This last bad argument is the worst uninvited guest of them all. This argument is so biblically baseless and logically vacuous that it was what motivated me to write this post in the first place. Even if you disagree with me on the previous four and will continue to brandish those terrible arguments with impunity, annoying everyone who crosses your digital path, please summon whatever shred of self-discipline you have in order to refrain from saying, “But God is obviously using him, so it must be OK!”

So I’ve noticed that pretty much whenever somebody in the evangelical world negatively critiques somebody else in the evangelical world, a few bad arguments are sure to follow from folks who seem to be allergic to any sort of sharpening confrontation. Whether these arguments rear their well-worn, played-out, ugly heads in their own follow-up blog post or just in the comment threads of the original critique, we’re sure to be paid a visit from these uninvited rhetorical guests.

What I hope to do is to alert us all to the existence of these five unwelcome leaps in logic, and hopefully see them turn up less and less as the blogosphere continues to go round and round. (Hear me now: I’m not saying any commenter is uninvited or unwelcome, just that there are some bad arguments that I could go without seeing for the rest of my life.)

The Call for Private Discussion

First, the “You-should-have-spoken-to-him-privately” argument wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to drop by. People wielding this argument just don’t seem to understand the nature of public discourse. You know: public statement, public evaluation, public discussion. Besides, one also wonders whether Clint was approached privately before such comments made their way to the combox. A word to the wise: if you think the only proper way for Christians to express disagreement with each other is to meet privately over coffee, a blog comment isn’t the place for you to express that disagreement.

The Accusation of Disunity and Division

Second, accusations of failing to foster Christian love and unity were sure to make an appearance. It’s always struck me as quite sad that when someone is touting bad doctrine and propagating error, it’s always the one who sounds the alarm that’s labeled as divisive. In the New Testament, a factious man was someone who advocated a different doctrine and didn’t agree with the sound words passed down from the Apostles (1Tim 6:3; 2Tim 1:13). The person who calls for the correction of error is not creating disunity, but only drawing attention to the disunity that already exists by virtue of the defection from sound teaching. And that warning is sent out as a call for a return to true unity, which is defined by a common commitment to the truth, not a common commitment to never discuss our disagreements in public.

The Reverence of Form over Content

Then there are the Tone Police, who care disproportionately less about what someone says than they do about how they say it. I gotta say, it took longer than I expected for them to drop by. I attribute that to having awesome readers and commenters here at The Cripplegate. But they eventually showed up just as they do elsewhere, and were sure to let us know that, regardless of the content, they didn’t like the tone of the post. The irony is rather astounding.The same people who get so distraught over this horrible, needless, uncharitable infighting, are themselves willing to engage in some uncharitable infighting—not over anything substantive, like one’s philosophy of ministry or the place of the miraculous gifts in the contemporary church—but over their tone. Form is revered over content.  I’ve decided that I don’t like the tone of commenters who don’t like other people’s tone. I’m hoping that’ll keep them busy for a while.

Read More