c.t. & imonkery

Once again I have to step in. I was actually working on a few new short stories. But now I have to waste good time on unnecessary necessities.

Posting comments is a privilege, not a right. I don’t have time to moderate the combox. I give commenters a pretty long leash, but if they abuse the privilege, they lose it.

Which brings me to c.t. It’s a pity about c.t. He’s bright and articulate. And he happens to be right about some central truths of the faith.

But along with that is a violently reactionary streak and a foul mouth.

C.T. has a pattern where Triablogue is concerned. He comes back under a new alias. When he begins, he’s on his best behavior. He uses flattery to ingratiate himself. Having got a foot in the door he begins to take over the combox, to become the de facto moderator, to become abusive to other commenters.

He poaches on my blog because I have far more traffic than he does on his blog.

Some of his comments are perfectly acceptable. But I don’t have the time to winnow the wheat from the chaff. That’s not my responsibility. And I have better things to do with my time.

While we’re on the subject, I also want to say something about language. Now there are worse things in the world that using blue language. And it’s possible to be legalistic about this.

My problem with c.t. and the Tavernistas is the way they flaunt obscenity. They go out of their way to use profanity and obscenity just too prove, I guess, how cool it is to be brazenly shameless; to prove that they are not inhibited by all those uptight Victorian hang-ups over holiness and consecration.

And where the Tavernistas are concerned, their verbal daring dovetails with their theological daring. They are constantly pushing the envelope.

This is symptomatic of heart-disease—of a heart clotted with spiritual insolence and defiant impiety. Let’s thumb our nose at God and see if we’ll be struck by lightning.

And that’s where Spencer comes in. Spencer is to pastoral ministry what Margaret Mead was to free sex and Timothy Leary was to acid.

Naturally he has a ferocious following. Young people generally prefer titular grown-ups who give them permission to dabble in sin with the blessing of an authority-figure. What you end up with is a symbiosis of evil: a gentleman’s agreement in which each party looks the other way at the other party’s misdeeds.

As the moderator of the BHT, Spencer is responsible for policing what is posted by his junior bloggers. But instead of acting as a conscientious shepherd who guides his flock in the ways of sanctification and the mortification of sin, Spencer is a corrupter of the young.