Every few months, I will get a letter here at the Internet Monk mail room that goes something like this (not a real letter btw, but very close):

Mr. Monk,

I don’t know why I read your web page. I need some encouragement in my faith and after reading what you write, I see no reason to continue being a Christian. You criticize everything and everyone. You find nothing right with the church. You amplify every doubt and objection to where it can’t be ignored and you seem on the verge of abandoning the faith yourself. Who knows how many atheists you’ve created. With all the influence you have in the blogosphere, you’d think you could be at least a little bit encouraging to those of us who are struggling.

Sincerely,

Bruised Reed

I’m not above appreciating this kind of letter and I don’t want to come off that way. “Bruised reeds” are important to me. I love them and feel a special concern and consideration for them. I’m not above criticism, though you’ll easily find people whose blogs will inform you that I’ve never allowed or agreed with a single criticism every offered to me.

I’m not a connoisseur of fan letters and I don’t send the goon squads out from my designated chat rooms to comment-harass and e-mail bomb those who say these sorts of things. Usually, I don’t say anything except send along a note acknowledging the concerns and thanking the person for reading.

Today, however, I want to make a few responses, and as I said, I don’t intend to be carping or snarky.

1) Encouragement comes in various forms. I have classes made up of seniors. Most of them will suffer through bout of senioritis, i.e. they will just stop doing any work and consider passing with any grade acceptable.

I “encourage” them in this situation, and my “encouragement” can take the form of genuine sympathy, personal anecdote, stories about my kids, threats, ranting, cage-rattling, threats to drop them, refusals to do college endorsements, name-calling, humor, absurdity, bribery, gifts and nonsense.

In all, my goal is to get them off the dead zone and back in the game.

This site is like that. You can fault it for not giving you a hug, or defending the resurrection, or answering your questions or lovingly linking to the Baylys or not giving Wendy’s coupons. But the fact is, on one day or another, I’ve done it all. Be gentle. Yell. Cry. Wonder. Muse. Be prophetic.

2) IM is like a restaurant with a menu, but the reason people stop in is the daily special. The daily special may be kicking Osteen or examining prayer books or looking at the Baptist confessions or questioning the emergent agenda. If you don’t like the daily special, you can get the menu (the archives, the search engine) and order something else. But I don’t think it’s really a worthy complaint that on the day you wanted fish we were serving corned beef.

3) Now I’m going to sound really mean, but trust me, I’m not being unkind.

Your fragile condition in evangelicalism or Christianity is not my fault. And it’s not my responsibility to cure it.

I’m not a doctor of the soul. I’m a pamphleteer. I’m a pirate radio DJ. I’m Leonard Cohen meets Kid Rock.

Listen: I’m a lot more likely to knock down your propped up evangelicalism than I am to give you another way to keep it standing. If the parable is “I thank you Lord that I am not as other men: I have all my questions answered” versus “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” then we are going with number 2.

Be careful now: I don’t want to spoil your faith or kick your church experience if it’s working for you. That’s never been my game. But tell me that all of us need to be like you and your church? I’m handing you a loaded mousetrap. Feed us the rhetoric of the church growth movement and say it’s “God blessing” so I need to get on board and you’re going to be given an honorary hand grenade. Pin pulled.

The distinctive place of this blog isn’t anything close to a Ray Ortlund, Jr or similar blogs designed for encouragement. This blog is provocative and oriented toward critical thinking and discussion.

4) I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot recently, but I’m far more interested in a person coming to a position of honesty and integrity than I am in maintaining labels that aren’t working. The choice between a phony Christian profession and honest doubt is not a hard one for me. I deeply disagree with those who say we should not speak of faith until we have answers. It shouldn’t take a lot of consideration to understand the answer may be “there’s no answer for this question.” If I have to go beyond that, I’m going at the expense of my integrity. Nothing good comes of that. It’s quite likely the reason so many people walk away from faith with the feeling they are doing a good thing and becoming more of a whole person.

5) I could send a commenter like the letter writer above to a dozen blogs that have predictable menus, steady posts that don’t vary much in agenda and never venture into edgy areas of doubt or controversy. I’m not in any way wanting to discourage any reader, but Internet Monk isn’t one of those blogs. It’s not highly devotional. It represents a vast number of diverse commenting voices. My writing will tip sacred cows from time to time. What I have to offer you is what you find here. I am not tailoring my writing to the individual needs of readers. I have to be true to my own motivations and a writer’s motivations aren’t always very impressive or pious.

With genuine respect for readers and commenters like the one above, I’d suggest that we sometimes expect far too much of the blogosphere. It’s the reader’s job to discern what blogs will help their own journey as a Christian.

A truly prominent, not-post anything blogger has put forward the following theory:

Those who use the prefix “post” to describe themselves are claiming to be smarter than those who don’t.

Example: A “post-modernist” is saying “I used to be mired in the darkness of modernism, but now, through my superior intellect, I have arisen from the tomb of modernism and ascended to the higher plane of post-modernism.”

Or: A post-conservative is saying “Once I lived in the dark swamps of conservatism, but now I’ve finally used my brains and looked at what Neanderthals inhabit conservatism. I’ve packed my bags and left for the sunshine and springtime of post-conservatism.”
And, of course: A post-evangelical- such as yours truly- is saying “Those stupid, sheeplike evangelicals can’t hold an intellectual candle to the brightness of my post-evangelical insights. How truly significant and wonderful it is that I have emerged, under the power of my stupendous brain, into post-evangelicalism.

You may send your best examples in to the Internet Monk research department.

I have three responses.

First, I don’t think that’s a completely wrong analysis. Intellectual arrogance is a common sin, and I’m sure I’m guilty of it. There are other reasons a person might take pride in being “post” whatever. There’s certainly a social dimension, as people “join up” with groups and movements they feel have moved beyond other groups and movements or just have an image they want to identify with. Pride comes in many different forms and some of them are quite subtle.

But intellectual pride goes both ways. There are those who take intellectual pride in their “old fashioned” legalism and their King James Onlyism. It’s no less potentially sinful to say “I’ve never changed and never will” than to say “I’ve changed and that makes me better.” It’s prideful to say “I’m smarter than those _________ Christians, who can’t see their own flaws and apostasy in comparison to my group.”

While I agree with the prominent blogger that being “post” whatever may be evidence of intellectual arrogance, I can’t say that’s automatically true or that there isn’t just as much arrogance in the other options of where we position ourselves in relationship to other Christians. It’s all a version of “My way of looking at things amounts to a kind of righteousness.” I think not.

Secondly, the process of thinking, learning and discovery, by its very nature, takes us in the direction of being “post” whatever we were before we thought, learned or discovered. There’s nothing wrong with being “post-ignorant” or “post-uninformed.”

It seems that some Christians want to present themselves as being “keepers of the foundational” truths, and that their “progress” has always been “back to the truth,” but not “post” anything. Ahem. So Calvinists, for example, don’t call themselves post-evangelicals, but in actual fact that’s precisely what many of them are. They are people whose journey of discovery has taken then into the world of reformation Christianity POST their sojourn among generic evangelicals.

Charismatics are usually post-cessationists. Catholic converts are post-protestants. Many reformed Christians are post-revivalists or post-Arminians. I don’t think anyone is making a claim the other camp is stupid. Just wrong, from the learner’s perspective.

If the purpose of learning, study, inquiry and discovery isn’t to transcend your previous ignorance and to move forward in your experience of truth, then what are we doing pursuing so many books. sermons, lectures and classes?

Why are we reading prominent blogs, if not to be “post” something in our own knowledge of the truth?

Third and finally, my own “post-evangelical” journey isn’t a triumphant parade of intellectual triumph over the stupid. That isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty that’s stupid, worthless and even spiritually dangerous going on among evangelicals. It’s to say that I’m intentionally moving past where evangelicals are going, to take a broader, deeper examination of their roots, their valuable contributions and their diverse options for the future. I believe that evangelicalism’s current directions are dire and portend an end to the movement as classically defined, but I believe evangelicalism “deep and wide” has hope worth stirring up and content worth keeping.

I have far more respect for evangelicals in general than those who typically criticize me for being “post evangelical.” Their pessimism exceeds mine by far. I believe there is much about evangelicalism that can be salvaged and much about it that reaches into the broader experience of truly “catholic” Christianity. My prominent critics typically find evangelicalism a train-wreck with only one hope: a wholesale rejection of all things Charismatic and catholic in favor of a kind of reformed Baptist/independent Baptist fundamentalism.

If there’s a competition for who is the most pessimistic “post-evangelical,” I can’t really run with the big dogs. Look up the people who think Rick Warren is a new age guru and Tim Keller is a mystic.

My intention is to discover what in evangelicalism presents a “Jesus shaped spirituality.” I do not adopt the post-evangelical label as a way to say I am smarter or others are stupid. I adopt it to say that living among evangelicals must be an intentional, deconstructive journey, sorting through tradition and trend, looking to scripture for authority and being open to the work of the Spirit, even among people very different from me…and maybe even not as “smart” as me.

The warning that “post” anything can be intellectual arrogance is a good word, well heard and hopefully heeded. But at the same time, drawing a caricature of other Christians who may use the label “post” may be another version of the same thing. There’s no immunity for any of us; just a constant need for humility, mutual respect and careful consideration of what God may be doing in those different from ourselves.

Who’s on your blogroll? Your RSS reader?

What are you saying by including or excluding them?

Somewhere in my future volume called “Blog Psychology: The Behavior of Bloggers Explained” I will have a chapter on blogrolls. Maybe I’ll even do that long lost doctoral thesis on “Blogrolls Explained: The Significance of Inclusion and Exclusion on Christian Blogrolls.”

Let me make clear at the outset that I put myself forward as an example of such behavior. I have included and excluded a number of people from my blogroll, and it will be on that basis that I’ll make any observations on what someone is thinking.

For starters, what is a blogroll anyway? Typically, it’s a list of internet sites- often blogs, but not restricted to blogs by any means- that the blogger wants to endorse or identify with in some way.

Of course, there may be other reasons for inclusion on a blogroll. A site may be interesting for informational purposes or simply be an “essential’ site the blogger visits frequently.

When it comes to blogs themselves, inclusion usually means…

-This is my friend and/or supporter.
-I’m endorsing this blog as similar to my own. You can trust it.
-This blog has beneficial spiritual content.

So when a blog disappears from a blogroll, something has normally prompted that removal.

Psychologically, blogrolls represent the “team sport” mentality that prevails in the blogosphere. We “build and draft” teams members like we are building a fantasy league. The people who endorse our views in our comments and link our posts at their blogs are rewarded with inclusion on our blogroll.

RSS readers, mostly unseen, but sometimes posted on sidebars, are another way of accumulating useful blogs. RSS readers run on a similar, yet slightly different, psychology since they don’t generally imply approval. Of course most of us monitor sites we like, but many of us also monitor blogs that we disagree with, and from that monitoring often shape our own posts in disapproval or reaction. In many ways, this may be one of the unhealthiest of blogging habits, as it selects from the entire blogosphere those sites we tend to disagree with the most, and serves up to us (and/or our readers) a regular round of posts that we disagree with. It contributes “conservations” and “blogwars” that exaggerate the differences that exist in the Christian blogosphere.

For example, many of my own “blogfights” involve people with whom I agree on almost everything in matters of faith and practice. Our areas of disagreement often involve questions of style, tone, vocabulary and “association.” Some of these differences- like “limited atonement”- are over subpoints of subpoints in Christian theology. Many of the errors I, and others, make in these blog squabbles exaggerate matters that, in the real world, are practically invisible.

The entire blogosphere has this characteristic. I have been in ministry for more than 30 years. In the 20 years I’ve been a pastor and campus minister, I’ve never talked to my congregation, students or co-workers about Karl Barth’s views of inspiration or made an endorsement of the emerging church. Virtually no one that I’ve worked with the past 20 years has any idea that I have any opinion more controversial than rejecting the pre-trib rapture.

Yet on the blogosphere I’ve had significant negative press for not accepting someone’s version of limited atonement and for being a “Barthian liberal”(!!) on scripture. Just this morning, I sent a fellow staff member the New Hampshire Confession of Faith in answer to his question about what I believed on a certain issue.

On the blogosphere, the fact that I affirm the New Hampshire Confession gets me no love , as those who monitor me as an “emerging heretic” only want to know about what they see as my dangerous departures from orthodoxy. (Ironically, one of my most frequent and flamboyant critics turns out to be an advocate of the amill eschatology I’ve held- under the radar of the dispensationalists that surround me- since college days. We should be friends.)

For example, in a recent discussion of my aversion to the word “inerrant” (a word that clearly means “always literal” to many who reject amill eschatology), a commenter called me a liar for implying that I had never had a controversy over my beliefs about scripture. But the fact is that the words I do use about the Bible in my ministry are MORE than adequate to convey my affirmation of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. In nine churches and three schools, I’ve never had a moment of controversy over scripture. If anything, The closest I’ve ever come: my New Covenant views of interpreting the Old Testament.

I have been guilty of the same kind of amplification of issues where I differ with other bloggers. I have an RSS category where I monitor blogs that frequently take positions with which I frequently take issue. This often has put me in conflict with people whom I would gladly accept as a fellow pastor or fellow elder in the “real world.” In the blogosphere, their identity and our interactions are dominated by our disagreements. But if we were at Starbucks, I think we’d get along as friends.

(This is not universally true. There are some on the blogosphere who clearly do not accept me as a Christian with my current beliefs as they understand them, and I do believe that fundamentally makes our relationship difficult. Rejecting someone’s profession of faith is a serious matter.)

This kind of selectivity in the information age has the potential to significantly shape our view of what the “conversation” is like in ways that are not beneficial or accurate. It is as if we intentionally subscribed to a collection of newspapers or cable channels that were certain annoy and anger us.

In the same way, however, selecting blogroll and RSS sources that completely reflect only our own views and opinions may also shape our view of the conversation wrongly. We can easily construct an “informational world” that simply reinforces our own beliefs and prejudices, alerts us to only those issues we currently care about, and excludes other points of view except when articulated by approved critics.

I will confess that I have included and excluded blogs from my blogroll based more on my personal reaction to individual issues than to the overall commitment and approach of the blogger to our common faith. Recently, I have noticed two fellow bloggers removing blogs from their favored places on the blogroll. It is likely this is prompted by disagreement over some issue, and is an expression of disapproval or punishment. “Blogroll banishment,” so to speak.

Some bloggers categorize their blogroll into groups based on the extent of their approval. I was once categorized on one blog as spiritually dangerous. My inclusion in a labeled category was a form of public disapproval. When I finally vanished (and the category removed), I was pleased.

The blogosphere lives and grows by the mutual recognition of one another’s existence. Blogroll inclusion exposes a blog to your audience, and has the potential, on many blogs, to drive significant traffic to the blog as a result of inclusion. If that is true, then exclusion is often a form of punishment, by making the blog less visible and discouraging traffic to the blog.

Here are some suggestions for “blogrolling.”

1) Don’t make your blogroll entirely a list of your “team.” Have some genuine diversity of blogs and posts.

2) Include blogs that you disagree with over some issues, but that produce useful, insightful and helpful content.

3) Don’t leave the impression that a blog is completely heretical and outside the bounds of the faith when you have a disagreement with them. It’s absurd to judge so much from even several areas of disagreement.

4) Consider not using the ability to monitor RSS feeds as a way to keep yourself stirred up against certain bloggers, topics or issues by isolating “enemy” feeds.

5) Be critical of yourself- and not just others- when blogging brings out childish, “team sport” tendencies.

Critics say those advocating a “missional” church fail to define what “missional” means. They, on the other hand, are generally confident in their own descriptions of missional churches and ministers.

Perhaps you’ve seen the red icon on the sidebar of this blog called “Friend of Missional.” If you haven’t, let me encourage you to spend some time with the links and resources there.

You will find a short definition, lists of characteristics, an index of outstanding blog posts on the topic, a reading list, a list of what a missional church is not and a description of what a missional church looks like. (This isn’t an organization, btw, like Emergent.)

It’s an excellent page, designed to specifically, carefully and comprehensively respond to the charge that missionalism is undefined.

Here’s a recent description of some missional churches by Tad Thompson:

So here we are – if you light candles, recite the apostles creed, refuse to adhere to any propositional truth, and read Blue Like Jazz (actually an interesting read), while having endless conversation with people about spirituality within the context of a community of faith – then wow – we are missional.

Rick Meigs definition at the site:

“Jesus told us to go into all the world and be his ambassadors, but many churches today have inadvertently changed the “go and be” command to a “come and see” appeal. We have grown attached to buildings, programs, staff and a wide variety of goods and services designed to attract and entertain people.

“Missional is a helpful term used to describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others. It speak of the very nature of the Jesus follower.”

I’ll let you read for yourself and make up your own mind if missionals are fairly represented by their critics or are fairly representing themselves.

Imagine with me, if you will, the following strange story.

Imagine that I make a blog post taking issue with some point made by Ravi Zacharias. I rarely disagree with Ravi, but let’s say I take some issue with him on the issue of inerrancy. I devote a post to it.

What would you think if, the next day, www.rzim.com had a full and lengthy polemic response to my comment? My name in the title, calling me out by name as if I am the only person with this response, characterizing me as part of a movement to denigrate the Bible and calling me a “bigot” for posting on my blog?

You should be saying, “That would be bizarre. How can you be a serious Christian leader if you use the internet to hunt down and respond to your critics personally, pejoratively and by name? When you are a leader of some stature, you have to forego these personal vendettas. Ravi would never do that.” Indeed.

Can we reload? Imagine that Dave Ramsey, well known financial counselor, is criticized by someone in the banking industry for his opposition to credit cards. What would you think of Ramsey if he devoted a full page on his web site calling this banker out by name and characterizing him as a tool of financial interests who distorted Dave’s points? What if Dave started doing that all the time? What if Dave couldn’t talk about finances without personalizing almost everything into a battle between himself and another person?

You should say, “Dave knows that he’s controversial to the financial establishment. He’s provocative on his show, and he knows there will be a response in the financial community. He can’t make everything personal. He can’t start using names. That’s juvenile. It will be the end of him as a leader if he keeps it up.” Again, indeed.

I could go on and on and on. Imagine the guys on Together for the Gospel writing long posts with their opponents names at the top, calling them bigots. Imagine Mark Dever or Al Mohler blogging and podcasting in personal, name-called-out derision of those who disagree with them strongly over elders or Calvinism or inerrancy.

Here’s a rule of thumb: The higher you go up the ladder of influence, the more you must forego personalizing conflicts with those who disagree with you. You expect it, and you act like you expect it. You blog and podcast like you expect it. You skip the names and you deal with the criticism as it plays a part in the overall issue.

You think that the guys at White Horse Inn don’t get mail? “For today’s show, we’re going to call out our critics by name, the bigots.” Or John Piper? Or R.C. Sproul? If those men started blogs to chase down and personally battle their critics, it would be a sea change in their leadership.

I’m pretty sure Joel Osteen won’t be writing a two page letter about me, calling me a bigot, even though i have the longest anti-Osteeen post on the web right here at IM. Even though he’s a lot of other things, he’s got more class than that. I assume he knows his problem isn’t Michael Spencer, the bigot, but conservative evangelicals, period.

Of course, one reason a person might fall into this pattern is how much attention they pay to their friends. If I have a room full of supporters who constantly send me links to every negative or disagreeable mention of me on the web, I’d have to decide what to do with that chattering class of eggers on. If people were always sending me links and telling me to go after people who responded to my posts, I’d have to decide how to handle that pressure. That’s part of leadership too.

I’m sure most people of influence have learned to listen to the voices that say, “Don’t personalize things like controversies in Calvinism. Don’t put that name at the top of your post or say he’s a bigot.” And others don’t listen to that advice. They are still susceptible to the chat room cheerleaders and the people sending links to respond to. They may even find themselves looking at every trackback and jumping into comment threads wherever they are mentioned.

High irony. Some people make their living being analytical and provocative, but when someone responds to them, that person is a “bigot.” Higher irony: Just last week someone wrote me about one of the critics I have in mind in this post. This person wanted my honest opinion of him. Now this person has done more than anyone on the web to cause me, personally, pain as a result of my blogging. But I understand what he’s doing and even why he’s doing it the way he’s doing it. I said he was a good man, and that his ministry was valuable and helpful. I said I had no reservations about him as a person or a minister, and that whatever problems I’d experienced were the same kinds of flaws that reside in my personality.

Here at our ministry, we have some “letter writers” on the staff. Every church or business does. When I make a decision about the spiritual life of our school, I’ll get the long, critical letter. I used to write long letters in reply, and throw them away.

Now, I read the letter, once, and throw it away. Life is simply too short. I’m here to lead, and as Lincoln said, if I respond to all my critics, I will do nothing else. Of course, if you want your business to be nothing but responding to critics, that’s another story.

This is now the third time I’ve gotten a lengthy treatment from an internet watchblogger of some reputation. He believes Catholics are non-Christians. I noted that he said the pope wasn’t in heaven, and he went after me by name as if I had insulted him. Later, I wrote an apologia about my differences with some kinds of reformed Christianity. He gave me three headlining posts in a week on his well-read blog, as if I had mounted an attack on him. Now I’ve made an off hand reference to him in the Chan/Gospel offer discussion, which he commented on at length, and my name is at the top of a post, again, where I’m labeled a bigot.

Being a bigot means I don’t have intelligent opinions, just bigoted prejudices. And that’s the heart of the problem: You have to forego responding to critics on the basis that they are idiots. They’re not. They simply are at a different place than you. If you make it your business to be provocative, some of them will make it their business to reply. THAT’S A COMPLIMENT TO YOU and you pull yourself down by making it a personal blogwar.

One of the reasons I am not part of certain kinds of churches is because of stories about what happened to people who criticized the elders and pastors. In some churches, disagreement with the elders or criticism of the pastors resulted in visits, accusations of moral failure, labeling as unsubmissive rebels and church discipline. In rare instances, this was clearly abusive.

These issues come to a basic decision from leaders in ministry: How will I respond to critics? How will I respond to those who tell me who my critics are and what they are saying?

Making that decision is part of why Ravi Zacharias is the man he is, and John Piper is the man he is. The rest of us- yours truly certainly included- get to decide every day what kind of persons we want to be. If we have been blessed to use this medium to some influence, then it’s a question of stewardship, character, maturity and the ability to resist the constant temptation to personalize.

In other words, my brother (and being able to call one another “brother” is a crucial part of this for me,) write every word you’ve ever written. We need your voice, even though I disagree with you occasionally (but not nearly as much as you or others think.) But can we find a way to take my name off those headlines? It’s not about me and you, and we both know it.

(Now here’s wishing a great day to all of you forwarding this post along. Keep up the good work.)

Occasionally, I’m criticized for my use of the acronym “TR” as shorthand for “Truly Reformed.” I often use this term in a critical way, and that’s brought regular criticism that the term is insulting.

Why do I use the term “TR?”

1) I didn’t invent the term “truly reformed.” “Truly Reformed” is a term that comes from inter-Presbyterian discussions of matters such as the regulative principle of worship or Psalms-only singing. You would hear the term “truly reformed” applied to differentiate between those with a very conservative view of reformed issues as contrasted with the broader evangelical identifications of other reformed groups. The term might come up in a discussion between strict members of the OPC and more evangelically comfortable members of the PCA.

I’m not aware of any insulting connotation in this use of the term “truly reformed.” I can understand where it seems that the use of the term is pointing out the sense in which one group believes they are true and right, but since that is exactly the case, there is no insult present.

2) I became familiar with Calvinism in the early 1980’s. My teachers were audio tapes, and many of them were from Reformed Baptists like Al Martin. Today, the Reformed Baptist movement is more diverse, but in the days that I was learning the TULIP, the difference was between reformation minded Southern Baptists in the Founder’s conference, Sovereign Grace Baptists (often of an NCT variety,) and Reformed Baptists of the Al Martin flavor. Anyone who knows the distinctions that I am mentioning will know EXACTLY why I say that the Al Martin variety were….”Truly Reformed” in their self-perception and in their approach to other kinds of reformation Christians.

I love Al Martin and I love my limited experience with Reformed Baptist churches of his side of the fence (and I know they aren’t flawless.) While I would call these folks “Truly Reformed” in their approach to, for example, insisting that other churches must have elders to be valid or in their Puritan approach to conversion, I have endless respect for their devotion to ongoing reformation.

3) When I use the term “TR,” I have in mind reformed persons who believe they, and not others, are the true practitioners of the reformed faith. In the blogosphere, one need only read the blogs of those who openly say that they, and not other reformed teachers, are presenting the reformation purely.

It puzzles me why “Truly Reformed” insults someone who believes that they are truer to the reformation than Luther or Calvin. Why is “Truly Reformed” insulting to a Baptist who believes that his way of doing reformed Christianity is “true” and a Presbyterian’s is “less true” and “less faithful?”

If the purpose of a blog is to judge other blogs, churches, ministries and preachers with the assumption that they are the custodians and practitioners of reformed Christianity and other evangelicals are not, what is the problem with “truly reformed?” I’ve never seen a group of people more convinced that they were the “true” “reformed” Christians. If the fault is my tone in using those words, that’s something else, but the words themselves cohere to reality.

4) There’s a never ending irony that Christians who see the Christian life primarily in terms of discernment, rejecting false doctrine, and refining the purity of reformed doctrine react so strongly to being labeled as “Truly Reformed.” The entire implicit and explicit assumption of being “Truly Reformed” is the energy that runs these criticisms of evangelicals, emergents and lesser reformed Christians. What is NOT “Truly Reformed” about these blogs? Do Apprising Ministries and Slice of Laodecia ever post without the assumption that they have the right of discernment and judgment via being “Truly Reformed.”

Here’s a recent description of the Boar’s Head Tavern from a well-known discernment blogger speaking to a BHT member. (The BHT is a group blog of 33 different individuals from almost as many different traditions.):

The neighborhoods of the blogosphere you inhabit are full of people who have renounced Calvinism and adopted epistemic skepticism as the cardinal principle that governs all their thought and doctrine; abandoned Rousas Rushdooney in favor of Stan Grenz; disavowed their Baptist beliefs and embraced a kind of neo-Puseyism instead; or moved away from being (supposedly) solidly Reformed to becoming harsh critics of practically everything distinctive about Protestant history and theology.

This isn’t being “Truly Reformed?”

5) A number of reformed bloggers use the term TR exactly as I do, to describe themselves and their fellow reformed Baptist leaning comrades.

I use the term “post-evangelical” to describe myself. I now see at least two discernment bloggers using it frequently about me, about emerging churches, etc., as a critical, negative label. Since, however, it is exactly how I see myself, not only am I not insulted, I often completely agree.

6) BHT podcast 29 inspired criticsim for saying that someone was a “Macarthur-type.” This was hailed as an insult on my part (and oddly, as a reference to just ONE blog out of the hundreds that identify with Macarthur.) Since I believe Dr. Macarthur represents very well a large portion of the current reformed Baptist resurgence, I completely fail to see how I was insulting someone. The rule seems to be that if I call you anything, it’s an insult. Does this work with “Piper-type” and “Sproul-type” as well?

I’m not sinless in my use of the term “TR,” but it’s not a mean or insulting term.

I’d be happy to answer questions about this term, but it seems entirely reasonable to me and very appropriate.