[Vision2020] Sitler, Wilson, and Pooh Bear

[Michael]

Vision Friends:

 

Writing is a bit hard on the road with four little kids (understatement!);
so I don't hope to accomplish much for now, even though it is true that I'm
finding my name out in public a bit more than I would like.   For now I
wanted to offer some important clarifications to my involvement in this
issue.  

 

First, the Sitler issue never has been nor is it now something I have wanted
to be involved with.  Although I have been tempted to cease all blogging
many times now, for various reasons I continue to plug away at trying to
analyze, and at times unmask, what I see as some unusual corruptions at
Christ Church; this has been a difficult process of going from a loyal
Wilson defender to a public critic, and I still feel like I'm in process.
My primary concerns have been with respect to the 'serrated edge,' a
developing 'enemy theology,' and what I call Wilson's 'sociology of
violence.'  The problem of cult of personalities and closed communities is
also of interest. The Sitler issue does not sit very snuggly in these
categories, and I have been-probably to a great fault-very apathetic to it.
I remain apathetic to it in many respects. However, after a long bit of
encouraging and arguing from a friend of mine, and after getting notice that
I had many respectable people with the same encouragement, I went ahead and
forwarded the public announcement. Even after I did, I was asking people I
trust if they thought it was the right thing to do, and I received no thumbs
down.   I forwarded the public announcement along with trepidation, and I
actually had little desire to make this some sort of political attack
against Doug Wilson.  I do desire to continue to unmask the various levels
of corruption at Christ Church, but if you haven't noticed, most
nonChristians find much on my Blog a bit boring.  I'm not into this politics
stuff, nor am I interested in bashing Wilson with anything I find on the
ground.  In fact, I have been forced to actively defend Wilson and Christ
Church on occasion off line because of my status of public critic.  

 

What has followed my posting of this announcement has simply grieved me.  I
deplore the undisciplined and ungodly use of this information to spew
bitterness and fabricate half truths. The person who wrote the announcement
has condemned the handling of it by some others, to the point of possibly
loosing a friend over it.  And I have been saddened to see the way both
sides of this 'dispute' have handled the topic of "victims."  In fact, I
almost feel  like I'm staring into a wasteland of chaos as I watch the posts
role in.  This is just further illumination of what I see as the continuance
of a 'sociology of violence.'  Are all the claims made about Wilson just?
Of course not.  Are all of them true? No way.  What I feel in my heart seems
so simple to me that I would not have imagined that anyone would entertain
the idea of lumping me in with those people who will pick up any stick to do
the work once the 'enemy' is located.  In some ways I wish I never posted
this announcement, thus freeing my name from the train wreck that was going
to result once this information got out-which was inevitable.  Perhaps I was
unwise in posting this.  It would seem so looking at what Christ Church has
done with my posting of this announcement.  Many of you not following some
aspects of this might not realize the fact that Wilson and others at Christ
Church have rhetorically associated me with the wildest responses to all
this and have gotten the suspicion off the ground that my posting the
announcement makes me just as sick as a child molester.  I have now been
labeled as totally immoral and psychologically unstable.  This is in fact
the primary response of Wilson and Christ Church to the revealing of this
information: those who offered the information are attacked first, other
questions are partially addressed secondarily. 

 

So this is where I see myself in this issue.  My blog was the conduit of
revealing this information.  My name is attached to the origination, and
that is all.  Wilson has therefore made me the whipping boy as this issue
heats up.  This kind of slanderous attack by Wilson is fully in line with
the purpose of my web site; Wilson's response to this issue is my primary
concern: the deceitful rhetoric; the maligning of people instead of dealing
with the evidence and issues directly; abusing his position through
intimidation and manipulation, etc.  Apparently, many do not share this
concern as much, but I believe they should; I believe that this is really
getting more at the heart of the problems at Christ Church.  Do I think that
there was pastoral misconduct in how the Sitler case was handled? From
everything I can tell so far, it would seem so; but I'm reading this off the
nature of Wilson's very troubling response to this more so than the actual
evidence we yet have of what had really transpired.  I wish I could just
correct the announcement and say that it is true that the congregation was
sufficiently notified, but I still cannot.  One of the reasons for this is
the fact that myself and many other kirkers were indeed not successfully
notified at all.  Does this reveal aspects of the corruption at Christ
Church?  I would think so.  But this does not mean that there was some kind
of big sex scandal to go on the front page of the newspaper.  I could be
wrong; there could be more to this than I know.  But I currently have little
reason to believe this and I have no intentions of being a part of the next
big politicized attack on Doug Wilson or Christ Church.  So few find it
interesting that Wilson is currently attacking the person who posted the
information on Sitler more so than providing basic information; I think this
highlights how at odds I just might be with this current 'controversy'.
Some of you will thank me for the info and then tip your hat once the Kirk
has lynched me.  A good reason to be careful on all fronts it seems to me.  

 

Finally, I want to also comment on my thoughts about Sitler.  I agree more
with Wilson and Christ Church than others who have so far commented to
this-although I do not wish to suggest a great coherence between this and
their prior theonomic stances and attitudes.  We are all sinners, and it is
ultimately not by my choosing that I'm Metzler and not Sitler.  The entire
world is sick and full of perversion.  I am thankful for the American Legal
Tradition and its careful balancing between protection from harm and the
disciplining of vengeance. The law and the courts are not God, nor do they
perfectly reflect ultimate justice.  The way some of the talk has gone about
the death penalty and disgust reveal hearts that need to know the God who
became man and died.  

 

I think I rambled a bit, but if you are still reading: Thanks for listening;
I hope this at least clarifies my take on all this.  

 

Michael Metzler

 

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