The internet draws all kinds. It is a democratic forum that gives anyone with an ip address opportunity to address anyone willing to listen. Some on the internet, however, use their access to it to scold others for presuming to hold forth without holding an advanced degree. They seem to reason, “Why would you listen to the cogent and careful arguments of this layman steeped in the Word of God when you could listen to the obtuse, jargon laden pontifications of me, a professional who speaks academ-ease with ease?”
That said, there are others on the internet who think their ISP is the same as an advanced degree, that this idea they got in their head last night is more cogent than the labors of the Westminster Divines. Or, that their understanding of the Westminster Divines is surely more accurate than the aged professor who wrote his dissertation on Westminster and has been lecturing on it for decades.
Both of these groups have a problem that they share with everyone who manages to be in neither of these two groups, pride. It’s everywhere. While you’re scanning the landscape in agreement with me, don’t forget the mirror. One of the places, however, that pride turns its klieg lights on itself is among the young, reckless and reformed. When a young man, and sometimes a young woman, comes to embrace the doctrines of grace it seems all too often that they first gave away the practice of grace. We call this the “cage-stage,” when the newly Reformed is so zealous, so obnoxious, so ungracious that the rest of the Reformed and the non-Reformed form an alliance to try to cage the beast until he calms down. If he never calms down, he has reached thunder puppy stage.
What’s a thunder puppy? Imagine a young hound dog, all ears and paws. He’s clumsy, weak, small, harmless. He barks, however, as if he were Cujo. The barking is the thunder. The rest is the puppy. With the advent of the internet, thunder puppies can add a megaphone to their bark without bothering to add any wisdom to their thought. They take up their cyber gavels and excommunicate their fathers and elder brothers in the faith. They drag out of context snippets of sermons and blog pieces to Jesus, demanding that He concede that the guilty should be stoned. They see themselves as Luther at the Diet of Worms, when they are more like Urkel eating a diet of worms.
How then do you tame them? Shame. We who embrace the sovereignty of God over all things can rest easy knowing that He will bless His own with humility one way or the other, either by the slow, steady process of maturation or the jarring train wreck of humiliation. Do not answer our brother fools in their folly. Speak gently and calmly. Do not show fear. It only encourages them. Offer your hand for them to sniff. And speak the truth in love, like a mature believer.