RC Sproul Jr.

I have not really said anything in particular about the web controversy that has engulfed St. Peter Presbyterian Church and the Highland Study Center (R.C. Sproul Jr.’s ministry), and I am not going to say anything specific about it now. But I do need to say a few things at the general level. If you don’t know anything about the situation, then that is just great and your world remains a better place. But if you do know about it, I would urge you remember two things, and bind them on your forehead and on your right hand.

The first thing is that everyone involved needs to honor and respect (and pray for) the principals in the situation, which would be Ken Talbot, as the moderator of the RPCGA, and the congregation and leadership of St. Peter. These are the entities and men involved, and they have ways of addressing us all if they want to say something. Responsible Christians everywhere should wait patiently while these responsible adults sort this one out.

But a good deal of the inflammatory aspect of this is coming from outside. If you come across a rogue web site, then remember that I have been writing extensively here about the principles of justice for more than academic reasons. Anyone running such a site should take it down in repentance and tears, and anyone remotely associated with such a site should walk away from it and never look back. Scurrilous attacks (such as I have seen) do nothing but discredit those who mount them, and those who listen to them

The comeback may be that some of these attacks from outside are being mounted by those who used to be inside, and so they have first-hand knowledge. But any responsible individual with first hand knowledge should be supplying that information to the appropriate bodies involved privately. To the extent that they take the show on the road (and team up with groups that are discreditable on other grounds) to that same extent they are demonstrating just how reliable that “first hand knowledge” must be. In our skirmishes here, I have seen more than one person demonstrate (by their subsequent unbiblical behavior after leaving us) that their first-hand knowledge was actually first-hand ignorance.

The second principle is this. I have seen some web sites in this that had a powerful amount of “information,” and lots of links to other attack sites and/or purported proofs. When you are shoveling excrement, the basic operating strategy has to be one of moving total tonnage. Many of the things claimed were issues about which I had no personal knowledge (with the only thing to go on being the way the charges were being made; cf. my series on justice). But happily mixed in with all this were slanders that I did have personal knowledge of. And guess what? These guys are about as reliable as any other guy with a spittle-flecked keyboard.

So honor Ken Talbot, and pray for the RPCGA. Honor RC Jr. and Laurence Windham and pray for St. Peter and the Highland Study Center. Dishonor character assassination web sites — that kind of scurrilous behavior is one reason why prayers of imprecation are still in the Bible. And finally, on a personal level, Laurence Windham and R.C. Jr. are friends of mine. I wanted readers of this blog to know that nothing has happened that would even begin to alter that.