A few things have been happening here in Moscow relating to the Kirk’s egregious attempt to frame pastoral abuse and heavy-handed gossip between elders as “Biblical counseling.”
A week ago, I directed you to a series of Prevailing Winds posts from May 2011 that dealt with Doug Wilson’s encouragement of the courtship between a desperately lonely young NSA student and Steven Sitler, a former NSA scholar and protege’ of Wilson’s whose confessed serial pedophilia — which included the State’s admonition that, at risk of life in prison, he not be left alone, ever, with any children from the marriage — seemed not to perturb the Palouse’s Pontiff of Pomposity. In doing this, in raking up the ugliest of Moscow’s ecclesiastical history, I pointed out that those seeking counseling from a Wilson-led Christ Church elder, one who insists on his right to share session information with whomever he want, need to consider the judgment and character of the man whose presence lurks behind every appointment.
The verdict of anyone familiar with Doug Wilson, even if the Sitler crisis was all they knew, would have to be that he is guilty of a depth of recklessness, impudence, selfishness, and malice generally not seen in the pastorate — or even among surly frat boys. The Sitler incident was isolated in its particular circumstances; the self-servingly horrific judgment it showed isn’t. Anyone not on Wilson’s payroll, unlike the majority of his elders, would conclude that this guy ought not have anything to do with establishing a “Biblical counseling” program anywhere near vertebrates.
Or high schoolers, which brings me to events of the last couple of weeks.
A friend notified me of a sign positioned near Moscow High School promising Free Pizza and Free Bibles on Tuesdays in a City-owned building directly across from campus — an informal free lunch and get-together moderated by a particularly weasily young Kirker. Those of us in Moscow know that the MHS cafeteria is large enough only for a fraction of its enrollment; our students leave campus for lunch largely because they have to, and nothing lures young people with less than an hour to search for cheap calories than the promise of free pizza just for crossing the street.
After another Moscow citizen raised hell with the administration of the 1912 Building for allowing proselytizing on City property, the Kirk agreed to cease its pizza-lure program until it finds another location. One problem solved, and God be praised.
But there’s a larger issue here, one infinitely more upsetting than the idea of religious proselytizing on taxpayer-funded property. Christ Church’s Center for Biblical Counseling is downtown, just a few blocks from the high school. Its “services” are free — a huge attraction in a town with not nearly enough mental health professionals, and where 50-minute sessions, if you’re able to get one, typically cost at least a hundred bucks. And while CBC counselor Mike Lawyer is not a licensed psychologist or social worker or psychiatrist — the fields that generally constitute “qualified mental health counselor” — his work is presented as a ministry. It’s free, it’s close to campus, and its services might be attractive to several hundred confused, lonely, teenagers and their families navigating the turbulent waters of adolescence.
Let’s be clear: The Kirk’s assertion to my friend, that the Free Pizza Tues,days was intended as an outreach to Christ Church/Trinity Reformed kids at the high school is more than spurious. It’s a lie. Doug Wilson’s contempt for “government schools” isn’t simply his opinion; rejection of public education is a matter on which he brooks no deviation. If you’re a Kirk parent, there is no matter of conscience, no personal conviction, no “this is best for our family” thinking when it comes to public schools. The likelihood of finding a Kirk kid at Moscow High School is about as great as finding a Jewish kid at a White Supremacist institution.
But it’s very likely that you’ll find some kids at the high school who ARE unchurched, and who ARE in the throes of adolescent angst, and who might become convinced that the nice Dr. Lawyer would be able to help them — or who would tell mom and dad that the counseling they can’t afford can be had at the Center For Biblical Counseling. Believe me — Wilson, et al, aren’t recruiting from Moscow High School in the hope of filling the black robes of New Saint Andrews. By high school, these kids are well beyond any hope of fitting into Logos, Wilson’s K-12 foray into “classical Christian education.” Their parents, suckling as they are on the teat of government largesse by sending their kids to Baal, Moloch, and Moscow High, aren’t likely to repent and come to the — ahem — light of Christ Church or Trinity. And most of the students, once the pizza is nibbled down to the crust and the conversation turns to the Kirk’s breathtaking masculinism and homophobia and general contempt for unbelievers — that is, those unbelievers not chowing down in front of them — are less than likely to accept any Christ as Lord and Savior who looks at all like these of his disciples.
(Of course, the idea of evangelism by hard Calvinists is a curious thing, given that those who will come to Christ, in their theology, will anyway, regardless of any evangelistic efforts, and those whom God has reprobated can’t come to Christ, regardless, again, of any evangelistic efforts. This explains not only why the Kirk is not generally associated with evangelism, and, more to the point, why the odious behavior of its principles isn’t considered bothersome if it offends unbelievers).
It seems a fair bet that the Free Pizza had a direct link to Free Counseling. That’s disturbing. The “free” counseling from the Lawyer and the “trainees” expected to pour forth from the “Counselor in a Week” sessions may not cost any money, but it’s far from free. The payment extracted from counselees is immense: vulnerability for reckless disclosure, emotional problems for a diagnosis of sin, a thirst for spiritual comfort for a Bible beating, and the presumption of qualification for the assurance of self-proclaimed expertise. You pour out your heart; your counselor will pour out your heart to those around him and around you, and the Bible from which you ought to seek solace will become the battering ram into your thoughts, your actions, your beliefs, and your motivations. Counseling by crowbar, it is.
The great Libertarian principle of TANSTAAFL — There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch — applies here. And as Wilson himself says, a thing may be offered without cost — but it sure ain’t free. While luring kids into your grip with pizza is considerably more crude than most Kirk machinations, it’s a necessary dip into the swamp of statism. After all, if your congregants balk at seeking counseling from someone who slavishly answers to you, it might become necessary to troll the waters for the kids and their parents who don’t yet know about either your atrocious judgment or your astounding disregard for standards of professional counseling.
In this case, a thin crust and a slathering of marinara covers a whole lotta error. Shame on them. Boys of Anselm House, your community is on to you.