Last week at The Grove we finished up our series, “Life As We Know it” and one of the things we dug into was that words create worlds. That every word we use has influence in either a positive or negative direction and as a follower of Jesus we have to own that.

Of course in the last week I’ve seen words flying. People making statements beyond their knowledge and assumptions that were simply unhelpful about a particular book that is being released soon and more particularly it’s author. 

I’m not (un) necessarily jumping in to the frey, if you will. But I do want say something about some things I recently read, which I think has continued to fuel the fire.

Kevin DeYoung, who I have never met and do not know personally though I’m sure is well intentioned wrote these words in a blog post:

 ”I am eager to read the book, not to pick a fight (though sometimes we need to fight, and this is one of those times), but because a book like this from a prominent pastor like this needs a response, many responses. We should be thankful for the clarity, but saddened by the content.” 

After I saw this blog post put on a friends Facebook page, I was frustrated and responded this way:

“This makes no sense…If we say we want to read the book but not to pick a fight yet, we’re ultimately saying we need to pick a fight. And our plan is to pick a fight though we’re still not 100 percent sure what the fight will be about?

And then we say the content saddens us?

How do we know the content saddens us, if we have yet to read said book? Ridiculous. I’m glad that common sense and grace rule our minds rather than participating in a modern day witch hunt.

I’m sure Jesus is impressed.”

I’m not going to add a whole lot of thoughts except to say this.

Seriously?

That’s what you’re adding to the discussion?

Now, to be fair the article does go on to talk about a particular doctrinal issue, that whether I agree with agree or not was strong enough to stand on its own without ever saying anything about the author of said book.

So, why? Why bring this person whose book you haven’t read yet into the discussion. Because this is about that doctrinal issue? Not good enough.

Because he is in error on this matter? Still not good enough, because you don’t know that since you haven’t read the book. 

I know, because you disagreed with the way he handled a particular topic in the past? Got it. Still not good enough.

This is heart breaking. Our words create worlds, the world created by these words I want absolutely no part in.