R. Scott Clark Made Me Do It

Scott Clark achieved a personal milestone this last week. He set the stage for this accomplishment by tweeting that “conspiracy theories are the fruit of intellectual sloth,” which is true enough. But just one hour before this, he had posted kudos (“great work”) to one of our local—let’s not call it a hate site, for one of our general societal problems is the way the rhetoric in these conflicts tends to escalate, but I still think it would be fair to call it a—frowny face site. They don’t like me over there.

I found out about this because a friend forwarded it to me, on the assumption that I would find it to be as much of a wheeze as he did. These things are hard to measure but it must have come close.

So one of Scott’s links went to the image I have re-posted, off to the right here. I won’t link to it, and generally don’t interact with critics who maintain the kind of howler/truth ratio that these folks manage to do. But Scott Clark really should know better — he is Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, after all, and he does work for a reputable institution, Westminster West, a real stand-up joint, and yet within an hour of sending his commendations of this intellectual sloth out into the wide world he then turned his attentions to the condemnation of the intellectual sloth that is involved in conspiracy theories.

And so then I looked at the arachnoid web schematic diagram that he tweeted, with me playing the role of the engorged daddy spider at the center of it all, raking in untold wealth, with its implication that I was all the while chortling over the fact that the Bilderbergers had not yet moved in to claim a piece of my Idaho action.

So Scott decried the intellectual sloth involved in conspiracy theories, and then, in the same Twitter-breath, he linked to a story that must have been written by a struggling sophomore at the Delmont School of Investigative Reporting and Nail Salon.

On one occasion, the apostle Paul was provoked into a flyting boast-fest, and acknowledged in the course of it that he was a madman to talk that way (2 Cor. 11:23). Ah, yes, but an inspired madman. There is a time for such things. Is this such a time? I wonder . . .

The take-away that was intended by Scott’s applause of the schematic diagram is that the viewer is invited to conclude that I am a nepotism ninja, landing lucrative contracts and cushy jobs for any or all of my kinfolk as I best see fit. That being the case, I think it necessary to say a few things that I would not usually say in the course of any normal paternal kvelling. I do maintain ordinary levels for such kvelling, but it usually is — I trust — not unseemly. This will be unseemly, but then back to normal. I am out of my mind to talk this way, but I don’t think you should worry. It will only be for a paragraph or so.

I do this for two reasons. The first is that Delmont’s finest did get the relationships right. On that chart, my wife, and father, and son, and daughters, and sons-in-law were all correctly identified, with their names spelled right, but with a lot of wrong implications otherwise, and so secondly, some sweet Christian people out there might be misled, those who still trust the reputation that is reasonably accorded someone who teaches at Westminster.

If you want to draw lines from me to those cushy spots I created for my unqualified relatives, then you need to draw the lines of control to many more surprising places. Bwa ha . . . no, that would be too much. Not right now. The lines, tentacles if you will, would have to go to places like Oxford University, Random House, The Atlantic, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, Kurosawa Productions, Oxford University Press, National Geographic, NPR, HarperCollins, Esquire, Thomas Nelson, the Raindance Film Festival in London, and to the hundreds of thousands of other people involved. I write books, and Nate writes books, but in terms of comparative sales he has lapped me about 1,298 times. His fiction has been translated into somewhere north of 24 languages. He writes best-selling books and award-winning books. Scott knows that I got Nate those gigs because he saw a locally-sourced chart with me at the top of it. Ben, my son-in-law, has a mere two books in print. One, The White Horse King, was published by Thomas Nelson, which Ben wrote during his studies at Oxford. Upon getting his DPhil there, his dissertation was selected by OUP for publication. That book is entitled Defending the Trinity in the Reformed Palatinate. Many years ago, I learned just the right mixture of blandishments and threats. If youse Oxonian guys don’t play ball, sez I, I can promise you a very stern editorial from the Moscow/Pullman Daily News. They were most cooperative after that.

Incidentally, I also pulled some strings to get Scott his DPhil at Oxford. If I had known he was going to be this ungrateful, I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help out. Sheer ingratitude.

I could go on at length in a similar vein about the rest of my literary family, but will forbear. A significant percentage of the remainder are girls, and I know that my critics are threatened by strong women.

Despite many failed attempts, the only thing I don’t secretly control around here is the Moscow Food Coop. But of course, I am only saying that because I really do . . . never mind.

Okay, back to normal. Let me resort to a much simpler explanation that does not need a Clarkian conspiracy theory to account for it. God has been extraordinarily kind to me in and through my family. I have a beautiful and talented wife. I have three talented children who all love the Lord. They all married very talented people, who also love the Lord. Between them, they have seventeen children, all of whom love the Lord. I do not have a doubt in my mind that some of those seventeen are going to get published, which will be an occasion, at that time, for even more kvelling in the Lord. Some of them are working on it now. Not only do we love the Lord, but we all love the covenant of grace, and we rejoice to be living under the blessings of it. We love words too. There is no conspiracy here, but there is a large inland lake of gratitude. If I go off the leash the way Paul did, I also want to return the way he did, and ground it all in the kindness of the Lord. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

Keep in mind the fact that such gratitude cannot be a thin veneer. It has to be true gratitude for true grace, a gratitude that runs clean through the whole. What do you have that you did not receive as a gift? And if as a gift, then why do you boast as though it were not? The invitation to mock boasting only comes when people (for purposes best known to themselves) try to deny that you have received any such gifts at all. You are just sitting up there in your toy college, called New St. Andrews, up there in Idaho, pretending that you have an intellectual community. Just because you have faculty with degrees from Oxford, and Notre Dame, and Oxford, and St. John’s, and Oxford . . . I’m sorry. Am I being tedious?

The summary of the argument is this. In order for the nepotism charge to get any traction at all, I have to be ten times more important than these people want me to be, and a hundred times more than I actually am. I would have to have an international empire, and palettes of unmarked bills diverted from Iran, obtained on the sly from the Treasury Department and George Soros. But then there really needs to be more information on that chart, way more lines, and we actually would need to bring in the Bilderbergers to make a conspiracy of that magnitude work.

P.S. One other thing should be noted parenthetically because it falls in the same general category of irrational and most indignant criticism. Speaking of things we find out about because amused friends forward them to us, Rachel Miller recently seized the moralistic high ground in a quest to denounce Nate’s books. She said, and I am now quoting:

“ND’s books aren’t just not Christian. They’re antithetical to Christianity. Dark, a celebration of evil.”

This is almost a pristine example of church-lady-ism. We are reaching that point in the story where our critics are becoming parodies of themselves. I see. A “celebration of evil“? So when I say “church lady,” I am not using hyperbole. We are talking the real deal kind of church lady, not the fake and fictional kind as seen on the teevee.

P.P.S. Having said this much, perhaps I should also say . . . no, no, I shall be strong. I will not reveal it too soon. I will be coy, and will not, as one of my grandchildren once put it, “throw the beans.” But I can say this much. Another outstanding example of my perfidious influence will be public tomorrow. Stay tuned.

P.P.P.S. I didn’t really help Scott get into Oxford.