I try to not riff/give “hot takes” on everything—I too easily could rant constantly. I prefer to be generous/edifying as much as possible. But for better or worse, here’s me letting out the monster that ever runs beneath my normally jolly, ostensibly encouraging exterior self:
I read the inflammatory piece on “shitholes” from Rod Dreher, & the flap over the latest asinine thing John Piper said about women in ministry. I’m torn between two responses: a) eye-rolling b) the same thing I feel when people report something crazy Pat Robertson says...
...that is to say, “who the hell is still paying attention to these persons, & why?” Dreher & Piper occupy different spaces, but are largely the same person: pseudo-intellectuals who sometimes impress folk a half inch above crass fundamentalism who think they sound “smart.”
Neither are serious thinkers, nor deserve to be taken as such. I tried to read & review The Benedict Option, but writing it was as tedious as reading the book was. I’m a student of Stanley Hauerwas—the BO is essentially an attempt at a kind of Hauerwas bathroom reader, except
Dreher is too self-referential, self-aggrandizing, & self-pitying to advance a complete thought. Piper shares the same lack of awareness, however sincere he might be, & however admirably committed he is to follow his horrible ideas all the way through to their logical horrible
conclusions. Either could audition for the role of the a less lovable Michael Scott of pastoral pop theology. Not to say I think that either man is wrong about everything-they are not, although both are unskilled thinkers & have a nebulous understanding of any of primary sources
they might engage, respectively. What they both rightly intuit within their own little ecosystems is that the world has moved on. What they cannot rightly discern is that God has. I am not speaking of salivation, here-they are both beloved & ridiculous sons, just like Uncle Pat,
...& just like me. What I mean is, they think culture has run off & left them & their world behind, when it is the Spirit that has. They think they are only irrelevant to flaming leftists, not understanding they are equally irrelevant to the Church in her global, multi-ethnic,
broadly Pentecostal expressions. They could still change course, like any of us could, but that would require some acknowledgement that they are riding shotgun on the Titanic—or is it a slave ship?—while they cheerfully critique any form of Christianity that doesn’t meet their
standards as faddish products of the times. They are of course not themselves products of any particular time or culture—they are neutral, bland & culture-free, the way whiteness is, able to wisely & easily arbitrate larger conflicts within the Body of the Christ. Blissfully
for them, they are enculturated only by “the gospel.” I don’t mean to swing too hard at a handful of unfortunate comments. In fairness, I find neither to interesting thinkers or above-average writers, even when they are being perfectly inoffensive. If you need to dispute such
persons when they go on the record with something absurd, feel free. If you are not so inclined to engage such trivial “thinkers,” feel free to shake the dust off your feet & move on. Between grace & natural selection, their words aren’t going much further anyway.
I personally just don’t know always know when it’s worth taking on a thing, & when it’s best to not give oxygen to folks who barely have any already...& just let them drift off to irrelevance along with those evangelical muppet babies, Jerry & Franklin.
(clears throat, waves goodbye to a number of followers, puts monster back in the cage, resumes kindler, gentler, slightly less dismissive version of self)
