By Jason Tsaddiq
Soulforce Article Critique, Part 2
Another heinous example of Mr. White’s stacking the deck (ignoring evidence) concerns his example of the September 22, 2000 incident in which Ronald E. Gay fatally shot Danny Overstreet and injured seven other people at a “gay bar.” Mr. White failed to recount, or possibly failed to research, that Mr. Gay had served in Vietnam during a rather troubled time period in American history. He was well-known by his wives (plural), family members, and friends to be a drunk. He even told police after his arrest that this was not a hate crime. According to one source, Mr. Gay’s comment about being “a Christian soldier, working for Lord” was not shouted while he was at the bar, shooting at people as told in Mr. White’s article. Mr. Gay wrote that comment in a letter addressed to the Roanoke Timesafter his arrest.[1]Mr. White took the actions of Mr. Gay out of context, failing to report in his article that, in addition to his Vietnam-induced PTSD, Mr. Gay had been bullied and harassed since elementary school. One must not excuse Mr. Gay for his sin of cold-blooded murder but one must not use his twisted, deficient mind as an example of “Christians” who misinterpret the Scripture.
In Mr. White’s example of Matthew and Tyler Williams, he fails again to tell the whole story and continues to ignore some evidence that contradicts his own beliefs. Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams were both arrested, tried, and convicted for the murder of Mr. Gary Matson and Mr. Winfield Mowder in July 1999. However, the interesting facts that Mr. White leaves out concern their upbringing and their affiliations. It is common knowledge that both brothers were part of a white supremacist group whose targets included Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities. They dabbled in organizations such as Christian Identity[2]and The Church of the Creator (now World Church of the Creator).[3]It is interesting to note also that these two brothers were also arrested, tried, and convicted of burning of synagogues as part of their hateful white supremacist activities. Mr. White leads the reader to believe that Mr. Matson and Mr. Mowder were murdered only because of their sexual orientation. Most assuredly, they were chosen in part because of the sexual orientation but mainly because these two brothers were already steeped in false beliefs which taught that they should hate homosexuals, Jews, and other minorities since these people were below the value of standard white people.[4]
On the top of page six, the example Mr. White gives is about Matthew Shephard’s death in 1998, a brutal murder in Wyoming. According to Mr. White, an pastor wrote an open letter claiming the “Gays are under the death penalty. . . .” Online research fails to produce evidence of this letter other than from Mr. White’s own writings. Surely, an open letter would be somewhat easy to find for verification of facts.
Verification of facts brings up another tidbit of faulty research and deck-stacking: Mr. White, in this article, has not given credit or verification for any of the pictures and/or the anecdotes that he gives as proof. If his facts are all perfectly straight, then he should have no qualms about giving the accurate source of these “facts.” He has eliminated any reference to the fact that some evidence exists that Matthew Shepherd was a sexual partner with one of his murderers.[5]
His second paragraph on page six includes these words: “Most Christians have no idea that the people killing gay and lesbian persons go around quoting those few verses of Scripture as justification.” If this statement is true, then these people (“killing gay and lesbian persons” while quoting Scripture) are in the minority; in their misinterpretation of Scripture, they do not represent Bible-obeying mankind. Being skilled in stacking the deck allows Mr. White to ignore the evidence of this truth.
Mr. White’s third premise commits two logical fallacies, the first being the fallacy of promoting a bandwagon, which advocates the idea that everyone believes or participates in an idea or action and therefore, the reader should also. He begins this premise by stating “Even heroes of the Christian faith have changed their minds about the meaning of various Biblical texts.” Since these “heroes of the faith have changed their minds,” so should the reader. His premise that “We must be open to new truth from Scripture” should raise a red flag of concern – yes, changing one’s mind after studying Scripture may and should occur as a believer learns more about his God. However, the term “new truth” implies that God’s Word changes or has changed since He gave it to holy men so long ago. God is not a god of confusion: He said what He wanted to say; He needs no Bible.2; He needs no second edition or addendums. Allowing for “new truth” should alarm the diligent student of the Word.
He mentions Paul, Peter, Jerry Falwell, and Jim Jones as the “heroes of the faith” mentioned in his first paragraph. For Paul, “It took a blinding light. . .to help the apostle Paul change his mind. . .” However, one must realize that the blinding light did not change Paul’s mind – he already knew Who was getting his attention for he called Him, “Lord.”
In Mr. White’s example of Peter seeing the sheet filled with now-allowed edible animals was not an example of “new truth.” It was an example of God changing His will for a certain time period as He has done several times throughout Scripture. In the example of Jerry Falwell, Mr. White included the idea of black and white segregation in his church. One may call Mr. Falwell an “hero of the faith” if desired, but one must realize that every “hero of the faith” still sins. Possibly the Holy Spirit had been previously prompting Mr. Falwell to repent of his sin of bigotry or his sin of following the worldly crowd instead of Biblical principles and then, when “a black shoeshine man” asked him the question, he was ready to give into the Holy Spirit. Neither God nor Scripture changed or became “new truth.” Mr. Falwell decided to follow what the Bible says about all men being created the same.
Comparing Jim Jones to Paul, Peter, and even Jerry Falwell is just a tad bizarre. Mr. Jones was well-known as being quite Biblically-eccentric, especially after bouncing around from various types of churches to other types of churches, then mingling all the “doctrine” into his own Peoples Temple. Mr. Jones’ actions were very much unbiblical so he should not even be used in this premise (maybe Mr. White needed a red herring inserted here.).
The example of Jim Jones is a segue to Mr. White’s next fallacy: he contradicts himself. In the first paragraph on page seven, he claims that “it’s terribly dangerous to think that our understanding of every Biblical text is also without error.” In the next paragraph, the paragraph about Jim Jones, Mr. White claims that the only people strong enough to avoid cult-like leaders are the ones who “study the texts themselves.” In one sentence, he wants his reader to believer the he, the reader, might make mistakes when interpreting Scripture; in the next sentence, he wants the reader to “study the text” himself. This question must be asked: “Why should one ‘study the texts’ himself if he is inevitably going to come to the incorrect conclusion?” One must wonder if Mr. White believes that a diligent student of the Word can be taught accurately by the Holy Spirit.
Missed Part 1? Get it here: http://baptistwriters.com/blog/2019/4/12/soulforce-article-critique-part-1
[1]Corky McGraw, A “Gay” Hate Crime, http://corkymcg0.tripod.com/crime/gayhatecrime.html, 2001, Accessed June 10, 2017.
[2]“Christian Identity is a unique anti-Semitic and racist theology that rose to a position of commanding influence on the racist right in the 1980s. "Christian" in name only, the movement's relationship with evangelicals and fundamentalists has generally been hostile due to the latter’s belief that the return of Jews to Israel is essential to the fulfillment of end-time prophecy.” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/christian-identity, Accessed June 10, 2017.
[3]An excerpt of some of their unscriptural beliefs is as follows: “Christianity is a violent religion. They have killed 1000 fellow Christians down through the years for every Christian that the Romans killed. They do not believe that Jesus existed in the 1stcentury CE. They point to the complete lack of evidence from any non-Jewish source that verifies His existence in Palestine. They reject the principle of loving your enemies. Enemies should be hated. They reject the ethic of reciprocity which is expressed in the Christian golden rule and in many similarstatements in other religions.” B. A. Robinson, Ontario Consultant on Religious Tolerance, http: //www. Religioustolerance.org/wcotc1.htm, Accessed June 10, 2017.
[4]An interesting note must be made here: after several hours of research, this author could not find the original source in which Benjamin Matthew Williams said to his mother, “I had to obey God’s law rather than man’s law.” Only one quite liberal source (salon.com) had a quote very similar to this aforementioned statement but with no credit given to the source. All other incidents in which this quote appears are actually quoting Mr. White. This situation in addition to other incidences of careless research by Mr. White causes one to wonder as to its veracity.
[5]These two websites will give more details on this controversy: http://nypost.com/2013/10/28/uncomfortable-truth-behind-matthew-shepards-death/ and
http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/09/13/have-we-got-matthew-shepard-all-wrong