A "Debacle" Revisited...

At times, of course, keystrokes are misunderstood to contain a bit more emotion of one kind or another than they actually do. In a disagreement with Tim Enloe, he chose to cut the discussion short and closed the comments section, which is his privilege to be certain. Nevertheless, I had been in the middle of a response which I was offering in brotherly affection and felt it would be amiss to leave everything in that state of an unfinished "debacle," as Mr. Enloe labelled it after tossing away the key. Thus, below I invite anyone interested to peruse my final thoughts on what I shall wryly refer to (because it is for me endearingly dramatic) as our little debacle, revisited...

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Before I begin a response, I would like to say to any who may be reading that it is difficult for a man to answer a challlenge of academic arrogance or elitism without coming across as a self-centered person or boastful because he has been compelled to make himself the primary subject. I encourage others to hear what Mr. Enloe is saying with more fairness and grace.

Now, to my response...

Mr. Enloe, I do believe that the tu quoque fallacy is one of your favorites. You are prone to using it whenever someone accuses you of evading the responsibility of every servant of the LORD not to "be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting [your] opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will." (II Timothy 2:24-26)

This is at times difficult for us to be sure but we have no right to anything else and the fact that other at least professed Christians may fire off their mouths or keyboards at will without any regard to the blessed Name which they wear and which they often profane places no burden upon you to match them.

Allow me to clarify a further misunderstanding which I believe was the result of rather poor communication on my part. You argued, "your displeasure with me seems directed at my serious dislike of the popular level. You seem to take it as 'sneering under the cloak of humor,' but I don’t think it’s all that irresponsible a position to hold."

When it comes to your charge that there is a highly irresponsible element in much of popular apologetics, you are surely correct, as far as I can see. But it was never this which pricked me but rather several important elements among the implications you drew from this...

1. Your way of describing others or their work tends toward dismissing them as a whole. I have met some of those people that you (and I) would call irresponsible and their irresponsibility in the context of apologetics has been deplorable to me, yet I have also known them to be rather fair and reasonable and charitable people in many other contexts. I've never met any of the true "lemmings" which you mentioned. Only fictional characters are that one-dimensional. I rather thank the Most High that sometimes human beings are contradictory creatures. He does not allow His people to destroy themselves by their penchant for folly.

2. Your criticism tends to denigrate their intelligence as a whole. A person can, of course, like yourself, describe themselves as personally only fair at apologetics or theological discourse while yet remaining fairly (or even especially) intelligent people. And, of course, because the issues you tend to take up and follow are among those which are "live" options and sensitive for many people, those you speak to tend to exaggerate, to become emotionally overblown or make flagrant errors on the flimsiest basis. This doesn't make them hicks in a backwater, as you suggested earlier.

3. It appears to me that you tend also to privilege the word of academics, perhaps a little too extensively. I would like to believe, though I may have too little reason to, that I have had sufficient experience with academics to know that they can act and think as absurdly as anyone else. They can go with their gut instincts and call it "common sense" (which happens far too often in academic philosophy), speak well beyond their specialization, pretend to more knowledge than they have and write obscure prose to cover their ignorance for the sake of prestige, and are often even more blind to the wisdom of Scripture than some others precisely because of the personal assurances afforded them by their position and "expertise." I know how little some degrees, even higher degrees, can be worth.

Of course you don't have to meet "Benjamin's rather moralistic standard," whatever that may be, anymore than I must meet yours. And I'm always with you if you wish to chuckle a bit or weep or groan over the little corner of the world where people don the title of "Ego Crusher," so long as we consider that perhaps they are what they are largely because of important fears or insecurities... I think they are uneasy at the prospect of putting on blinders and placing their lives and hearts in the hands of "experts." They would rather "do exegesis" and "prove" your experts wrong even if in private they realize on some level that their efforts appear superficial even to themselves. Of course they are grabbing at straws but this doesn't make them hopeless.

I was once among them, myself, and the stories you've told are very familiar, though like you I hope that I was perhaps abiding by a different standard of integrity even back then. Yet, unless we are particularly special people and they are beyond the reach of GOD, I suppose it is not a great leap to conclude that if we could escape the pop-apologetics "mentality", there is hope for even the worst of those we left behind. Indeed, I should rather say that if even we made it, what cannot be accomplished in the lives of others?