“Please understand that I have no beef with any church and their selection of primary and secondary doctrine. I may disagree with the doctrinal emphasis or even the core theology of a particular church but I would vociferously defend their right to express and celebrate their beliefs. I would also “elect” not to attend a church that subscribed to the set of beliefs that are described in TULIP, etc. I would be unhappy. Also, given my propensity to verbally emote, in excruciating detail, my disagreements and affirmations, it would stand to reason that the church leaders would be dispirited by my presence as well.”

This is a quote of Dee’s.  She is the moderator and one of the proprietors of www.wartburgwatch.com.  Go ahead and read it…take a moment to think about it.  Try to decide if you can figure out just what point Dee is trying to make here, because I must admit that I am struggling.  Maybe we can think this through together and come up with something coherent.

I’ll wait.

[tick tock]

Finished?

Good.  Now, let’s examine this intellectual puzzle, because Dee, if nothing else, is very prolific, almost prodigious, when it comes to pithy remarks that contradict multiple points in a single breath.  Let’s look at this doozy.  What did you come up with?

Here is what I got:

Dee somehow has managed in her mind to make a complete and practical distinction between  a church “selecting their primary and secondary doctrine” and that same church actually practicing those doctrines.  Meaning, if you read her quote, she is utterly in favor of, and would support any given church selecting whatever doctrine they want to teach and be taught, regardless of how oppressive and destructive to humanity it might be I presume; and yet at the same time she reserves the right to disagree with—which means oppose—the actual implementation (teaching) of that doctrine that she is so happy they selected.

Hmm…wait.  No.  That’s not it.  Or is it?  I’m so confused.  She’s okay with them choosing what they believe, and yet she disagrees with what they believe.  And that can only mean that she does have a problem with them believing what they believe.  No…wait.  She has doesn’t have a problem with their right to believe what they believe, but she has a problem with what they believe. But if they don’t actually choose it, then how can she know that any right has been exercised so that she can affirm the right?  No…okay, let’s see.

Okay, here it is: Believing the doctrine is their right, it’s just that she doesn’t like the doctrine.  She just likes that they believe it.  Why?  I guess because they have a right to believe it.

So…er.  What in the hell does that have to do with anything?  I mean, as far as I can tell, no one is threatening to impose martial law on the neo-Calvinist churches.  In fact, the only ones interested in martial law are the Calvinists, I submit.  If there is anyone who should be reassuring the opposition that they have no interest in denying anyone’s right to believe what they believe, it should be the fucking Reformed crowd.

Still, I’ve gotta work through this.  Bear with me.

Hmm…you like the right but hate the belief; and yet there is no right without the belief, because rights are irrelevant and don’t functionally exist unless they are being exercised, and often times exercised in service to beliefs you hate.  But there is no distinct dichotomy between rights and actions, so the real debate isn’t “right”.  Rights are merely a vehicle for ideas.  The ideas still need to be destroyed even if they are exercised as a “right”.

Yep…yeah.  I think I’ve got it.  The right to believe what you believe is totally irrelevant.  Ideas are the issue. Not politics.

Of course, such pointless diversions aren’t, unfortunately, a joke.  We aren’t discussing rights, we are discussing evil ideas which destroy humanity.  It is this kind of thinking which kneecaps Dee, and many other discernment bloggers’ argument against abuse in the church.  Talking out of both sides of one’s mouth makes for no effective rebuttal of a Reformed Orthodoxy that has been codified, systematized, synthesized, and fully integrated into Western thinking for going on 600 years.  And this is why today Christianity has become little more than a collection of mutually exclusive ideas meant to convey a cohesive belief system which is good for nothing except propagandizing the masses in service to a theocratic Marxist “state”.  Be it a full fledged theocracy collective like Calvin’s Geneva, or the tyrannical mystic  Marxism of today’s Reformed “local” church.

Now, now…I know what you are thinking.  All Dee is doing is proclaiming the right of people in this country to believe what they want, and the commensurate right of people to believe differently.  Yeah, yeah…I get that.  I am an Enlightenment-American (my new hyphenated label…you like it?), and utterly deny the right of government to enforce morality except in the cases of direct violations against person and property.  That being said, I too, have no problem with people believing what they want; nor do I have any problem with standing up and expressing my opinion that what they believe is stark naked bullshit.

But here is the difference.  First, I submit, after spending much time on a her blog, that Dee does not make a connection between what people choose to believe-their assumptions–and how what they believe drives abuse in the church.  She doesn’t think that “celebrating” an evil, destructive doctrine will lead to human sacrifice in the form of all manner of horror.  I think to her, “celebrate” means happy and nice and loving.  And thus, “celebrations” of ideas always will lead to life, regardless of what those ideas are.  So, the tyranny is only caused, not by celebrating or choosing ideas, but by meanies whose mommies just never taught them any manners.  Could I be misreading Dee?  I suppose, but I have not seen it myself.  I still have not yet seen Dee make a connection between ideas and abuse.  Just “bad people” and abuse.  Or, people who are not “doing” the ideas “right”. Like, it can’t be the ideas’ fault, but if there is abuse, it must be in spite of the doctrinal assumptions, not because of them.  If I am mistaken about this, please send me a link.

Second, and to emphasize my first point, by being completely comfortable with people selecting whatever doctrine they want, Dee, I submit, is again not seeing anything particularly wrong with IDEAS.  The point is not whether people have a right to believe what they want…the inherent right of free thinking and free speech is irrelevant in this fight against the Reformed, neo-Calvinist juggernaut which is slowly coagulating Christianity into a violent, theo-Marxist altruistic hoard.  The point is that ideas matter…more than anything.  You can’t on the one hand be completely complacent about the fact that there is a growing denomination of Christian influence which is substituting life for death as the yard stick of man’s moral GOOD, and then turn around and condemn them on your popular blog for “celebrating” the very ideas you just said they have every right to implement…to foist at the point of oppressive “church discipline” upon the masses.  You can’t condemn doctrine and laud it too, is my point, and this is exactly what I believe Dee does in her statement.

The fact is one cannot ever celebrate any group of people choosing to accept and teach a belief system which categorically concedes the singular premise that DEATH is GOOD.  I don’t really give a shit if Dee thinks they have a right to believe what they want.  Again, what does that have to do with anything?!  You can believe that a friggin monkey built Disneyland…that isn’t the point of a “discernment blog”.  The point is to confront abuse…the rape of children, the fleecing of innocent parishioners in service to a money-lusting Pastor, the installation of idiot twenty-somethings in positions of “authority” (force) over mature and seasoned men and women, the relegation of women away from their own self-perpetuation and self-fulfillment in a free society to a “biblical role” which denies them any natural right to pursue their own interests and talents as categorical human equals.

And you will never confront abuse by “celebrating” the fact that everyday another church falls prey to the mystic despotism which is sweeping through our great faith like the Orc hoards of Isengard.

So, sure…they have a right to choose their beliefs.  They have a right to practice their beliefs.  But the don’t have the right to tell me that it isn’t stark, raving rational larceny.  And they don’t have the right to say it isn’t abusive.  And they don’t have the right to deceive the communities of our great nation in service to their own will to power.

You know…hmm.  I hate all this talk of “rights”.  It’s just…well, it’s just fucking irrelevant, like I said.  So, scratch that last paragraph as just ranting.  Rather…again, their “right” is immaterial.  Getting into this “rights” business is a red herring.  Better said, they have an evil doctrine, and it should not be tolerated by anyone who concedes that morality is summarized best by doctrines which confess that God actually loves and inherently values his children for who and what they are.  And the whole idea of they have a “right” to it is just pointless, immaterial blabbering. It is only useful for false humility.

Yes…that’s exactly what bothers me about Dee’s “you have a right” business and blah, blah, blah.  It has the appearance of something disingenuous about it.  Like…don’t be scared, I’m really a nice person.  Of course you have a right to your beliefs, we can all get along.  We just need to be nicer, okay? If you guys would just do it like Wade does, we could all go back to baking Christmas cookies, and my commenters could spend more time discussing their love of chocolate and sharing lasagna recipes.

It’s just…trying to assuage the very people who are exercising their rights in about the worst way possible.  It’s totally besides the point.  Your right to believe what you want.  Here’s a newsflash for Wartburg Watch. THAT?  Has never been the issue.  And the fact that you are making it an issue tells me that you still don’t get it.

Abuse is ideas, not politics and not personalities.  Abuse is doctrine.  Period.  Full stop.

And further: The Constitution allows us to have these debates.  It is sad that it seems it has become yet another Wartburg Watch excuse for intellectual laziness.