Spanky Sproul 3: Rationality Is NOT in the Mix

[Banyan]

44 minutes ago, MamaJunebug said:

I’m  pretty much past my “theology geek” phase but I’m going over there just for fun. Hoping the reviewer has done the turgid reading for us. Have never had patience for overblown pomposity and certainly won’t attempt to develop any now. 

It looks to be targeted a bit more for the theology geeks, which I'm not, but I can still figure it out without much trouble. Here's the Readers Digest version:

• God is wrathful. God is some other stuff too but his most significant character trait is wrath.
• God's wrath is "glorious" and "beautiful."
• Prior to creation God had nothing he could demonstrate the glory and beauty of his wrath on.
• God creates the world to have something he could pour out his wrath on.
• Problem... God creates the world good. Nothing there is worthy of pouring out his wrath on.
• God needs sin to take out his wrath on, but none exists anywhere.
• God creates sin.
• No one sins, not even Satan, because their inclinations are only for good.
• God changes the inclinations of man and even Satan to desire to do sin.
• Their inclinations to sin are so powerful they really have no choice in the matter.
• Adam and Eve and Satan fall into sin.
• God gets to pour out his wrath on everyone and send them to eternal blazes.
• This gives God "glory."
• We should all "jump up and down" rejoicing when God sends sinners to hell.

Summation-- God made everything good but then decided to f**k it all up.

[MamaJunebug]

@Banyan, thank you for the synopsis. That is some messed-up stuff. 

Ill be interested in how folks pick this apart. 

[stylites]

7 hours ago, Banyan said:

It looks to be targeted a bit more for the theology geeks, which I'm not, but I can still figure it out without much trouble. Here's the Readers Digest version:

• God is wrathful. God is some other stuff too but his most significant character trait is wrath.
• God's wrath is "glorious" and "beautiful."
• Prior to creation God had nothing he could demonstrate the glory and beauty of his wrath on.
• God creates the world to have something he could pour out his wrath on.
• Problem... God creates the world good. Nothing there is worthy of pouring out his wrath on.
• God needs sin to take out his wrath on, but none exists anywhere.
• God creates sin.
• No one sins, not even Satan, because their inclinations are only for good.
• God changes the inclinations of man and even Satan to desire to do sin.
• Their inclinations to sin are so powerful they really have no choice in the matter.
• Adam and Eve and Satan fall into sin.
• God gets to pour out his wrath on everyone and send them to eternal blazes.
• This gives God "glory."
• We should all "jump up and down" rejoicing when God sends sinners to hell.

Summation-- God made everything good but then decided to f**k it all up.

It’s a very negative energy presentation of God, where the game appears to be to describe God in as horrible a way as possible and then glory in that horribleness.

”Don’t like it that God hates you ? Wuss!”

i think Luther has it right when he labelled this kind of thing a “theology of glory”

[LydiaAnn]

18 hours ago, ophelia said:

THIS! Life must be so hard for the little boys right now and I feel like they are really lost in this whole mess. They have been through a lot and it must be so hard for them to process all the things that happened to them in the last years.

..and the daughter in the home, Denise’s daughter. 

[AnnaSofia]

Maili has written some beautiful (and very sad) pieces about dealing with the loss of her mom, and her sister, Shannon.

https://www.mailiailsa.com/2018/05/09/3560-days

https://www.mailiailsa.com/2018/10/03/six-years

[CyborgKin]

On 6/3/2019 at 5:13 AM, older than allosaurs said:

Per Facebook he works for RC Sproul Jr. Ministries and he spent this morning teaching "How to Read the Bible" at his new church.

"A is for Adam, God made him from dust..."

[DomWackTroll]

45 minutes ago, CyborgKin said:

"How to Read the Bible"

Be sure to bite your thumb and softly chuckle as you read it. Trust me, it screams "deep thoughts." 

 

[MamaJunebug]

1 hour ago, AnnaSofia said:

Maili has written some beautiful (and very sad) pieces about dealing with the loss of her mom, and her sister, Shannon.

https://www.mailiailsa.com/2018/05/09/3560-days

https://www.mailiailsa.com/2018/10/03/six-years

Crikey.

That child wasn’t even 20 when she wrote those. What a soul. What heart. She appears to have taken after her mom, rest her soul. 

What eloquence, so simply stated and so incredibly perceptive, candid, strong. 

The photo of her and her mom. To think of that woman being slapped around by her supposed loving protector. 

Free Maili. And her brothers.  

[ophelia]

6 hours ago, LydiaAnn said:

..and the daughter in the home, Denise’s daughter. 

I had totally forgotten about her, thank you for the reminder!

Lisa and Spanky are some of the worst fundie parents we discuss here, IMHO. Fundie parents always mess up their children's life, sadly that is a given, but the way those two treat Maili and her brothers (and the married siblings that already left) really takes fucked up to another level. 

Does anybody know if the kids are still allowed to see family from their mothers side?

[mountaineer]

My heart absolutely cries for Maili. Erin Claire was in FLOTSH's home for a time but seems to have fled as soon as possible.  I think Maili is only around 16. I wonder if she'll get out of dodge when she's of age. I hope so.

[AnnaSofia]

Maili turned 17 in March. I think Erin Claire managed to bail for Darby's a few months shy of her 18th birthday? So there's hope for Maili, assuming that Darby, or one of the other adult sibs are willing and able to have her. Reilly and Donovan are much younger (9 and 13?) so unfortunately they've got awhile to go.

Edited June 7, 2019 by AnnaSofia

[LydiaAnn]

11 hours ago, ophelia said:

I had totally forgotten about her, thank you for the reminder!

Lisa and Spanky are some of the worst fundie parents we discuss here, IMHO. Fundie parents always mess up their children's life, sadly that is a given, but the way those two treat Maili and her brothers (and the married siblings that already left) really takes fucked up to another level. 

Does anybody know if the kids are still allowed to see family from their mothers side?

I believe the boys and Maili are cut off from Denise’s family outside the home. To include their siblings. It’s unfathomable and tragic. Just an awful situation for those three kids.

[older than allosaurs]

from RC Jr's latest blogpost, bolding and commentary mine.

Quote

You want to know what your problem is? You don’t love Jesus enough. I know this not because I know you, but because I know me. I’ve got the same problem. Wherever there is a sin problem, underneath it all, is this problem. Husbands don’t love their wives as Jesus loves the church, because husbands don’t love Jesus enough. Children disobey their parents, because they don’t love Jesus enough. [Children disobey their parents because they are children. Sometimes children disobey their parents because their parents are unreasonable.] Pastors soft pedal the Bible because they don’t love Jesus enough. And people hop from one church to another because they don’t love Jesus enough. [Ummm...how many denominations have you tried out lately?] Politicians grow power hungry because they don’t love Jesus enough. Rich people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Middle class people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Poor people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. [Is it greedy to want enough a place to sleep and enough to eat?] Find a sin and you will find there a heart that doesn’t love Jesus enough. Find Jesus and you will find the solution to our problem. Which is just what Jesus has promised will happen.

It is a good thing that evangelical Christians have wakened from their pietistic slumbers. It is good and proper that we should be about the business of making manifest the reign of Christ over all things. That He is Lord has effects that stray rather far from our hearts. [We sin against syntax because we don't love Jesus enough?] We fight the culture wars because they are simply a manifestation of the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. [We've got a  John Piper--aka batshit-- level metaphor right here] But the serpent is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. He took the biblical wisdom that argued that we ought to tend to our souls, and turned it into world-denying piety. And now he takes the biblical wisdom that argues that we must push for the crown rights of King Jesus, and turned it into worldliness, and a denial of the call to piety. Jesus on the other hand calls us to seek first two things, the kingdom of God, and His righteousness. ...

There's lots more, but I have stuff to do today.

[Howl]

Quote

We fight the culture wars because they are simply a manifestation of the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

Um, I hate to harp on technicalities, but I thought the guy had the seed....

Anyway, "seed of the serpent."
I think he's talking "seed of the serpent" because alliteration. 

[MamaJunebug]

7 hours ago, older than allosaurs said:

from RC Jr's latest blogpost, bolding and commentary mine.

There's lots more, but I have stuff to do today.

Thank you for spending some of your precious time looking closely at the drivel so I  didn’t have to. 

His repetitious fussing against pietism tells me two things:  he’s never going to apologize for marrying a multiple divorcee  and he’s finna drink again before this is all over  

 

[refugee]

13 hours ago, Howl said:

Um, I hate to harp on technicalities, but I thought the guy had the seed....

Anyway, "seed of the serpent."
I think he's talking "seed of the serpent" because alliteration. 

Hahah. But it’s actually from scripture, Genesis 3:15, where god promises to put enmity between the woman’s seed (which I have heard identified as Jesus, who did not technically come from a man’s seed) and the serpent’s seed.

[Howl]

46 minutes ago, refugee said:

Hahah. But it’s actually from scripture, Genesis 3:15, where god promises to put enmity between the woman’s seed (which I have heard identified as Jesus, who did not technically come from a man’s seed) and the serpent’s seed.

Ahhh, got it.  

[older than allosaurs]

RCJR has given a book promo interview to the Fort Wayne paper, and he must like the results because he linked them on his blog.   http://www.journalgazette.net/features/20190613/his-fathers-forgiveness

Here's an excerpt; bolding mine. Could some actual Christian here tell me if that bolded paragraph is how it works? You only have to repent to God, not to -- just picking a few at random -- your children, your mother, your new wife, your former parishioners? I do grasp the concept of God's grace and forgiveness, but that quote seems like it come from Ima Addict's  Big Golden Book of Denial.
 

Quote

 

Each chapter centers on conversations and things he learned from his father. The goal was to bring his father's teachings of the Gospel into real-life situations as examples, even if he himself was the person being corrected during those lessons. Sproul calls it “stewarding my failures to make good use of them.”

With help from his wife, he said, the process was therapeutic, cathartic and a blessing. They prayed together before and during the writing of the book.

“I wanted to be able to go to all those people out there whose sin they know and no one else knows and to be able to say to them: As our sin gets exposed and we repent of it, it is covered and gone,” he says.

“One of the hardships is that everybody who knew me before and knows that this all happened, they all felt like they have stock in me and that they were owed a personal apology, and they want that personal apology to be as intense as it might have been the day after. I repented a long time ago, and God forgave me, and I am not carrying that burden around anymore.”

 

 

 

[Howl]

Quote

I repented a long time ago, and God forgave me, and I am not carrying that burden around anymore [so everybody I've hurt can just fuck off].”

There seems to be a parenthetical "so fuck off" in there, so I've added it in. 

Alternately, Spanky could unburden himself from this hardship by saying something like, "I know my drinking, arrogance and cruelty caused pain to so many and for that I am truly and deeply sorry."  That's not really so hard and might also really impress God. 

Also, note how in this sentence,"One of the hardships is that everybody who knew me before and knows that this all happened" Spanky casts himself as a "poor me" victim.   Mind you, this is a man whose alcoholic oblivion allowed a pedophile to molest at least one of his children.  

 

Edited June 14, 2019 by Howl

[Palimpsest]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

There seems to be a parenthetical "so fuck off" in there, so I've added it in. 

Exactly.  I was holding back because I don't count as a Christian, actual or otherwise.  But nothing about that is Christian.

And there's another bit: 

Quote

One of the hardships is that everybody who knew me before and knows that this all happened, they all felt like they have stock in me and that they were owed a personal apology,

How dare they presume to have stock in me!  I'm only their son, father, self appointed mentor, etc. but I owe them nothing!  Not even an apology.

I am Precious, hear me roar.  God has forgiven me, so you don't have to, and you are just -- objects.  

Classic narcissistic behavior.  I want to thump him.  Hard.

[older than allosaurs]

1 hour ago, Palimpsest said:

I am Precious, hear me roar.  God has forgiven me, so you don't have to, and you are just -- objects.  

Classic narcissistic behavior.  I want to thump him.  Hard.

This must be what keeps me coming back to RCJR. I've got no real reason to be interested in him besides our theoretical commonality as adoptive parents, but I keep checking back in. I had a long marriage to a narcissist, and there is something eerie and fascinating about seeing the exact same character traits in two people who otherwise have pretty much zero in common except an enabling parent or two.

Any human expectation or accountability was an unconscionable burden to put on someone so smart and special as my former husband. The very concept first bewildered him and then pissed him off. Any way he behaved was the necessary way to behave. Anything he wanted to do was necessary for him to do. Any obstacle to his desires was an attack on his core. And no one was ever so victimized, not ever. Everything he did was intense and when he was angry (which was often) he could incinerate you with a look or a phrase. He wasn't physically abusive, but he was plenty scary.

Once when our kids were elementary age, I carefully picked a calm time and told him that the children were afraid of his anger and that actually got in the way of his getting his point across about behavior. They would be so freaked out by his manner that they couldn't focus on what they had or hadn't done.

Long pause, and then he said "I've been afraid of this." I thought he meant that he realized he was over the top and it was hard to admit. But I asked, and he said he had long feared he would be yet another man who was falsely accused of child abuse. I wish I could say that the kids and I were out the door right then, but it took a few more years. When we did split up he told the children, and my parents, and our friends, that I had abused him -- poor victim that he was -- daily throughout our marriage.

So RCJR makes me thank my lucky stars that's over, and he makes me feel terrible for his children.

 

[Howl]

2 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

I am Precious, hear me roar

Please let this be the title of the next Spanky thread....

[Antipatriarch]

@older than allosaurs thanks for sharing your story; hope you and your kids are OK.

I've learned a lot in the last few years about narcissists (and how horrible being in a marriage with them can be), reading Natalie Hoffman's blog ("Flying Free Now") and also Julie McMahon's story (as related on a "Naked Pastor" thread). Both these women have ties to Mpls./St. Paul where I live. Both were gaslighted and made to feel they were partly at fault by those in their communities. It's horrible.

[MamaJunebug]

Christian here. I’ll answer your query a little obliquely. 

Jesus said we have to forgive those who ask us for forgiveness or our Father in Heaven won’t forgive us when we ask Him for the same thing. 

Sounds to me like Jesus was expecting us to ask forgiveness of each other. Yet another way Spanky Sproul has got it all so, so wrong. 

[Sobeknofret]

He also misses the accountability issue. We are to be not just accountable to God for our actions, but to our fellow believers. Sproul is basically saying, "I'm accountable to God and I apologized to Him, so fuck everyone else I've hurt with my actions. I don't owe them anything." It doesn't work like that, and it *really* doesn't work like that if you're set in a leadership/pastoring position. You have to be accountable to the people you're purporting to lead, whether in a secular setting or a spiritual one. If you can't do that, then you're not fit to lead.

He makes me so angry. So childish and so spiritually unfit for leading a church.