Response to Ben Douglass #1

I'm going to begin a series of responses to Ben Douglas, who was, until I believe April of 2007, the Vice President of Robertson Genesis Apostolate, and he has been putting up some videos. I'm going to be responding to two videos that he did in regards to charity and how I could benefit from learning from him about being charitable.

And then he attempts to address the issue of Ignatius and the videos that I put up specifically in response to Steve Ray. He had written to me a while back, and then I saw on Steve Ray's blog, in Steve Ray's own inimitable fashion, choosing not to mention me by name, of course.

I'm just an anti-Catholic. And this is Ray's way of being disrespectful and mean-spirited. He knows that I do much more than deal with just Catholicism. He knows that I have a ministry of preaching and teaching and so on and so forth, but he insists on being so unkind and cavalier as to use this kind of language.

And I would just say to Ben Douglas in beginning this series, since he has decided that I need to learn to be more charitable, even though the two instances he gives, Mr. Douglas was actually wrong in both of them, and it really makes me wonder why Ben has such a prejudice against me that he would misinterpret things so badly.

But my real question for Ben is, don't you think these videos need to be sent to other people? Steve Ray, for example, linked to these videos that you put up, don't you think it might be good to send them to him?

I mean, Mr. Ray has a major honesty problem. I mean, this man will say things, he will go on the air and he will make claims, and then when people who know better respond to him, he either responds with, well, these people are just idiots, they're idiotic.

I mean, even in the blog article linking to your videos, he behaves in this fashion. Did you contact him, Mr. Douglas, and say, oh, Steve, that was extremely uncharitable, the way that you spoke and the way that you wrote.

Your blog is filled with very uncharitable things, using the same standards. Did you write to him? Did you write to him when he includes the most scandalous, the most libelous, horrible, disgusting attacks upon me and my family on his blog?

Doing things that would never even cross my mind to make the kinds of comments he has about my family. And he recently was talking about my sister and, again, demonstrated just how grossly truth-challenged the man is.

He has no concept of speaking the truth in love or in any other way. He said that my sister grew up in a Reformed Baptist church. It's on his blog. You can go check it for yourself. The problem is my sister probably never even heard of Reformed Baptist church until she was at least 31 or 32 years of age.

To my knowledge, has never been inside a Reformed Baptist church. She may have visited mine once, but I don't have any recollection that she did. She's certainly never been a member of a Reformed Baptist church for any period of time, let alone was she raised in a Reformed Baptist church.

So this is the kind of 33 ,000 denominations, and Jerome was the only one who ever believed this. I mean, Steve Ray just throws stuff out there, and whether it's true or not is irrelevant to the man. And then when you challenge him on it, it's, oh, you're all a bunch of anti-Catholics, and you're mean-spirited, and you're nasty, and I'm just a nice grandpa with a funny hat, and I take people to Israel.

It's amazing. Where are the Catholic apologists who stand up and say, enough of this. It does seem to me, Mr. Douglas, that there is a very serious problem on your side that's hybrid, and the problem is as long as it serves Mother Church, it's just fine.

Now, you guys finally have gone after Roberts and Jennis, and you guys have all your arguments there and all the rest of that stuff, and Jerry Mattatix has just said he vacants us now and all the rest of this stuff.

Okay, fine. But that's not the same. Going after someone for making anti-Jewish statements, that's not the same. As policing your people in regards to their behavior toward Protestants. I mean, look at Art Sippo.

Here's a man who's been spewing venom at Protestants forever, and he's still on the envoy forums, as far as I know. He's still given a free reign to just behave and violate everything that you yourself are talking about.

So I just wonder, Mr. Douglas, don't you think your time would be a little bit better spent? Don't you think those folks would receive your lecturing on charitability a little bit better than I would?

Shouldn't you be policing your side of things? If I have done what you say I've done, and as I said, you're wrong on both examples you gave, but if I was, fine, pointing out those problems on your side of the tiber wouldn't make any difference.

But the fact of the matter is, it's a little bit difficult to accept your words if they're not being directed with just as much focus to the people on your own side. So with that, let's take a look at what Ben has to say.

The subject of this video is charity. Specifically, the principles of charity which ought to govern our treatment of our theological opponents, and how Dr. White could benefit from learning these principles and applying them in his ministry.

Well, if you spend any significant amount of time reading or listening to James White, you're probably going to notice a pattern. And that is, he is extremely quick to accuse his opponents of deliberate dishonesty, even outright lies.

He jumps to this accusation far quicker than merited by the evidence.

Now, of course, it would be really, really nice if examples were given. What Ben does, for some reason, is he starts off attacking my character and making these observations, and then only later does he get to examples.

And when we actually look at the examples, they're not supportive of what he's saying. I mean, how many people? I realize most of the people who are going to be watching his videos will never take the time to listen to what I have to say.

They'll never fairly analyze what I have to say. They're looking for a reason to detest me, and so that's easy. But what about those who do? The few people who will go, well, wait a minute, I saw one of those debates, and I've seen five debates between James White and Mitchell Pacwa, and that never happened.

I'm getting close to 70 debates now, depending on how you count them up. And people who've seen any portion of them are looking at you, Ben, and going, what are you talking about? What do you mean? What, in the first five minutes of the opening statement, I'm accusing my opponent of being a liar?

Of course not. So why start with this kind of a presentation that just simply is clearly, obviously false? I don't understand it.

Now, why he does this, I don't know. It's possible that he's been negatively influenced by spending so much time dealing with people like, oh, Gail Riplinger, Dave Hunt, Nader Achmed, and Robert Syngenis.

Well, now, there's a list of people. Nader Achmed, Gail Riplinger, Dave Hunt, and Robert Syngenis? Wow. Yeah, you know, there's no question that when you deal with the broad spectrum of apologetics, and you deal with the nice folks like Mitch Pacwa, and you deal with the nasty folks, and the list on the Roman side there is very, very long, and you've got Nader Achmed and you've got the King James only folks, I mean, they've always been the worst, even worse than the Muslims.

It would be easier for me to just deal with the nice folks. Is it always the nice folks who are actually doing the most damage to Christ's church? Is it always the nice folks who have the ear of so many people?

Sadly, it's not. And so are my debates with Mitch Pacwa different than the mass debate with Robert Syngenis? Yeah, big time, big time. But is there some way to avoid that other than just simply not engaging with those types of folks?

Well, you know, that's a choice that a person has to make. And, you know, people with less desire to see the truth presented in a broad spectrum of areas, you know, might not engage the same number of people I do.

I have to stand before God and be judged for that and be judged for who I've chosen to debate. But even in those situations, I believe that a fair-minded person would say that my response to even the nastiest opponents has been to become even more focused and that I do not return upon their heads the same kind of abuse they frequently heap upon mine.