In this series, I was planning on addressing a rule of thumb approach for sorting out situations from a distance. You are not the judge, jury, or executioner, but you do read various blogs, and you see scandals and gaffes processed on the evening news, and you read the newspaper. What are you to do with some poor hapless soul who gets himself into a local newsprint and ink bath? You are not ever going to be asked to vote, or determine anyone’s fate. You are just a small part of that great big ocean called “public opinion.” Charges and counter-charges fly, and once the food fight is well under way, it is very difficult to determine who “started it.”
But David Bayly beat me to this, and so I thought I would begin these thoughts by quoting him. “But when accusations and motives seem murky and you are not in the position of investigator or judge, one good way to know something about the truth of a situation is to examine the tactics of disputants. Tactics reveal truth. I don’t mean we should look to see who speaks in saccharine tones or whose words drip ostentatious piety. I mean we should look at cold hard facts. Cold hard facts are these kinds of things: who went outside the local body first, who spread the dispute before the world? Who is accusing others of offenses against ‘what is written?’ Who is charging others of offenses consisting primarily of tone and attitude? Who took their complaints to the internet? Who tendered apologies? Who refused apologies? Such things are not conclusive. But they are indicative.”
As he says, such things are not conclusive. But they are more than enough to make you wary about asking a bad-reputation monger to be a fishing buddy. So here are some of my own slight variations on David’s theme.
1. In the course of the controversy, who has offered various apologies, and who has not? Hint: the ones who have apologized and sought forgiveness in various settings are frequently the same ones who are accused of “never admitting they are wrong.”
2. Who has refused to accept apologies? Hint: they are usually the same ones who are on a personal vituperation crusade in the name of love and unity.
3. Who took their complaints to the internet before they were appropriately adjudicated by the appropriate governing bodies? Who took the show on the road before the church had dealt with the issue? A good example of this would be the recent flap surrounding R.C. Sproul, Jr. and the RPCGA. Everyone who is posting or running some variation of passingdogbytheears.com ought to withdraw their cyber-charges and privately offer any legitimate evidence they might have to the appropriate adjudicating bodies. Refusal to do so, as David Bayly points out, tells you something important.
4. Who believes that their personal feelings trump everything the Bible says about processing and handling evidence? It doesn’t matter what the Scriptures say because they are the chief cook and bottle washer down at DeeplyGrieved.com.
5. David asked who is charging others with offenses that consisted largely of “tone and attitude.” Another way of making this point is to point out that some charges require a “deeply individualist interpretive grid” and others do not. Charging the church bookkeeper with embezzlement of $100,000 requires a commonly shared interpretive grid (involving the community’s understanding of the difference between meum and tuum), the testimony of a couple of bank tellers, and some people on the elder board who can count. But when the charge goes something like this, watch out. “And in the silence that followed the pastor’s rebuke of my teen-aged son (poor baby), you could just feel the hostility radiate from the pastor, like heat from a stove.” Really? “You had the hate-o-meter out, did you? How fortunate.” The people who make charges like this specialize in offering their own esoteric and individualist interpretation of the glance with a thousand meanings. And those who refuse to go along with their interpretation of others are clearly “loyal to a fault. Perhaps even a little cultish. So sad.”
6. Because the point of doing all this is recruitment, not justice, it is frequently taken as a personal affront when someone hears or reads what they say, but then reserves judgment (Prov. 18:17) until he knows more. But too bad. The Bible tells us to reserve judgment until we know, and if someone is crowding us to disobey this clear requirement (or is busy explaining it all away), that tells you something.
7. And last, there is a common problem that David didn’t touch on — but from his other comments, I bet he has seen this one too. This is the “You’re So Vain You Probably Think This Song is About You” problem. Some people buy tickets to a football game and they are afraid that they are being talked about in the huddle. Once the conspiratorial mindset settles in, everything is interpreted as though it is directed at them personally — sermon topics, text selection, elder board decisions, lectionary readings, and blog posts like this one. A favorite tactic of those who have fallen into this is a just “connect the dots” approach. Usually, quite a number of the dots they connect really have to do with other folks. A related comment to this, and then I am done.
As a pastor, if I encounter three husbands over the course of a month (say) who have an anger problem in their families, the congregation can expect to hear about this problem in the sermons. They will of course not hear any personal identifications (“And brethren, it is right that Mr. Smith is squirming in his seat just now . . .”) but they should hear about sins and difficulties that the pastor has good reason to expect are a problem in the congregation. One of the first rules of preaching is that you must never use the pulpit to settle personal scores. But another rule of preaching, just as important, is that you must never squander your time in the pulpit by thundering away at sins that never make their appearance in the lives of those gathered in front of you. And this is why I am writing so much about justice recently. There are a number of people in our circles (in a number of situations) who clearly have no firm grasp of what justice is, or how it functions. This is a common problem, all over the country.