My friend from back in Iowa, Tim Larsen, wrote an email to to Bob in light of his comments about Zach (are you following this?). Here was his initial email to Bob:
Mr. Ryan -Usually I wouldn't speak up on something like this, but I felt compelled to email Tim and address some concerns that I had with his email, namely his use of insulting comments in response to an unbeliever. Though I commend his boldness, I fear he is doing more harm than good here. I would submit that comments like this from his email above are very problematic in terms of evangelism.
As a long-time diehard Tiger Woods fan, I never would have anticipated 36 hours ago that I would eventually be happy that Zach Johnson won the Masters. But after reading about your ignorant, pathetic, disgraceful comments today in regards to Zach Johnson, I now am. Even though you and people of your ilk shouldn't be dignified with this type of importance, I can now honestly say that I am glad Zach Johnson won the Masters because of people like Bob Ryan from the Boston Globe.
Earlier today, you referred to it as "unfortunate" that Zach Johnson chose to mention his faith following the Masters. What I find to be more unfortunate is that the self-appointed PC police (generally wanna-be elitists from the northeast) like yourself continually look down your nose at people of faith without even making a serious attempt to understand what motivates us. Zach Johnson had just experienced the greatest success of his life - winning the Masters - on the most important day of the year to a Christian - Easter. Why is it so hard for you to understand the emotion and meaning involved in that? Why is it so offensive to you when Zach Johnson says that his faith helped him keep his composure during an intense pressure situation? And why, most importantly, do you think that Zach Johnson has an obligation to keep his faith to himself? If you even care to understand the teachings of Christ, you would know that our obligation is quite the opposite, that our responsibility is actually to NOT keep matters of faith to ourselves.
People of your persuasion have spent the better part of 2 1/2 years wondering why a "simpleton" like George W. Bush beat John Kerry in the 2004 election. And now you are confused about Zach Johnson's statements following his round yesterday. All I can say is that there is a large segment of this country that you don't understand. To put it more bluntly, you are clueless. You and your fellow people from Massachusetts can continue to mock and deride simple, "ignorant" people of faith from "fly-over" country all you want, but we're going to continue to be here, and we're going to continue to have an influence, and we're not going to compromise our beliefs. So, from me to you, I would like to say that "unfortunate" is not what happened when Zach Johnson spoke yesterday. "Unfortunate" is something that happens virtually every time you open your mouth or put pen to paper. You aren't nearly as smart as you think you are, and you sure don't understand people of faith.
You might be surprised what you'd learn if you actually tried to look into Zach Johnson's soul and genuinely sought to understand what motivated him to say what he said. You may want to dismiss him as some crazy religious extremist. But believe me when I say that there are millions of others in this country who proudly believe exactly what Zach Johnson believes. Our beliefs are grounded in reason and historical fact and truth, not in myth and superstition. And we sure aren't going to be quiet just because Bob Ryan from the Boston Globe says we should. We answer to a much higher Being than you can even conceive.
Tim Larsen
“To put it more bluntly, you are clueless”.
"Unfortunate" is something that happens virtually every time you open your mouth or put pen to paper.”
“You aren't nearly as smart as you think you are”
“We answer to a much higher Being than you can even conceive”
His take is that evangelism was not his goal and that his comments were extremely appropriate in light of the fact that Bob is a "thickheaded" writer from the arrogant and post-Christian NE part of the country. He would say that we need to say sharp things like this to get the attention of guys like Bob.
What is your take? I would love to hear what you think. If you want to read my take you can go to Matt Reisetter's myspace.com blog and read the comments there. He has posted our whole email exchange. Some of you might find it very interesting. I think these are very important matters to think through and I would love your take if you want to give it.
11 comments:
As with most hot buttons, this one remains a bit...shall we say...messy. How does one manifest that Christ like tactic of being 'shrewd as a viper yet innocent as a dove.' Certainly this is no easy feat, much less in a day and age of dime store opinions and hasty clicking. My take is that VZ is right...boldness is a great thing, but (pardon the cliche), people don't care about what you know until then know about how much you care. May that never serve as a mantra for timidity, but instead by the battle cry of those willing to do the HARD WORK of communicating truth to non believers in love.
Z - Thanks for humbly seeking to correct a brother. It seems to me that the longer many people spend in the Christian "bubble", they tend to not realize how their "boldness" in proclaiming the truth comes off to the other side as another simple-minded, crazy Christian spouting "hate" speech. It also seems that many times people from opposite ends of the religious spectrum can completely speak past one another. On one level, they're talking about the same issue, but on another level, they whizz right past each other linguistically and ideologically.
I personally agree with both of them, not in some sort of postmodern mind-meld way, but in the sense that they each have something important to say. Bob says: "God didn't have anything to do with Zach Johnson playing the best 4 days of golf in the tournament." Absolutely correct! Tim says: "Zach found strength and composure as a result of the collision of 2 of the most important things in his life - his faith and his talent." Right on!
But I disagree with both of them as well. Bob, in fearing any discussion of religion in the realm of sports performance, even if it DID play a huge role in Zach's win. Tim, in the choice of words he chose to respond to Bob...and we don't need to go into that any further (Z, thanks for doing the hard work to Biblically support what many people are thinking!).
I've got work to get back to, but cheers to you, Z, for your humility AND your boldness!
GMaz
I agree with you. Jesus said the tell-tale mark of the Christian is that we would have love for one another. The mature and biblically loving response would have been to respectfully correct Bob without resorting to character impugning or 7th grade insults. It's admittedly harder to do, especially when passionate feelings are involved, and taking the high road in one's correspondence may require several revisions before sending. But ultimately, Tim's final line of his letter said it all: We answer to a higher being. It's true not only for Zach Johnson but true for *Tim* as well -- and therefore the ends can never justify the means.
To be fair, and for people to make the best assessment of the appropriateness of your dialogue with Tim, they need to see the whole thing, in my opinion.
They can do so by going to www.myspace.com/mattreisetter and clicking on the blog post titled "Zach Attack" (Zach, by the way, refers to Zach Johnson, not Zach Nielsen)
Zach,
Thanks for doing this. I hope that God would soften Tim's heart to receive your wise and faithful wounds (Prov. 27:6), and that he--and we--would learn what it means to "in everything . . . adorn the doctrine of God our Savior" (Titus 2:10). Knee-jerk, chest-thumping sophomoric swagger accomplishes little more than pumping up ourselves rather than pointing--with brokenhearted boldness--to the beauty of the gospel.
JT
I agree with the essence of what Taylor's saying, but I'd point out that some who saw David on the battlefield with the Philistines (such as his brothers who were pissed that he was sticking his nose into their business) may have accused his actions of resembling "knee-jerk, chest-pumping, sophomoric swagger".
That's a well written sentence, Taylor, you're a heck of a writer and a thinker, but I'm still not sure it means that harsh words are never appropriate. Maybe you're not suggesting that they aren't...
Matt,
What do you mean by "harsh"?
I didn't say this to Tim, but I'll say it here. The model for our evangelism of others is God's evangelism (literally, gospeling) of us. How did God treat us when we were dead in trespasses and sins? Harshness for God in that situation is hell. If you believe, then you know that God has called you gracious and only by his mercy. Thus, as we are created in his image we are to do like wise. God pursues us out of the riches of his mercy, we do the same of those who are far from him.
Having an arrogant tone in dealing with unbelievers kind of reminds me of the unmerciful servant from Matt 18:21-34. It fails to recognize that God was not arrogant with you, thus we can't be that way with others and look down on them in our speech with them. What do we expect them to do?
I still don't get why Tim would get angry with Bob. Why would Tim or I or anyone expect any different from an unbelieving world! Ponder how the disciples reacted when they were persectuted severly in the book of Acts. They didn't write emails that claimed that the Pharisees were "clueless". They rejoiced that they were worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus! This seems to be the appropriate tone in dealing with a lost world. Contend for the truth with humility and grace and then take the suffering that comes, not with anger, but joy as we share in the sufferings of Christ (Col 2)!
Zach,
This is one of those things we will constantly be dealing with for the rest of our lives. As long as religious beliefs stand at the center of our lives, people will yell at each other about them.
There are a number of issues and problems I see. Let me comment on two:
1. Hermeneutics--this is a prime case where your post on hermeneutics is a valuable one. As I see it, neither Tim nor Bob considered (or cared it seems) about WHAT the other person had to say and WHY they were saying it. As a result, they were basically just barking their positions at one another, with little if any positive movement. I wonder what Tim wanted to accomplish, and what he honestly thought he was accomplishing. Tim wrote: "I had no particular ambition of influencing his viewpoint. I believe the probability of his viewpoint changing is very low. Even before my exchange with him, I believed that he was a stubborn, narrow-minded nominal Catholic from the northeast. While God can do whatever He wants to do, I am not particularly optimistic about my ability to change Bob Ryan's mind. That being said, it's worth a try." In light of this, what is Tim's reason for all of this? It seems that the whole discussion which Tim began started off on a bad note and there was not any intention for progress.
2. Use of scripture vs. pop-culture Christianity paraphrasing. On this, Zach, I think that you are on much more solid ground (we can disagree about interpretive issues some other time). I did not see Tim giving any solid scriptural reasons for the way he went about saying what he said, or for the content of what he said. Here is an example: "When it comes to influencing others, there is a time for gentle words, and there is a time for righteous anger and confrontation. My view is that the most effective approach depends largely on the personality of the person involved." What is the Biblical warrant for this? I am not saying whether there is or is not one, but this statement seems to stand behind Tim's method, and as a Christian, he should have scripture behind this. If he is interested in pleasing an "audience of one" then "his Tim's) view" should not be the one dictating his actions.
In the whole exchange there is a lot of assuming, misunderstanding, bickering, and very little Biblical witness to Christ. Zach, you agree with Tim's purpose, but not his method. Reading his letters, I find myself wondering what his purpose really was. I can not assume, but based on what he wrote himself it was not to influence or win Bob, or even to encourage Bob to better understand Christianity, or even Tim's own viewpoint. So, what good purpose was there? And how is it defended Biblically?
Reisetter writes: I'm still not sure it means that harsh words are never appropriate.
I didn't, and wouldn't, claim that "harsh words are never appropriate." In fact, I think one could argue that my comment itself was a form of harshness.
I think if we try to put things into the black-and-white categories of "gentleness" and "harshness." I believe the OT prophets, Jesus, Paul, etc often used tough words that could be considered harsh. To me, the question is whether the words are fitting and whether or not the underlying attitude is one of gospel-centered humility.
The idea of fittingness is the most difficult to explain. I think it's more "caught" than "taught." It doesn't lend itself well to "rules" and "principles" and "checklists."
I think gospel-centered humility is a bit more objective. Have we been gripped by the depth of the gospel? Do we truly comprehend where we would be apart from mercy? If I were Tim's friend (I don't know him)I think I'd be pretty concerned about his flippancy toward correction and submission to God-appointed leaders.
Well, those are a few thoughts.
Blessings, Matt.
JT
I just saw this today on the DG website. Perhaps it will be helpful. It says what I was trying to say (except, of course, it says it better!).
Love shapes how to speak the truth.
"Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ" (Ephesians 4:15). There is an unloving way to speak the truth. That kind of truth-speaking we should repudiate. But there is a way to speak the truth in love, and that we should seek. It is not always a soft way to speak, or Jesus would have to be accused of lack of love in dealing with some folks in the Gospels. But it does ask about what is the most helpful thing to say when everything is considered. Sometimes what would have been a hard word to one group is a needed act of love to another group, and not a wrong to the group addressed. But in general, love shapes truth into words and ways that are patient and gentle (2 Timothy 2:24-25).
A clarification:
I said: "In the whole exchange there is a lot of assuming, misunderstanding, bickering, and very little Biblical witness to Christ."
I was referring to the exchange between Tim and Bob.
Hope there was no misunderstanding.
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