I know I am a day late and a dollar short in all this but I didn’t read my aggregator for most of last week and when I finally did last night I realized I had missed another God-blog controversy wherein Michael Spencer was taken to the woodshed by Frank Turk. I then wrote the piece below initially as an email to Mr. Turk but have decided to post it here instead.
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Mr. Turk,

Let me first say that I was not very familiar with your blog before all this, having only visited it a few times, but now I have added it to my aggregator and hope to read it more regularly in the future. I like humor. I also want to confess that I am a regular and avid reader of iMonk and the BHT (just so you know where I am coming from.) I also don’t give him a pass on everything he says and writes.

I just finished reading your post and all the comments regarding Michael Spencer and I have a some thoughts and questions:

1)You said “we should not allow emotionally unstable people to speak on behalf of Christianity in any respect.” If I understand it right, one of your main points is that Michael Spencer is emotionally unstable and as such is not “credible” and is “a fraud” when giving opinions about the the Christian faith and ministry. I disagree with you on two levels.

First, I think that to call him emotionally unstable is a bit much. I guess it depends on how you define “emotionally unstable”. If you meant he is pathological or psychotic in some way such that nothing he says could be construed as reliable or trustworthy, then I have to disagree with you, fervently. Is he given to melancholy? (yes by his own admission). Does he have a lot (too much) invested emotionally in his writing and in his popularity as a blogger. I think he does. But those and his many other sins are not, in my opinion, enough to label him as “emotionally unstable” as I defined it above.

Second, I think your statement as a blanket generalization is, in fact, not true. Especially since it adds, “in any respect”. There’s no wiggle room there. Heck, I am emotionally unstable. When I go to a chick flick with my wife, I am the one who cries. I cry at those stupid Kodak commercials on TV. When we have an argument , I cry first (ok thats an old Bill Cosby joke). In a Myers-Briggs profile, I am an ENFP. More touchy-feely and wishy-washy. There is a whole story I could tell of going to seminary (no I am not in the ministry nor have I ever been) and learning lots of facts about the faith and knowing systematic theology and Greek and Hebrew and church history. And how after all that my heart was hard as stone. Only many many years after the fact did God bring me to repentance and brokenness. Therein He caused me to see the importance of the heart and affections and LOVE in such a way as to move me to a greater love for the scriptures and the gospel and HIM. But I won’t tell that story (haha). All that is to say that I know why I love Michael Spencer and what he writes. He writes from a place of brokenness and contrition and humility. No one else that I know of is writing like that on the internet. No one is that open about their struggles and sin. I can relate to him. Bloggers who: 1) have their act together or 2) who have all their propositions in a row or 3) think that exegesis and systematics is an exact science or 4) truly sound from their writing as if sin is not really a struggle for them — don’t appeal to me. Of course, I am sure that they don’t care that they don’t appeal to me since I am emotionally unstable.

Of course, many people who have spoken on behalf of Christianity in God-glorifying ways were “emotionally unstable”. William Cowper was brought forth several times in the comments on your first post and you never even responded. He was “emotionally unstable”. He spoke on behalf of Chrsitianity. He wrote in “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” -

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

That dog will hunt. And yet Cowper’s life is described, in John Piper’s sermon on him, as “one long accumulation of pain.” He suffered with severe depression his entire life. By probably anyone’s standard he would be described as “emotionally unstable”. Many other great figures of the faith suffered with darknesses and depressions and “Dark Nights of the Soul”. The Psalmist, Paul, Luther, Spurgeon and many others. Even Jesus struggled with his calling to go to the cross

I think just on the face of it your comment is in error, so here are my questions:

1. What do you mean by emotionally unstable? How do you define it?
2. As has been asked before, does William Cowper “speak on behalf of Christianity”?
3. Is there a place for openness, brokenness, confession and gospel contrition in the christian blogosphere”?
4. Spencer appeals to many readers for many reason. What do you think they are?
5. Is it possible that often what he is says is glorifying to God and edifying to the saints?

I need to end by telling you that from what I have read in your blog, I think you and I would get along swimmingly if we met in real life. You seem to me to be smart, funny and a true lover of the gospel and I really look forward to reading more on your blog.

Scott