Play nice!

Well, ain’t we got fun! Ever since this annotated Catechism became a matter of concern, beginning last week with a layman’s Tweet about what’s in it, the sparks have been flying. To be clear, we didn’t enter the fray to make things worse, and, frankly, I think they’re being handled well since we and a host of others with similar concerns brought it up.

But now it seems there’s, er, mud being flung about in a rather unsavory fashion. As it happens, for our part we take great pleasure in being falsely accused and men revile us, and persecute us, and say all manner of evil against us falsely, for Christ’s sake. In fact, we rejoice and are exceeding glad. We weren’t quite linked with “a white nationalist and misogynist mob” now being blamed on social media for the action of the synodical President when he took down the book for further review, because, well, we’re not anonymous. But we did participate in supporting the cause of having the book halted, so, yeah, in a way.

But we have no desire to return the favor. And neither should you, whoever you are. These are matters of theological concern, important matters for the church. No one, as far as we can tell, is out to get anyone. We just want the church to be the best it can be.

So while we have on the one hand made it clear that theology belongs in the trenches, not in the ivoried halls of the experts, we also wish on the other hand to say it ought to be handled by cooler heads.

The world’s mammoth cancel culture, after all, has no use for cooler heads. As we all know, they like to scream and shout and be riotous and unwilling to talk. That’s no secret. But we in the church know better than that, don’t we?

So, a reminder: play nice!