Outing The Discerning Reader

I had my own customer service issue with TDR which has led me to look elsewhere for books. It took them 6 months to refund my money ($200) after countless emails were sent to resolve the issue. Now, with the new direction Rob is taking TDR, I have many more reasons to look elsewhere. His decision to lash out and attack his customers is akin to an athelete complaining about his fans. Not the best approach. The progressive direction he is taking TDR is like a Country Singer deciding he is going to become a Rap Artist. Also, not a good approach. The likely outcome will be a drastic drop in TDR orders, and a merge with Sojourners.

Philip Johnson's Bookmarks:

The Discerning Reader - The story of this company's sudden meltdown is one of the saddest and most bizarre sagas of the Christian Web. The Discerning Reader is a Medford, OR-based bookselling business that over the years sponsored several excellent and well-designed Web sites—including Antithesis, Christian counterculture, and a colorful critique of postmodernism. At least ninety percent of their book recommendations were excellent and insightful. We highly recommended them for more than two years.
Then complaints began to multiply about customer service problems at The Discerning Reader. Customer-service difficulties per se are inevitable and an understandable part of doing business by mail. What was disturbing here was the coarse and pugnacious way owner Rob Schläpfer lashed out at his customers with profanity-laced abuse. We know this is a fact, because (even though we never complained about customer service,) as we have sought to understand and make sense of the changes taking place on the various Discerning Reader-sponsored Web sites, we have more than once been on the receiving end of some choice but unprintable expletives from Mr. Schläpfer.
As the controversy grew regarding Mr. Schlapfer and his abuse of customers, he began to attack the theological stance he himself had at first claimed to represent. He hypocritically wagged his finger at Reformed Christians, suggesting that their theology made them abusive and unloving. He has now given a wholesale endorsement and his highest rating to a book calling for evangelicals to embrace postmodernism. Since we once recommended this site and its sister sites with the highest accolades, we think it only fair to issue an equally strong warning: Discernment seems to be in very short supply these days at The Discerning Reader. Caveat emptor.

To Rob's credit, he did respond:

I am sending this note out to anyone who has had any contact with our online work in the last 6 months or so. I would like to have addressed it with the salutation "Dear Friends." Sadly, some of you would not consider yourselves as such today. Where this is my fault, because of something I should not have said, I am truly sorry. Where this is the result of some disagreement over a theological matter, or the direction we have chosen to take in recent days, I would urge you to put that aside for a moment.

It has been reported around the Web that in recent weeks/months I have expressed anger with some of the people I have encountered in our work, "taking them to task" in a manner that is utterly inconsistent with the values I hold dear -- values that have been expressed throughout our six years on line.

It is true. I have done so. And I would like to formally apologize. I've been wrong. I would ask all injured parties to forgive me -- for Jesus' sake, and for the glory of the gospel.

for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.


Selah.

Having said that -- with no qualification whatsoever -- I think it is important to underscore the source of my anger. It isn't because I just like to fly off the handle . . . I don't. It isn't some personal animus -- nor is it the fact that I occasionally "just have a bad day." No, there is something profound eating away at me, making it all the more needful to be kept in check -- something I have obviously failed to do, to my own shame. (It has also put me in a deep state of genuine depression for many months.)

In my last Christian Counterculture editorial, "This Is the Way of Love" (published in September 2004), I noted some important insights from author Greg Boyd regarding what I believe is the major problem that confronts the Christian community today: the tragic lack of love [and grace] among us. (Critics of Boyd's Open Theology: I know it is hard for you, but please put that aside for a moment and hear him on a point that has nothing to do with that debate. Thanks.) He writes:

"How much harm has been done to the church and to the cause of Jesus Christ because Christians have placed other considerations alongside or above the command to love as God loves? In the name of truth, Christians in the past have sometimes destroyed people, even physically torturing and murdering them. In the name of holiness, Christians have often pushed away and shamed those who don't meet their standard, creating their own little holiness club to which struggling sinners need not apply. And in the name of correct biblical doctrine, Christians have frequently destroyed the unity of the body of Christ, refusing to minister or worship together because of doctrinal differences, sometimes viciously attacking those who disagree with them."

"The unsurpassable worth of the person who doesn't share our truth, doesn't meet our definition of holiness, or doesn't agree with our "correct biblical doctrine" has all too often been neglected or denied. Which means that in such cases the truth, holiness, or correct doctrine we have defended was altogether worthless: clashing cymbals, resounding gongs, religious noise, nothing more. Such noise tarnishes the reputation--the glory--of God. It also explains why the church generally has been known for many things other than love and many things that contradict love."


I then made a comment that is very telling of my own disposition since beginning our work in 1999:

"Now I must confess that in recent years this reality has taken me from sheer bewilderment, on to near despair, and all the way to anger. And while I am ashamed of the later, there is no question in my mind that the issue at stake is the glory and reputation of God -- as Dr. Boyd suggests. This is not about "being nice" -- as one "pastor" snidely remarked to me. It is about being Godly. And being Godly means -- above all else -- loving as God loves."


There is something terribly wrong with people who call themselves "born again" believers in America today. Greg Boyd (above) nails it: we are judgmental, moralistic and almost completely lacking in the grace and love that mark God's character. As Christians, we fail to heed the most basic truth that marks the breaking in of the new age:

For the law was given through Moses;
but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

I have seen it first hand on almost a daily basis for years -- especially since opening our book ministry five years ago. Judgment. Accusation. Vindictiveness. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." It is most notorious in Reformed circles -- the people who love "the Law." But it tends to mark all too many of those who are conservative and evangelical in their beliefs. And it makes me angry. Sometimes irrationally so. For that I do apologize. Most sincerely.

Please pray for me. Having been a Christian most of my life now, I find this gnawing anger a terrible thing to combat. I find the depression overwhelming at times. And I have deliberately pulled away from our work. But I will continue to look to the Lord to restore my hope.

So let's just leave it at this:

I am sorry.


rob schläpfer