Your Help Needed: Letting the Cat (halfway) Out of the Bag

Well, Lucy, we've got some 'splainin' to do.  This is going to be a lengthy entry, so sit back, grab a cup of your favorite addictive caffeinated beverage, and get ready to hear a tale of wonder.

Well, it may not be a tale of wonder, but it's at least a tale of heartache (similar, eh?).  As we explained yesterday, TEDS administration has been strongly suggesting that we shut down our website.  What we'd like to do today is answer a lot of questions for our readers and for the administration.  At the end of that, we need your feedback. 

You can email us or you can comment on this post.  As we're trying to decide what our next step is, we value the opinions of the administration and our readers.  But first, bear with us as we answer a few questions.

1.  Who is behind The Secret Diary of D.A. Carson?  

This is easily the most asked question we get, both from curious readers and TEDS administration.  While we can't reveal actual names (more about that later), we can give you a little information that may surprise you.

The site actually consists of a think tank of four different people: one writer/collaborator, two collaborators, and one editor/censor (who we sometimes lock in the closet when we have a disagreement).  Article ideas are kicked around each week and eventually the suggestions and team input makes it into an article written by our "Don."

Most people have assumed that "the Don" is a single TEDS student.  Some of us have never even set foot on campus and the four of us literally live a thousand miles apart.  We can't be much more specific than that, but trust us when we say that the administration has made a lot of wrong assumptions about the "person" behind this site.

2.  Why did you start the blog?

We're all big fans of "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs", an awesome site that was started over a year ago and has thousands of regular readers, us included.

What we loved about that blog is that it gathered a bunch of technology geeks together and enabled them to have a laugh about the weird things in the industry and then have a discussion in the comments section.

So one day, the idea hit us: wouldn't it be cool if we had a site like that for TEDS?  A site where people could have a laugh, chat things out, etc.  It would be a fun little thing we could try and if no one read it we could just shut it down.

3.  Why D. A. Carson?

Well, the answer to this should be pretty obvious.  Not only is Dr. Carson the face of Trinity, but in many ways he is the face of Evangelical scholarship.  If you're going to write a "Secret Diary" of a famous person in hopes of gathering TEDS students, choosing Dr. Carson is a no-brainer.  

4.  Are you criticizing Dr. Carson with your posts?

Absolutely not.  No, we don't agree with everything that Carson says and writes, but for the most part we think his scholarship is top-notch and we very much appreciate the contribution he's made to Christian thought and theology.

Just like "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" made a character out of Apple's CEO, we have made a character out of D. A. Carson.  Our Dr. Carson calls himself "Dragon" and "the Don", has a slight crush on Robin Meade, uses words like "frickin'" and "Emerjerk", and always thinks he's right about everything.

To be fair, the real D. A. Carson may do all of those things, too, but we doubt it.  The truth is that we don't know him at all; all we know is what we've read in his books.  So we're not being critical or trying to reprimand Dr. Carson; we're simply using him as a springboard for the site, just like "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" uses Steve.

5.  Are you criticizing Paige Patterson with your posts?

Yes.  And if that didn't make you smile, you can probably just stop reading right now and send us your hate mail.  

Seriously, though, we quickly realized that we couldn't just talk about seminary life all the time.  We'll continue to do that, but other topics will have to be approached.  So we decided on some very light-hearted criticism.  We've even criticized people and things that we like because we're making a character.  

This blog is not meant to be taken that seriously.  We can't stress that enough.  If you want serious discussion of theological issues and scholarly debate, there are a ridiculous amount of blogs that you can read and most of them are pretty boring and dry.  If that's your thing, great!  But if you want to take a break from that, we want you to come relax on our blog and have a laugh.

6.  So what's the controversy?

Well, that's a good question because we're not exactly sure.  It all seemed to start when Felix Theonugraha, the associate dean of students for TEDS, left us a comment about the fact that he wasn't crazy about the site.  We published the comment and told him we felt he was misunderstanding our intent, but we figured that would be the end of it.

Well, it wasn't.

Last week TEDS administration informed us that Dr. Carson himself didn't like our site and wanted us to take it down.

And you know what?  We were completely prepared to do that.  You see, we're Christians before we're humorists, and if Dr. Carson was truly offended by the site, we were going to pull it.

They told us that we could correspond with Dr. Carson himself if we wanted to.  And we did want to because we wanted to explain to him what we're explaining to you now: how we started and why, and that it was never meant as a criticism of him.  If, after that, he still wanted us to remove it, we were going to do that.  We just wanted him to know that we truly have respect for him.

However, when we notified the administration that we would indeed like to correspond with Dr. Carson, they took the offer off the table and said he wouldn't speak with us.

They told us that there were "others at the school who do not appreciate what you are doing and take it very seriously."  They told us we should just "trust" them on this and that "some of the things [we had] written had been very offensive even if [we] didn't intend for them to be."  In fact, we were told, "the details might surprise you."

So what does that mean?  Your guess is as good as ours.  Unless the administration really is aligned with the mafia (a post we felt was SO over the top that everyone would clearly see we were kidding), or they think we've hurt Fred Phelps' feelings, or Paige Patterson is going to be the next TEDS president, we don't know what the hubub is over.

In fact, we don't know if Carson really has a problem with the site or not because no one will let us correspond with him OR tell us why people are so "offended."  All they tell us (and they tell us this repeatedly, believe me) is "shut down the blog" and "reveal your identity."

7.  So why not just shut the site down?

Well, that would certainly be the easiest thing to do.  It was a lot of work even before administration was giving us such a hard time.

But there's a little problem.  As it turns out, people actually like us (we're shocked, too).

We started this blog just one month ago.  In that very short time we've gone from 4 unique visitors a day to over 150 unique visitors a day.  And you know what?  Only half of them are from TEDS.

We're getting visitors from every state and a LOT of visitors from Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, and California.  Are those locations ringing a bell?

They should: they're the states with the biggest seminaries.  That's right, lots of seminary students are tuning in every day to see what the new article is about.

Since our inception, we've received over 60 comments and over 40 emails.  We haven't published every comment and we've published almost no email (just some questions for our Q & A articles), but here's something that may surprise the administration: out of over 100 correspondences from readers, we have had a total of 6 that were critical of the blog as a whole.  Sure, we had some people who didn't agree with our homeschool article or our Emerjerk article, but they all said that they liked the blog even if they didn't agree with every post.

So what does that tell us?  It tells us that a very large group of people understand where we're coming from and enjoy what we do.  A small, but very vocal, minority don't.  

So how is that different from anything else in the world?

8.  So what's next?

Well, we have three options:

1.  Shut down the blog

2.  Keep going as we are

3.  Stop this blog and start doing The Secret Diary of Paige Patterson.  Just kidding.

Okay, so we have two options.  What makes the decision difficult is that many people and even some internet outlets have enjoyed the blog.  

However, if we have hurt or offended you in a way that "might surprise us," we really do want to hear from you.  If you tell us not to, we won't publish your name or comments or let anyone know that you contacted us.  In all seriousness, we want to know why you want us to stop blogging.  You can email us right now by clicking here.

Also, if you've enjoyed the blog and want us to keep it up, we want to hear from you, too.  Some of you have already let your voice be heard, and we appreciate it.

In the end, if Dr. Carson, after reading this, still strongly feels that we should take the blog down, we'll do it.  We just want to hear it from him and not a messenger.

If however, there is just a small group of people in the administration that aren't crazy about it and we get a lot of comments and emails from people telling us to keep going, well...that's going to have an affect on our decision.

To contact us, please feel free to email us: stephtheintern@gmail.com

Or leave a comment on this post.

Thanks again to all our readers.  Your emails, comments, and laughter are the reason we've kept it up.  Regardless of the outcome, it's been a fun ride.  

We'll be taking the rest of the weekend off to sort through the massive amount of email we're expecting and we'll update you next week as to what all takes place.  In the meantime, we have a "Fake Carson Q & A: John Piper Edition" we'll be posting on Monday.

Now put down your caffeinated drink and contact us by email or comment or we'll send Fake Carson to your house to destroy you in badminton.  You don't want a piece of "the Dragon," you frickin' Emerjerk (yes, that includes you, Paige Patterson).