I am thinking…nay, I will post this under a new category:  The Wartburg Watch Watch.  I thought it appropriate since I seem to spend so much time defending myself from their knee-jerk emotional responses to my comments over there; as well as helping myself on many occasion to a large serving of Wartburg Watch Fodder and Folly Casserole in service to my own blog’s content.  It is a treasure trove these days; a precious-gem mine of wonderful cautionary exposes.  And also, it is educational for me.  I mean this in all humility:  I find that sometimes yes, I can actually communicate better, and my infinite time in the moderation corner (we’ve been having some great keggers over here, by they way…if Dee ever tosses you into this motley crew, bring beer money)  has helped me see that. So, I can thank them for a few things, both personally and “professionally”–that is, as a writer dabbling in the subjects of philosophy and spiritual tyranny.

For those of you who want the complete context of what prompted this post, I suggest you visit http://www.wartburgwatch.com and go to the comments thread under the recent Wade Burelson E-Church post.  Wade makes an…er, well, very interesting remark which naturally I took issue with and attacked accordingly, because, I guess you could say that that’s how I am.  And yes, if you read it, you’ll see that I “went there” and you’ll also see what I mean by this and you’ll also see that I’m unapologetic about “going there” and think that “going there” is inevitable when the egregiousness of the statement to which you are responding basically drop kicks you directly “there”.

Dee reacted with a predictably uber-emotional knee-jerk reaction and made all sorts of unsubstantiated and false accusations about my heart and my intentions and my “spirit”…which, shrug, I expected that much.  I also expected her to not post it because by now I understand that that is how she is.  What I didn’t expect was for Wade Burleson, himself, to take up my cause and basically call Dee out on her hypocritical natural instinct to decide for me what my intentions were or were not, and essentially tell her that he wears big boy pants and can take it and give it back (with all the added charm and grace of…well, of Wade; he really does have quite a fetching disposition).  And Wade is and was right…though, his rationale…hmm, I’m going to talk about that later.  You can read it for yourself over there, just go down a bit and you’ll see the scripture reference he uses (uses the example of Shemei and King David).  At any rate, Wade was right and seeing him stick up for me was pretty awesome.

I was, like, this close [index and thumb together and one eye squinting] to not even commenting because I realize that I have totally  misjudged what Wartburg is going for as a blog; and understand that I have been trying to go in a direction over at that site that is just not what they are about at all.  Oh…what foolishness we engage in when we convince ourselves that we are helping people.  What we really need to understand–and I know this will sound jaded and cynical, but I’m of the real world and let’s be honest, the real world makes people cynics and jaded like gravity makes them hit he floor when they trip–anyway, what we really need to understand is that the people we help or want to help in understanding how doctrine affects the behavior of spiritual despots are vaaaaastly, almost infinitely, outnumbered by the people on these “discernment blogs” who simply don’t give a shit about that at all.  And that means we can all breath a sigh of relief, shrug off our illusory responsibility to “them” which can be counted usually on a couple of hands at most, and stay away from these blogs and the inevitable abuse we will suffer at the hands of those who proclaim themselves  moderators of “discerning abuse”, without a blush of irony.

They. Don’t. Give. A. Shit.

They do not make a connection between bad men and bad ideas.  Thus, they have a blog that is really good at pointing out who in Christianity these days is a big old meany, but not necessarily why they are a big old meany.  They are a fine shoulder to cry on, and a place to gather and vent “outrage” at the blindness of these wicked overlords/the CJ Mahaney’s of the world…but the root of the calling out of this behavior by these moderators and blog hosts extends no further than:  “that was a bad thing to do, mister, and you should know better”.   And when you ask them, “Well, since they (the meany Pastors) believe this, can you explain why they should “know better?”

That’s when you are told that you should just be quiet and just love people more.   That you should stop pretending to “understand God” and should quite “telling people what they think”.

Because,you, dear reader, must understand, that love, undefined and without a standard by which it can be known, is somehow the “thing” which these Christians truly believe will magically make all intentions good and all doctrines beside the point.

So, this little post is dedicated to what I call Dee and Deb’s fall TO grace…a little tongue in cheek reference to the ironically quite evil “doctrines of grace” as codified and systematized by Reformed Protestantism and specifically, and most purely and abusively, by today’s American Neo-Calvinist movement.  And I do categorize Wade Burleson as being part of this movement.  He is a quintessential Calvinist in his theology, I submit, and the fact that he is quite a nice man cannot and should not and will not absolve him of his responsibility to defend his doctrine rationally.  This he cannot do, because the doctrine is irrational…an anathema to reason.  And thus, can only be apprehended at the expense of humanity, never in service to it.  You see, nice occurs only in spite of reformed doctrine, as I have said numerous times in the past.  It is not canonical nor is nice orthodox, as a cursory review of Protestant history will verify.  And also, nice is a relative term.  Wade is “nice” to me (I suspect only to a point, though).  And Dee is not nice to me at all now, but she is nice to Wade.  My point is that Wade and Dee may be nice here and there, but Reformed doctrine is always evil.

Gotta run…back with part two in a bit