, I wish that his statement had come a lot sooner, and had been a lot shorter, but there are reasons behind how all that happened, as you will see.
Although we are still in November, and all my regular posts have been without qualifications, this one will be pretty much all qualification and explanation, so go ahead and budget for that. I will compensate for that by speaking directly, and by naming names.
A Quick Summary of The Background
Pastor Tobias had a parishioner move from Germany to the States, and this person wound up joining Pastor Joel’s church. As time went on, Pastor Tobias became concerned about the radicalization he was seeing in this person, coming as a result of him listening to Corey Mahler at Stone Choir. There is some reason to believe that he had been harboring negative attitudes about the Jews for some time, but it was after his move to Texas that it began to be manifest.
At one point, this person shared a meme with Pastor Tobias, which I have embedded off to the right for you. There was a Zoom meeting between Pastor Tobias and Pastor Joel, along with the member concerned, and a few others. Unbeknownst to Pastor Tobias, this meeting was recorded.
After this, Pastor Tobias mentioned Pastor Joel by name on an Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast. Pastor Joel responded with a podcast discussing their earlier (secretly recorded) meeting with his co-host, breaking down what had happened when a member had “shared a Holocaust meme.” A few weeks later, Pastor Tobias responded with a two-hour podcast of his own (see above), answering the claims made in Pastor Joel’s podcast. His podcast was platformed by Eschatology Matters. A number of Pastor Tobias’s friends, including me, retweeted the link to that podcast. I will discuss my retweet of that below.
Naturally, controversy erupted. I was (and am) part of a Signal chat group that was giving Pastor Tobias counsel, advice, and encouragement. A day or so into that controversy, Pastor Tobias came to realize that he thought he had inadvertently misrepresented his former member and Pastor Joel on a significant point, and told us he was preparing a follow-up video correction (regarding whether a quote from Corey Mahler was their belief also). He was doing this with the support of his advisors. Truth first.
Before that happened, Pastor Joel notified Eschatology Matters that the initial meeting had been recorded, and he provided that recording to them. However, he refused to give permission for it to be shared any further, expressly excluding Pastor Tobias from hearing it. As a result Eschatology Matters took down the podcast, and issued a very general apology—which only inflamed things further.
Pastor Tobias was eager to seek forgiveness for any misrepresentations he had made, but the people advising him (including me) believed that he had a right to see and hear the evidence against him as he crafted any such apology. “Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” (John 7:51). While it was clear some sort of correction or apology was owed, it was important to get it right.
It seemed to us perverse to record a man secretly and then to deny him access to the evidence against him while others who had nothing to do with it could listen to the secret recording, and pound Pastor Tobias with it. This had happened because Pastor Joel had shared the recording with others in his circle, and it was leaked to some really bad actors who were using it to savage Pastor Tobias online.
What this recording had revealed—in addition to the problem that Pastor Tobias had already realized—was that a centerpiece of Pastor Tobias’s refutation was possibly a misrepresentation of what had actually happened. Pastor Joel had claimed (in his podcast) that Pastor Tobias would not be satisfied unless this member of his was brought under church discipline. A repeated statement in Pastor Tobias’s podcast was that they were not pushing for excommunication. The recording seemed to reveal that Pastor Joel had every right to his impression that Pastor Tobias was in fact pressing for excommunication.
So the issue here is not whether church discipline was actually warranted (at any level, from admonition up to excommunication). I actually believe it was, about which more in a bit. But that was not the issue. The issue was the fact that Pastor Tobias appeared to be pressing for it, but then denied that he was pressing for any such thing in his podcast. This was the central reason why Eschatology Matters took the podcast down. And it is the main basis for accusing Pastor Tobias of lying.
I don’t believe Pastor Tobias was deliberately lying—or slandering anyone (he certainly was not). But after all factors are thrown in (what Pastor Tobias was assuming about his intentions, the larger context, the fact that English is not his native tongue, etc.), the fact remains that an impartial observer could side with Pastor Joel on this point. And so in this most recent video, Pastor Tobias apologized at two places for his lack of clarity, although he did not apologize for lying and slander. His explanation, which was also backed up by things he had said at the time, was that he was answering the charge from Pastor Joel that he was pressing for excommunication over the simple sharing of a meme, and for mere differences of historical opinion. Church discipline was very much in play for him, but it would have been for unrepentant hatred, but not “for a meme.”
So there you have it.
My Role and Initial Retweet
I have reproduced my initial retweet of Pastor Tobias’s podcast below. I would like you to read what I wrote very carefully, and then I will comment on it below.
Please note that phrase “in every direction.” It is not just a phrase that was in there by happy accident. It was there because although I believed that my friend Pastor Tobias had a right to answer the public accusations that Pastor Joel had made against him (e.g. that he had “lost his mind”), I also knew I did not have the complete story before me. I also believe that Pastor Joel had a right to respond to Pastor Tobias’ mention of him previously in an Iron Sharpens Iron broadcast. But that is just the initial issue—the right of response.
After that comes the nature and quality of the response, by which we can gauge more accurately what is actually going on. As it happens, my retweet anticipated that as well. I referred to the “internal contradictions of the NETTR approach,” which were on a manic high when it came to the berating accusations that exploded over the last few weeks. I have never seen anything quite like it. It was quite a gaudy display.
Friends Who Let You Down
It is not possible to conduct any kind of public ministry, still less a polemical ministry, without trusting your friends and colleagues. When that happens, sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they fail, sometimes they do great, sometimes they swing and miss, and sometimes they move away from you, changing allegiances, and sometimes they leave themselves open to misrepresentation.
As many of you know, I spoke at Pastor Joel’s conference a year or so ago. Before accepting that invitation—because of certain worrisome things in this vein that we had already seen—I sought my elders’ permission to go. They granted that permission, with the proviso that I tell Pastor Joel straight up what our concerns were—a coddling of antisemitism being one of them. This I did, telling Pastor Joel, and I quote, “We wanted you to understand that to move in that direction at all is the same thing as moving away from us.” Pastor Joel understood, and I went there and spoke. The Ogden gents were there too. It was a good conference, and all was well. But since that time, Pastor Joel has in fact decided to move away from us on these issues, and that is a big piece of this controversy. More about that in the following sections.
When Pastor Tobias first responded to the public accusations made against him, he appeared to have stepped on a couple of rakes. Under the most negative construction, he misrepresented Pastor Joel’s disagreement with a vile sentiment from Corey Mahler, and he misremembered and/or misrepresented how hard he appeared to be pushing for church discipline. He has explained further what he meant at those points, and apologized for any confusion he created. For my part, I am satisfied.
Side B Nazis
I do not believe that Joel Webbon is a racist, or a fascist, or a Nazi, or a Holocaust denier, anything like that. I have heard his repudiation of all of that. I have seen what he said to his church about it, and he has told me the same thing personally. I believe him. But the issue here is a question of pastoral wisdom. In the secret recording, Joel made it very that he rejected Corey Mahler’s crap soup, and every fake potato in it, and that is all to the good. I applaud it.
But he also made his pastoral philosophy very clear when it comes to parishioners dabbling in such things, and that is where the real issue is. He also said that he did not believe he had the authority to tell any member not to read “that book,” or to avoid “that web site.” And under ordinary circumstances, this is quite correct, but these are not such circumstances.
Under ordinary circumstances, a pastor should never tell a member that he can’t drink alcohol, for example. To do so would be a legalistic abuse of pastoral authority. But what if a parishioner had a real drinking problem, was about to be fired from his job, and his marriage was on the brink because of it. Now what? Would it be an abuse of pastoral authority to tell this man that he could not drink at all?
Pastor Joel says that Corey Mahler is poison, which is true, and he is dealing with a parishioner who has manifestly been poisoned.
Before this controversy broke, this is an area where I had cautioned Joel explicitly.
“With parishioners like this, you have a two-fold responsibility. One is to him as a soul under your care, the same way you would treat a member with a drinking problem. But unlike the guy with a drinking problem, this kind of thing is a toxin in the whole body, the kind of thing that Paul said would spread like gangrene (2 Tim. 2:17). So you also have a broad responsibility to the whole flock.”
Text message to Joel
If I had a parishioner like this, I would instruct him, as his pastor, that he had to be done taking in material like this. No more. I would also tell him that they could not talk to anyone in the church about these issues apart from the pastor or elders. He could talk freely there, but nowhere else. If he agreed, well and good. If he did not agree, then I would tell him that if he remained in the church, then church discipline would be in the offing.
According to Scripture, certain areas are not to be “brought along,” but rather they must be silenced. When people in the church have toxic talking points—and Joel agrees with us that these are toxic talking points—Scripture requires that they be silenced. Silenced.
Someone might ask whether or not this is overstatement, panicking over a trifle. Gangrene? Spreading infection? Isn’t this just a little problem with one parishioner?
No, and no on two counts. First, we have had a massive controversy on the conservative Christian right, one that has been the precise opposite of edifying. All of it arose from a coddling approach to a toxic issue.
Second, when I look at the comments that came boiling out on Twitter in the aftermath of this, I have to say that it sure looked like gangrenous pus to me. Quite a lot of it.
Young Men Who Have Been Lied To
One of the more obvious things about this moment we are in is that we are dealing with hordes of young fatherless men who have been coming to the realization that they have been lied to their entire lives. They don’t know what to believe any more. The bottom has fallen out for them. I get that, and I do sympathize.
But this is hardly a good reason to lie to them some more. This is hardly a good reason to let them dabble in lies that are far more poisonous. Time to hate the Jews! Really? That’s what we need?
Pastors should know the pattern. A young woman who grew up with an alcoholic father or an abusive stepfather runs a greater risk of getting together with or marrying some guy who is just like that. We tend to prefer the devil we know to the devil we don’t know. There is a sad human tendency to say “never again” right before we do it again.
Young men who have been lied to their entire lives are far more susceptible to the next wave of liars. Their wariness and hurt is no protection for them. And this entire situation is a glaring illustration of it.
And to go back to my illustration of the girl who grew up with an abuser. The people who did everything they could to help her during that time, and who then warned her that her new boyfriend was going to be trouble, are rejected by her as condemning and censorious. “They can’t be pleased somehow. They have boomer brain.” And so a victim of liars, about to take up with the next liar, is inexplicably hostile to the one person who will tell her the truth.
A Miscellany of Random Responses
A number of things have whistled by my head over the last few weeks, and rather than charging off multiple directions at once, I thought I should just bundle up some of the more critical responses, and put them in one place, that place being here. Take each paragraph as a discrete point.
I have heard it being said that I have had a goal, over the last year or so, to “take out” Joel Webbon. It would be more to the point to say that I was actively engaged in trying to prevent him from taking himself out. The people who vilify their betters online are apparently also pretty good at whispering in wormtonguelike ways. There has been no plotting to take anyone out.
Some have been making the point that this whole thing has revealed a division between the natural law guys and the theonomy guys. As a theonomy guy who has room for natural law, this hardly seems like something to highlight. Natural law is to be preferred because theonomy does a better job keeping out Nazis?
There is a real difference between Nazis and people who feel compassion for Nazis, wanting to bring them along. The latter are not guilty of the sins of the former, and they are not in the same league. People who are given over to hatred are proper subjects of church discipline. At the end of a judicious and judicial process, they may be told by the church that they do not match the profile of a Christian. Those who mistakenly coddle such sins are not themselves guilty of those same sins, and they should not be subject to church discipline. Nevertheless, having such a blind spot does disqualify someone from leadership in the church.
If there had been a “let’s give Achan a second chance” contingent in Joshua’s army, they would not be guilty of Achan’s sin. They also would not have been included among Joshua’s most trusted advisors.
Others assert that this whole thing was performative virtue signaling, with us wanting the progressive left to somehow approve of us. Yeah, that’s me all right, buttering up the left the way I do. Go make up something else.
It is also being said that the disappointment of some is because this dispute should have been settled “inside the camp.” Actually, no. The dispute is over whether or not Stone Choir is inside the camp—because if they are inside the camp, then we are out. Have you seen that poll that is trying to determine which is more popular, It’s Good to be a Man and Stone Choir? The poll that the Feds are helping out with? There is a full court press to get those rancid guys included as within the pale, and some men (who are not of their number) cannot be prevailed upon to see the problem. Now this latter group should certainly not be excommunicated. But they shouldn’t be listened to either. So back to the wisdom of Trumpkin, cited at the top.
“We should not have Aslan for a friend if we brought in that rabble,” said Trufflehunter as they came away from the cave of the Black Dwarfs.
“Oh, Aslan!” said Trumpkin, cheerily but contemptuously. “What matters much more is that you wouldn’t have me.”
Prince Caspian
I have seen a number of confident pronouncements that Moscow really “did ourselves in” on this one. I can only quote Mark Twain, and somewhat jubilantly. The reports of our demise are something of an exaggeration.
Gospel Should Be Taken Like Whiskey—Straight
Ethnic animosity is one of those respectable sins that knows how to disguise itself as virtue, or special insight, or worldly wisdom. Moreover it is one of the central sins targeted by the gospel.
We are given the table of contents for the Book of Acts in the first chapter.
“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”Acts 1:8 (KJV)
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and out to the edges, concentric circles working their way out. And at virtually every stage there was another historic set of ethnic prejudices to overcome. The first was in chapter 6, where a dispute arose between the Hellenized Jews and the Hebraic Jews (Acts 6: 1). Then in chapter 8, Phillip caused a situation by preaching the gospel to Samaritans (Acts 8:5). Then in chapter 10, Peter was instructed to go preach the gospel to a Roman centurion, albeit a God-fearing one (Acts 10:17). And then, on the first missionary journey, the first “cold call” proclamation to a Gentile occurred (Acts 13:7). The whole situation was so fraught that the first ecumenical council was held at Jerusalem in order to settle the question (Acts 15:4-5).
Carnal and self-righteous hearts do not want to receive this, and the carnal and self-righteous heart is quite clever at coming up with reasons for taunting anyone who brings Scripture to bear in a way that convicts them of their sin. And sin it is, straight out of the sewage lagoon. Because the left has their counterfeit version of diversity and all such, it is the easiest thing in the world to accuse the faithful Christian of being “woke.” After all, a real twenty dollar bill looks an awful lot like a counterfeit one. Hmmm?
The gospel that addresses the fake righteousness of ethnic pride is straightforward. Jesus died, He was buried in accordance with the Scriptures, and on the third day He rose, also in accordance with the Scriptures. This was all done to make one new man out of the two, those two being Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:15). But He was not limited in His plan. He also insisted on making one new man out of slave and free, male and female, and Jew and Greek (Gal. 3:28). Cretans, that loser bunch, were to be brought in and taught righteousness as well (Tit. 1:12). And the apostle, in an apparent fit of madness, also thought to include the barbarians up north, and the Scythians (Col. 3:11). The Scythians!
Yes, there are those who say that our emphasis means that we are backhanding natural affections, and despising our own heritage. Given what we say in the Antioch Declaration about this, the charge is . . . curious.
“We affirm that God has ordained the existence of peoples and nations (Acts 17:26-28) and as such our cultural heritage is something to be grateful for so that, in view of God’s good gifts to our people, national pride, along with a healthy patriotism, are appropriate for Christians.”
Antioch Declaration
“Every day they wrest my words: All their thoughts are against me for evil.”Psalm 56:5 (KJV)