To Jason Stellman: “Time to Go Dark…”

Just in case you didn't see it over at Old Life, Dr Alan Strange writes:

Given the kind of interchanges that Jason had over at CTC and given where he is now headed (not yet in the RCC, as I understand it), it would seem to me that it would behoove Jason to be a bit quieter about these things. It seemed on his blog–”Creed Code Cult”–that he might be heading in that direction when he wrote two months ago (in June), that it was “time to go dark” and to “fade to black.” I realize that he meant that specifically with respect to his aforementioned blog, but it seems like a good general principle, if I may say so sincerely and without rancor.

Jason, you’ve been trained as and have been a Presbyterian minister. You’ve publicly defended the Reformed faith and have questioned Rome, to which you’ve now gone over. Does it not become you, at least for now, to retire from the public eye? If you’ve come to regard what you formerly taught as in error, should you now immediately become the teacher of the opposite (though not appointed in any way by the magisterium that you have come to revere)? While the folk at CTC appear as self-appointed, in typical American religious fashion, you especially should not be over-eager to become a spokesman for what you so recently openly opposed.

I suppose that there is no way to soften my view any further, but I think it unseemly for you to be doing what you are now doing. Perhaps no one else thinks it improper for former Presbyterian ministers to become aggressive apologists for Rome while barely having arrived there, but I do. Your flip-flop and open advocacy of a church in which you hold no teaching office, over against the doctrines of one in which you did, seems out of place and a bit like whistling in the dark, as if trying to convince yourself by talking to us. Jason, I don’t know you personally, but thank God for the evident gifts that He has given you and urge you to think about backing off your forceful internet advocacy of something that you’ve scarcely embraced and arguing against that tradition of which you were so recently a minister.