Paul's Passing Thoughts

SESSION ONE

JOHN IMMEL:  I know that people online can’t see this, but this is – luckily, you guys can see this. So about three weeks after the conference last year, I get an e-mail from Paul, Paul Dohse, the organizer of this conference. And the title of the e-mail is “Thoughts?” In the body of the e-mail it says, “See attached jpeg.” That’s it. So I read this and I can’t for the life of me figure out what he’s talking about. So I write to Paul back and I say, “Paul, can you explain this?” Now you have all heard Paul speak. So it is at no end of irony that Paul’s e-mails are notoriously short to the point of cryptic. There are no rabbit trails in Paul’s e-mails. So I write on the reply, “I have no idea what you want from me here.” So finally, Paul writes me back and he says – is this hot? Is this a little too hot?

PAUL DOHSE:  A little, yeah.

JOHN IMMEL:  Can you turn it down just a touch? Check, check, check? Does that work?

PAUL DOHSE:  That’s better.

JOHN IMMEL:  That’s a whole better? Okay, good. All right, so he writes me back and he says, the idea – now mind you, with this in mind, this is Paul’s response. “The idea that freedom of man is practically a pipedream because he is enslaved to his own desires spiritually, hence, at the very least indifferent to political freedom on a social level.” So, here’s his question. “So will the New Calvinist Movement cause political indifference in American society among Christians?” And I’m like, “Oh, I get it.” So then I go back to this. And for those of you online, you can’t see this. But this guy, Mark Ray, I get to use the cool pointer now. Mark Ray here, I don’t know who he is, don’t care, don’t matter. He says right here, “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” And this is when I finally understood what Paul’s after. And he’s interested in me commenting on the impact of New Calvinism on American culture, what it’s trying to do.

Now, of course, he, this Mark Ray, is actually quoting a guy by the name of Edmund Burke. You can look him up. He’s not really an enigmatic character. But Edmund Burke held the fundamental assumption about human existence, and this quote ultimately that the nature of man requires that man can only be governed by a totalitarian government, that the function of government is human restraint. So anyway, Paul is asking me to weigh in on this particular issue. And my response was, yes. I’ll summarize. Yes, this is exactly what the Neo-Calvinist movement is willing to do. Now my e-mail response to Paul was about 500 words. I gave a detailed explanation, and it turns out – well, I gave that explanation. I won’t tell you what I said. And so then, I send them off to Paul, and Paul says to me, “This would be a perfect progression from this year to next year. This could be your 2014 thesis for next year’s conference.” So this is exactly what we’re going talk about, the Edmund Burke comment and its specific impact on the progression of American thought, where we are. Now of course the flyer says that I’m going to talk about National Socialist Germany. That is true. We are going to talk about that.

But before I get too much farther into this, I guess I do need to make some introductions. My name is John Immel. I like to introduce myself this way. I am no one from nowhere. And the important thing about this is that there is a general trend and a general move within Christianity. The assumption being that if you’re standing behind a pulpit that you bear some form of authority, and that the expectation is that whatever I say, you have some obligation to accept. I reject that as a fundamental premise. I’m not here as a representative of authority. I am here to present to you ideas and the most powerful arguments that I can bring to you. And your part of this conversation, and it is a conversation, is for you to bring your highest and best rational self to this engagement. I’m going to make the most powerful argument I can, and I want you to engage your brain and to think and to analyze and to find out what is correct, what is true. And if I’ve done my job well, you will end up agreeing with me because I believe I hold right ideas. But here is how this works. If you can find a flaw on what I said, then you have the ability to say ,”Hey, John. Now here I think is an adjustment.” And if you make a powerful argument, if you make a good argument, and I apply my rational individuality to that, I go, “You know what? That’s true.”

Now having said that, I did write a book. I wrote a book, this book, called Blight in the Vineyard: Exposing the Roots, Myths, and Emotional Torments of Spiritual Tyranny. You can buy this online at amazon.com. It’s $23.99 online. If you like what I say in the conference, those of you who are watching online, if you like what I say, you’re going to find more of the same in here. Now I will say this. I wrote this, and I’ll get into this just a little bit more here in the moment. I wrote this using a modern denomination called Sovereign Grace Ministries as my anecdote. But the book is not about Sovereign Grace Ministries specifically. The book is about how the ideas embedded in what we’re going to talk about shaped this specific ministry. So I talk about a who so we can talk about a what. And the what are the ideas that are behind it. And in particular, the Neo-Calvinist, the new resurgent movement of Calvinism in the United States.

Now it is a little dated because when I wrote this, most of the major players, and those of you familiar within evangelical Christianity certainly will have heard names like CJ Mahaney, Brent Detwiler, Joshua Harris. These were all people at the top of the uber super apostles, whatever they want to call themselves now. There’s been a split within that denomination, and so that current history is not reflected in the book, but it actually doesn’t matter because the book is not about the personalities or the organization of that denomination. The book is about how the ideas were used to create this denomination in Sovereign Grace Ministries and ultimately how that causes them to act within that denomination. So you’ll still get the same things even though like I said it’s historically dated.

So this conference, this specific conference represents the culmination of about – at least 20 years of thinking for me. And to give you a sense of scope, which is what I think I do best, I think I give people the framework best. I need to actually talk about me personally a little bit. I got born again when I was 15. So my exposure to Christianity is going on 30 years. Now I got born again and became immediately a part of a brethren church in Eaton, Ohio, actually not too far from where we are now. And my introduction to Christianity was dramatic. I’m confident there are people that can tell you about my life during my high school career. But I took Christianity seriously, and I invested in Christianity. I invested in what I believe to be the truth with absolute commitment. So by the time I was 18, I was fully invested and fully committed to Christianity, modern American Christianity. Now I’m going to make a distinction here. (more…)