Monday, September 10, 2007

I Am SO Offended (but not really)

So sometime, when you're bored or you just can't slush through any more homework for the evening, you should punch my name into Google just to see what the results are.

According to Stephanie, the third site to come up under a "D.A. Carson" search is some website called WayOfLife.org, and they don't seem to like me very much.  Sure, it hurts my feelings a little, but one thing that the Don has learned in all these years is this: you have to be able to take criticism.  Even when you're misunderstood and you have a VERY loud minority screaming that you're a monster and disagreeing with what you've written, said, or believed, you just have to take it and move on.

But I digress.

Apparently the ringleader of this WayOfLife.org site is a self-professed FUNDAMENTALIST named David W. Cloud, and it seems that he's very excited about snuffing out the evils of "New Evangelical scholars" like myself.  

I read his cute little article entitled "Beware of D.A. Carson," and he's basically upset that I'm okay with inclusive language, that I helped promote the New Revised Standard Version (this guy really hates "new" stuff), and that I'm not a literal six-day creationist.

Boo-hoo.

Okay, so I wrote out a 12 page rebuttal to his comments and thought about printing them here for you to read, but I realized that might be a tad too long.  So instead, I have decided to just criticize the thing that bothered me most after looking at his article:

His website design.

I mean, geez!  C'mon, David, it's not flippin' 1992 anymore!  No pictures, the font is Times New Roman, and your top box combines the colors Purple, Yellow, and RED!  What were you thinking!?  There is absolutely NOTHING on this page to reset my attention span, and since you drone on and on for what can only be compared to an ETERNITY, you really need to spice up the page a little bit.

You want to spar with the Don?  You want me to open the floodgates and unleash tidal wave after tidal wave of the theological genius that resides in my head?  You want to see if you have what it takes to go round after round against a heavyweight of my ability?

Then fix your ugly website.  Once it's less offensive to my eyes I'll be glad to K.O. you in the first round.

They don't call me "the Dragon" for nothin'.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If we assume that David Cloud is a Christian and he has a serious problem with your approval of inclusive language etc., what would be the general impression left on people who actually take Cloud seriously, when they read your blog? You are poking fun at him without answering his 'accusations'. Do you think this is God-honoring? He is blowing you out of the water (trying at least) without engaging the issues with you. Your response is to say, in effect, that he is not worth answering, but only worth poking fun at. Are you 'answering' him in the opposite spirit, or is it in fact the exact same spirit but in different (and a tad more clever and subtle) garb?

D. A. Carson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
D. A. Carson said...

Since you didn't leave a name or email address, I figured it'd be best to just message you on here.

This blog was "The Secret Diary of D.A. Carson." It wasn't actually written by D.A. Carson, so it doesn't really try very hard to engage in theological discourse as much as it tried to be humorous.

So that would be why I didn't talk about the issues.