Preying on the Weak
I promise. This is not a blog about Douglas Wilson. It’s just that historical roots have a habit of bringing forth (or revealing) new fruits, nuts, and nut cases every now and then. My introduction of Pooh’s Think Part 2 has presented an unfortunate opportunity to address an old matter with the sort of bearishness better designed for Part 1. However, this is an opportunity to defend Douglas Wilson and New St. Andrew’s from the potential attacks of a real enemy within. The following is a letter I wrote this weekend to an old friend – very old I am sad to say – currently politicking in the Kirk. I have changed the name and any other information that would easily reveal his identity. I have not yet received a reply, but I do not plan to follow this issue beyond this post. Hopefully, the old historical roots will hibernate for a while.
_____________________
Mr. Jenkins,
After I sent you a note to let you know that Pooh’s Think, Part 2 was up and running with comments, you offered a startling reply. Am I surprised? Well, on one level, of course. This is shocking. You have known me for 15 years and were a ######, a school mate, business partner, and so on. Why do the strangest and most hurtful attacks come from precisely those who know better and those who have best access to alternative methods? But in another sense, I am not surprised. This is almost to be expected. Shocking things from the Kirk towards me and my family are no longer, well, shocking. There is a bizarre twist this time around, though. You write from within the Kirk, but as an enemy to the Kirk – the real kind, no ‘kill pooh’ kind of fairy tales here. In what follows, I am afraid I will take some uncharitable liberties in my tone, since I have finally lost my patience with your political brutality against me and the Kirk and Douglas Wilson.
I will remind you of the full content of your reply later on in this letter to you. I want to begin by pointing out what is perhaps the most, should I say, religious rhetoric you were able to muster against an old, faithful friend. After almost three years of silence, you now want to know if “who” I am is either a close friend and business partner or someone who simply “went off the deep end”, both possible identities landing on polar extremes, and from your view, mutually exclusive. And as if that was not enough slash and salt, you also admit, albeit implicitly, that you have in fact intentionally shunned me and my family over the last three years. What one does not know does not hurt them and so you wanted to make sure that I was in the know. I have been up to this moment someone “off the deep end” and therefore someone you know you would not work with, share your life with, or have your family get to know. Being off the deep end must be a pretty serious thing. I am not surprised. When this sort of thing comes up in the Kirk with respect to me, it is rarely a subtle reflection, but rather more along the lines of a primal grunt, vaguely implying crazy, insane, mad, deluded, lost it, vile, deceitful, slanderous, mutinous, patricide, creepy, sucking chest wound, victim of father hunger and so on.
Mr. Jenkins, I believe you are wrong in what you have done with me and my family, but I am happy that you have at least agreed to it in writing. It seems prudent to remind you of the historical facts about me, you, and the Kirk before commenting further on your letter to me.
Just a number of months previous to the beginning of Pooh’s Think, Part 1, you were, in essence, bad-mouthing New St. Andrews and Douglas Wilson. You told me I was ahead of the game, in comparison to the guys in Moscow. But there was a context to this praise. You were seeking to bring me into a “secret” group that would plan a New St. Andrew’s on the East Coast. This new institution would need to be established in a subversive way. It needed the resources of New St. Andrew’s West but might not receive the blessing and help from Douglas Wilson directly without careful political maneuvering.
On March 22, 2005, I wrote to Doug Jones, Peter Leithart, and Douglas Wilson, as well as copying to you:
A friend of mine is in serious planning for a Christian liberal arts college-like experiment on the east coast. We’ve been conversing, and I’ve attempted to share my own vision in order to help shape the direction of whatever might come to be. Below is part of that vision.
In an attempt at bringing me into your ‘inner circle’ while excluding Douglas Wilson, you responded with an email only to me:
. . . we need to play our cards ‘close to the chest’. There are a number of ways that this project can go astray and I do NOT want certain individuals to know what we are doing until they can do nothing about it. . . . . Before we unveil our intentions, we need to make sure everyone within the ‘inner circle’ is on the same sheet of music. This inner circle includes [Doug] Jones, you, #####, myself, and #### (my #### buddy). You need to think of this as a de-facto school or elder board. There can be discussions outside of the board but they must be limited and they must always tow the party line. Soul-searching must stay within the family.
You may not see the wisdom of this course but I can assure you that it will pay off. I view this project as high warfare. I am not interested in taking prisoners or sparing the weak. I intend to kill and slay and destroy and drive the enemy back to the very gates of hell. But one of the main ways that an army can be weakened in their power is by not being unified on their vision or by unveiling their intentions to the enemy (including the spies within their own camp).
This is the brainstorming phase, so your ideas are very appropriate and I’m glad that you are talking to Jones and Leithart about this. I do ask that you tell them to please keep it under wraps. The worst thing that could happen is that all of Moscow hears of this. Please don’t think I’m paranoid. I just don’t want my prey to get away.
What has followed this deranged note from you has demonstrated to me that your ‘inner circle’ was little more than a psychological method of manipulation, well described by C.S. Lewis in his essay The Inner Ring: “Of all the passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skilful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
Soon after this note, when I let you know I mentioned some concerns you shared about the direction of New St. Andrew’s to Douglas Wilson (I was mentoring with him at the time), you responded in a harsh way, as if I had committed mutiny or revealed some kind of patented technology. You even threatened me with expulsion from the inner ring. On March 26, 2005 you wrote:
I cannot deny that I am very sad to hear about what you said to Doug Wilson yesterday, in reference to me. . . . My discussions with you (in private), about the strengths and weaknesses of NSA, had a much greater goal – the hopes of someday reproducing and improving their efforts on the East Coast. I fear that these efforts have been undermined by your indiscretion. Yes, I do want you to go back to Doug and explain that my comments were not intended to undermine any of the work they have done. . . .For the near future, I think we should table any future discussions about NSA East. You and I have much work to do before we can ever be equipped to truly pursue such an effort. And, in hindsight, it was probably ill advised of me to enter into this discussion with you at such an early stage.
I wrote a lengthy letter to you in response to this bizarre reaction, including the following:
I was already very surprised that you were so concerned about my bringing up the idea of a NSA sort of thing; I have always been very transparent and open with the men here and I did not want to think that what I was discussing with you was something that needed to be kept from them. . . . . Also, I want to remind you that some of your comments about NSA have been extremely derogatory and I have gone on record defending NSA while at the same time agreeing with some of your assessment. I am not happy with the fact that this now somehow gets covered up. My ginger comments about you were actually very guarded and I attempted to not reveal much about what I knew about your criticism.
I then offered what I now see as a prophetic insight to what was going on:
I can not help but see this last email from you as primarily the result of politically motivated bitterness, a worry about what Wilson knows (independent of any evaluation of my own conduct), and a re-evaluation of what my political worth is to you in your endeavors.
This is key: a re-evaluation of my political worth to you in your endeavors.
My last sentence of the letter reaffirmed my loyalty to both sanity and the Kirk:
. . . if you want me to give myself to something right now, then I want to reserve the right to bring it up with Wilson. I don’t see any reason to put myself under a small visionary group out east more so than I am currently putting myself under Wilson and the Greyfriars program.
So your first round of political ‘warfare’ did not work out for you so well, caught, as you were, with your pants half way down. Your approach from here would be more shrewd and guarded. Still well within your manipulative clasp, you continued to bleed me of time on a large ever morphing business-planning venture that you led me on to think was backed by a very interested investor; as it turned out, this was not really the truth. And you continued to do your best to keep me a political asset within the Kirk. You apologized for threatening me with the status of outsider to your inner ring and launched plan B:
But I do have some very important reasons why I don’t want to unveil everything we are doing. Some of which I haven’t had time to explain to you, but I ask you to trust me. Of course (in our discussions) I have been very critical of some of NSA’s recent decisions. I have not made those comments to anyone else. My assumption was that you are one of the only ones who truly appreciate what NSA represents. . . . . But here’s the problem with going to Doug (right now) about some of these concerns. We have no ‘gravitas’. We must earn the right to ask him certain questions and make certain criticisms to him. When we’ve put 5 more years of effort into this thing, have been successful at a number of different levels, are well on the way to raising our kids well, then we might be able to approach Wilson with a few (very respectful) questions . . . That is why I have never talked to Wilson about these things.
Now that your original game was up, you completely changed your story. This is called lying. I will spell it out so that there is no uncertainty about this fact. You were originally distraught that I had simply emailed Douglas Wilson about the fact that I had been talking to someone about the mere idea of a New St. Andrew’s East. This email was sent to Douglas Wilson, Douglas Jones, and Peter Leithart. I have already quoted your response above. But as a reminder, you opened with the imperative: ”I do NOT want certain individuals to know what we are doing until they can do nothing about it.” I remind you further that at the end of the email, after rambling about killing weak prey and not sparing enemies, you said that it was fine to talk to Jones and Leithart. The logic here is pretty straight forward. Certain individuals = Douglas Wilson.
So, after I admonished you for your bizarre behavior, after you apologized, and after I explained that I would currently discuss any life career plans with Douglas Wilson, you now state that the reason you did not want to discuss these issues with Douglas Wilson – Jones and Leithart were just fine discussion partners – was because you and me were not worthy to even ask respectful questions of Wilson on the topic of education. This is such a bizarre idea that it looks like you were trying to make sure I knew you were lying, like some kind of code to use while I was behind enemy lines. I was a Credenda writer, Christ Church member, Greyfriar student, and I had a one on one mentorship with Douglas Wilson that affording me the opportunity to argue about education (not that this was a very bi-directional process by then). You were scared to death that I was going to infringe the cosmos’ eternal laws of social propriety and bring ill will from the gods on your cultural project by simply asking Douglas Wilson a respectful question about education? I know that you are not Lord, so I must now choose between Liar and Lunatic. It could, of course, be a combination of both.
Well before Pooh’s Think, when I started criticizing Wilson on his blog, you offered friendly advice to tone it down. Your reason for this was strictly based on Wilson’s authority and status as pastor and leader. Given your ##### background, and what I saw to be a very rigid ethical application (among other things), it was not difficult for me to go with the advice of others who thought what I was doing was good, right, and healthy. Andrea, my wife, had the same intuition about what was at that early time a fairly unique response to my more ginger challenges to Wilson.
I also explained to you early on that there was more to the situation than you knew, and some that you still do not know. And remarkably, you did in fact agree with my stated assessment of Wilson at that time: as you put it, “the root is not there.” In context, we were agreeing that Wilson was fundamentally flawed precisely where a pastor in power cannot be: arrogance and a lust for power. I have no other interpretation as to what it was we were comfortably agreeing to.
Once things were heating up and I realized that I could no longer stand with the Kirk and cover up her arrogance any longer, I sent you an email explaining that I should probably pursue more ecumenical paths, such as an M.A. in philosophy and mainline Christian education work. I asked for your thoughts on the matter, and on November 28th, 2005, just two weeks before Pooh’s Think launched, you replied with a sermon thundering from mount Sinai:
Humbly learn the wisdom of Leithhart, Wilson, Jones and (yes) even Atwood. Learn how to pastor a flock, care for the needy, deal with controversy (internal and external), mentor younger men, and serve on an elder board. There is much to be gained from them (even if it is learning what you don’t want to do). These are the things that will change the kingdom of God. . . . Humbly submit. Submit to your leadership. Learn at their feet. Do the hard groundwork for 10 years . . .
So here you are telling me to submit for ten years (I was already 32 with four children) to a system you thought was becoming growingly corrupt and to a man who you did not even trust with your own future plans on the East coast. There is only one explanation for this sanctimonious homily: I was on my way out of the Kirk, which meant you were losing one of your most valuable political assets. I was no good to you unless I had political connections in the Kirk.
After Pooh’s Think, Part 1, launched, you explained that you received counsel out East to not take sides and stay out of it; you intended to do just this. But you did more than this; you retreated in complete silence. Months later we spoke on the phone once again and had a friendly, argumentative discussion about a number of issue – some of which were discussed on Pooh’s Think and some which were not. You offered me no advice or counsel about my process of blogging at that time from my recollection; you had rather only reestablished that you were still committed to not taking ‘sides’ in what was by that time a bizarre social conflict. Given your jealous attempt at winning me over from the ‘West’ just a number of months before Pooh’s Think started, it was not difficult for me to find an explanation for how you were handling the issue.
And that was it. The insults and attacks grew, we were kicked out of Christ Church, we moved to California and I never heard a peep from you. There is really very little more to the relevant historical record. If you think otherwise, please enlighten me. You have always had only high regards for me, my abilities, character, work ethic, sincerity, and honesty.
Now, I have sent you a note about Pooh’s Think, part 2, and you say that you “look forward to talking to” me, but oddly, also note that you assumed there had been some form of reconciliation between me and “Christ Church (and Wilson).” I still wonder if you honestly thought there had been some form of reconciliation; I wonder if you were rather just making some point about your now obvious attitude. You are the only one to claim ownership of this assumption so far, and I have been back in communication with about 80 people since launching Part 2 two weeks ago. I was truly interested in knowing more about this assumption of reconciliation before I answered you one way or the other, and I was offering lighthearted rhetoric of the sort you are already familiar with from me. On March 3rd, 2009, I wrote:
Thanks for the note. I’m curious. You might assume there has been reconciliation. What might your assumption be in particular? How did this reconciliation come about? What is its nature and extent? Just trying to crawl up into that interesting, creative, assuming mind of yours.
As I understand it, the above is a sufficient summary of everything relevant that preceded the two serious paragraphs you offered in response. Here they are:
I ask because your website seemed to describe Christ church (and Wilson) in a positive way. This is much different than the way you described it before (in Pooh 1.0) So which is it? Do you not believe those things anymore? Is Wilson ‘evil’ like you told me over the phone? If not, then I would assume you have gone to Christ Church and reconciled with them. If you still think those things, then you are being disingenuous on your website (or, at the very least, speaking completely tongue in cheek.)
And, because of our past friendship and the friendship I still share with the leadership of Moscow, I want to know where everyone stands. Because someone, who I thought was one of my best friends, decided to ignore my advice, and I want to make sure I know who I am talking to. The guy who I wanted to work with and share my life with and have my family get to know, or the guy who went off the deep end. Either way, I’m not interested in chit-chatting or answering vague questions about ‘nature and extent’. I want you to play right up the middle with me. If you are unable to do that, that is fine. Just don’t email back.
I will now offer my immediate thoughts about these two paragraphs:
I do not recall saying that Wilson is “evil” over the phone; but perhaps I did. I thought I said it on the world wide web, actually. I do not understand what your point in ‘quoting’ me would be here. I was writing what I thought about Wilson almost every day for half a year for the entire world to see. I have always used subtle analysis on this issue of ‘evil,’ and the entire history of Pooh’s Think could be seen as my wrestling with what I was learning about Wilson – is he evil? Is this spiritual? Is there a natural explanation? Is he consciously lying? Does he really believe what he just said? Does he really want to maim me for the shear pleasure of it? Is this a universal mechanism?
If you followed Pooh’s Think at all from the time we were kicked out of Christ Church, you would have known this has been one of the primary topics of focus; this was so even after I stopped writing about Wilson much. And if you followed Pooh’s Think from its inception till the time we were kicked out of Christ Church, you would have known that I was not a critic of Christ Church, but rather a member of it. I was a critic of Douglas Wilson and some of the specific forms of arrogance coming from the Kirk.
Yet, here, you offer the most conveniently clunky reasoning possible: Part two was “positive” and Part one was “negative”. This issue is far too complex to summarize here, but it is easy to at least point out that I had plenty of positive evaluation of the Kirk in Part 1 and there is clearly negative points made here in Part 2. So far, however, I have no real evidence that you ever even read my website – outside skimming the screen glassy eyed and enjoying the resulting negative emotional reactions. Do I believe “those things” anymore? What things?
Next, you tell me that if I still “think those things,” then I am either disingenuous or completely tongue and cheek. Well, I can certainly tell you that I stand behind what I did at Pooh’s Think – and the process and method is far more at issue than whatever ‘belief’ I espoused about the world at any given time. So yes, still guessing at your meaning, in a sense I suppose I still “think those things.” But if this is so, then you have just accused me of being disingenuous based on nothing more than the Pages to the right of my new start up of Pooh’s Think, Part 2 – an absurd conclusion. Given the fact that you have known me to be nothing but entirely sincere and honest over the last 15 years, this is nothing but unjust, irrational insult.
You then go on to question the very nature of “who” I am. This is a topic dear to you because I dared “ignore” your advice. Ignore? So I either obey your counsel over the counsel of many others or I have wrongfully “ignored” you? And what did I ignore? Your authoritative demand that I submit to an admittedly corrupt man for ten more years instead of getting a master’s degree in philosophy? Next is the most despicable statement in the email. I opened this letter with the following, but it is worth repeating:
After almost three years of silence, you now want to know if “who” I am is either a close friend and business partner or someone who simply “went off the deep end”, both possible identities landing on polar extremes, and from your view, mutually exclusive. And as if that was not enough slash and salt, you also admit, albeit implicitly, that you have in fact intentionally shunned me and my family over the last three years – what you do not know does not hurt you and so you wanted to make sure that I was in the know. I have been up to this moment someone “off the deep end” and therefore someone you know you would not work with, share your life with, or have your family get to know. Being off the deep end must be a pretty serious thing. I am not surprised. When this sort of thing comes up in the Kirk with respect to me, it is rarely a subtle reflection, but rather more along the lines of a primal grunt, vaguely implying something along the lines of crazy, insane, mad, deluded, lost it, vile, deceitful, slanderous, mutinous, patricide, creepy, a sucking chest wound, diseased with father hunger, and so on.
If we lived in the Village instead of the Kirk, I guess this would be like calling me ‘red.’
After this debasing of my good name, and the clarification that you have completely shunned my family over the last three years, you decide to end your email with nothing more than entirely unnecessary, presuming, and arrogant remarks. You are not interested in “chit-chatting” with someone as vile as me if I in fact have not reconciled to your “friends” in the leadership of Christ Church. You have no time for my “vague questions” and mock my rhetorical frill, the mere phrase ‘nature and extent’. You imply I am not playing “right up the middle” with you, and predict that I might not be able to do anything but this from here, in which case you would prefer not to hear from me again. And all this just after warmly saying one hour before that you “look forward to talking” with me. Who, again, is disingenuous?
Feel free to dispute the facts. I am eager for such a rare event as that – and good luck. But you have proven your faithfulness and character with such discipline and determination, that I am now afraid to prolong what has been a 15 year experiment of being your friend. And I would not want to do anything to disrupt my use of this new insight. You have mercifully given me more license in my research of the Kirk. This is, of course, just how it always works. It is just this sort of non-empathetic arrogance and irrationality that continues to expose the vacuity at the core of your social and religious identity.
You might recall Bob Moore. He has been my friend as long as I have been yours. And Pooh’s Think did not once jeopardize my relationship with him. My only advice to you is that you be willing to appreciate the fact that most people who followed Pooh’s Think do not think that I went “off the deep end.” In fact, a good majority – almost all perhaps – who had no special identity tied up with the Kirk and Wilson and little exposure to the narratives within, actually thought I was an honest, good guy and my accomplishments at Pooh’s Think helpful – at times, worthy of praise. This must be a strange thing for you to hear, is it not? Why is that? Just imagine how arrogant and ridiculous your stance towards an old friend of 15 years would be if in fact Pooh’s Think, Part 1 was, instead of a vile nuisance from a deluded bitter man, actually a cultural and educational accomplishment. Once again, I am perfectly content being on this side of the fence, ‘my friend’.
I could say a good deal more, including an analysis of your concern over “where everyone stands” as you once again play politics in the Kirk (as a write in fact). But there seems little point to move beyond the points above.
Yours Truly,
Michael P Metzler
POB 878
Cardiff-By-The-Sea, CA 92007
Posted by metzler on Tuesday, March 17, 2009, at 4:12 pm.
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
3 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
3 Comments »
I’m going to have to read “The Inner Ring” now!
Comment by Cindy K — March 19, 2009 @ 8:01 pm
Hi Cindy. Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect is where I first saw reference to this essay. You can read it here: http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php
Comment by Michael Metzler — March 20, 2009 @ 1:25 pm
Thanks, Michael. I went and looked for this last night. I’d forgotten about this, assuming it was a book of Lewis that I had not read.
Comment by Cindy K — March 20, 2009 @ 4:47 pm