All The Signs You Need

No.225: August 23, 2024

Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This is a paid subscription feature with a preview before the paywall. Please consider subscribing to enjoy this weekly missive along with an occasional “Off The Shelf” feature about books, a frequent Pipe & Dram feature of little monologues/conversations in my study, and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.

Dear Friends,

I received a couple of pieces of fan mail this week, and I hope it will not be self-indulgent to share a bit about it with you. One was somewhat irritated with me, and the other was the nicest letter anyone’s ever sent me. Batting .500 gets you your own personal wing built on to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, so I take it all in stride.

The first was from a longtime reader, who had two bones to pick with me. First, he has trouble taking me seriously regarding my view of Megan Basham’s book, Shepherds For Sale, because I haven’t read it. Second, he laments that I appear to approve of the nastiness of Kevin Williamson’s review of the book (that’s the review I called “not nice”—it wasn’t!). Those are both fair enough and understandable concerns, and I responded to them in reverse order:

If you read the comments, I do mention that I didn’t like KDW’s nastiness. Should’ve put that in the body, of course, but not everything occurs to one at the time. The ‘point’ is simply to note a double-standard; and, yes, we should all be held to the higher, single standard.

As for reading the book, I’ll quote Irenaeus: ‘It is not needful that one should drink up the ocean who wishes to learn that its water is salt.’ I have followed Megan’s work pretty closely for years (those are my ‘good faith’ bona fides), and every dynamic her critics describe (and document) are EXACTLY the dynamics I have lamented (I mean, genuinely lamented) for years. Her model is the hermeneutic of suspicion for anyone outside her tribe; to play fast and loose with people’s words, spin them in the most uncharitable ways she can, and to project conspiracies where there are plenty of alternative explanations. Her relentless (mis)treatment of Tim Keller alone, for just one example, just disqualifies her in my mind as a reliable person. Maybe she was incapable of understanding his magnificent 40,000-word analysis of Critical Theory; but she certainly pretended she was, and yet couldn’t have been further from the mark.*

I am not judging a book by the cover. I am judging the book by its author, with whom I’ve had plenty of experience. Some authors lose the benefit of the doubt; and then, when such doubts are subsequently confirmed by people clearly demonstrating instances of misquoting and twisting people’s words, why in the world would I be obligated to read the book myself? And her stubborn insistence that, as far as I can tell, there are NO ERRORS anywhere in her book and anyone who says so is part of ‘Big Eva’s’ conspiracy to keep people from reading the book, tells me what I need to know. She is self-deceived and this is not in good faith.

A sip tells me it is salt. There are almost certainly a lot of bad actors in evangelicalism. I would not trust Megan Basham to tell me about them.

* As I recall. The idea that Keller was “woke” because of Critical Race Theory popped quickly into mind, but a better example would be her constant insinuation that Keller was soft on LGBTQ issues. Keller played a major role in producing the PCA’s outstanding committee report on human sexuality. On Twitter someone once pointed her to that document as a true articulation of his views—because he claimed it as a true articulation of his views. She then complained that she couldn’t really discern his views because it was the work of a committee and she couldn’t tell how much was his contribution. You see, there’s no winning if she’s pegged you as a “Shepherd For Sale.” He just had to have been lying when he signed his name to that document. Just like Karen Swallow Prior just had to have been dishonest when she said she wasn’t drawing a “moral equivalence” between masking and opposing abortion and Gavin Ortlund had to have been lying when he clearly said that what you think about climate change isn’t a gospel issue. People really mean the opposite of what they say because, well, we all know they are the bad guys and of course they would say that because they are hiding the truth and covering their tracks. This is, lamentably, her well-oiled-and-polished modus operandi.

I hope that helps clarify for anyone else wondering about those two things.

---

Earlier in the week I received a message—more like a letter—from a new(er) reader. I won’t post it here, but I’d like to summarize because it struck me as really amazing. He first became aware of my writing when he was in high school ten years ago and his youth pastor talked to the kids about the movie, Noah. If you recall, my review of that film was picked up by Breitbart and Drudge Report and a host of other media outlets and blasted all over the planet. It was a huge controversy for a couple of weeks, and it was hard not to notice that the box office numbers for Noah utterly collapsed between my review on Monday after opening weekend and the following weekend. Looking at the sheer numbers and reach of that review, I did not (and do not) believe those to be unrelated phenomena.

Anyway, this young man later had a college assignment to write about Ridley Scott’s movie, Gods & Kings, a retelling of the Exodus story. He wondered if I had reviewed that film. I had. (I apologize if your browser says my other website is “unsafe.” It isn’t, but there’s a backend DNS error somewhere that I haven’t had the ability to figure out. I’m working on it). The review really helped him out on the paper.

I think those are literally the only two movie reviews I’ve done in the past decade. And both proved helpful. He then told me that when he felt a desire to maybe, perhaps read Harry Potter, he found my various writings about it over the years and they convinced him to give it a try. And, his words: “mind blown.” “Best novels I’ve ever read.” Well, yes. Of course. That’s what I keep telling everybody, but they never really seem to believe me. I replied that I was mostly amazed that “I’d convinced a skeptic to read Harry Potter.” And then, at what I take to be something of a low point in his life, he took up my recommendation to read Robert Galbraith’s (i.e., JK Rowling) Cormoran Strike detective series, and it was a bit of a lifeline. He read all seven and is eagerly awaiting (as am I) the eighth. [Note: please read all the fine print caveats I wrote about that series here.]

He then encouraged me that even when it seems like I am writing words and sending them out into the black hole of cyberspace, there is somebody somewhere for whom my words have an impact. He told me of a newfound love of literature and reading and thinking with a Christian worldview. I had a lot of thoughts, about God’s providence, his calling, his mysterious workings, and so forth. But the main one was:

I guess I can’t quit just yet.

---

A new study shows that the Shroud of Turin linen dates all the way back to the first century! It’s the latest news in a centuries’ long debate over its authenticity.