You could have done better!

I sometimes receive notes from a fellow — an active Latter-day Saint, so far as I can tell — who likes to tell me that what I do, and what my associates do, is often quite poorly done.  Late last year, for example, on the spur of the moment (literally so), I posted a quick fundraising appeal on Facebook that managed to bring in several thousand dollars for the Interpreter Foundation.  (I’m grateful for the generosity of those who contributed, mostly in modest amounts.)  This fellow’s response to the fundraising appeal, though, was to write to tell me that, while he was thinking about making a donation, he probably wouldn’t, because, well, he just isn’t very enthused about Interpreter.  (And, in the end, true to his word, he gave nothing.  But I’m deeply grateful that, along the way, he kept me informed about the unlikelihood of his making a contribution!)

More recently, he’s written again to tell me that he just doesn’t think very highly of many of my blog entries and of Interpreter — even though, he assures me, he loves certain other Mormon-related periodicals.  He apparently bought a few copies of our Interpreter journal some time back and, after they had sat on his shelf for a while, finally decided to take a gander at one of them.  His verdict?  There are, he reports, “significant issues in some of the articles,” including but not necessarily limited to “weird leaps of logic.”  Still, he admits, he “could be wrong.”

“Apologetics has its place,” he tells me, “but some of it feels like a cousin of conspiracy theories: building up tons of small, inconsequential fragments that lead you to believe that Mickey Mouse killed JFK.”

Well.  I would simply like to respond, to this fellow and to others who might be inclined to similar expressions, that such comments are absolutely useless.

As of this week — quite without mentioning the podcasts, scripture roundtables, blog entries, books, conferences, radio broadcasts, scripture study aids, Old Testament KnowWhys, video-recorded lectures, and other things produced by the Interpreter Foundation — Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture has published roughly 325 articles by approximately 125 distinct authors.

In other words, there is no single Interpreter style or topic or method or approach.

Telling me that he finds “weird leaps of logic” and other “significant issues in some of the articles” (although he “could be wrong”) and that “some” apologetics seems silly to him, on a par with crazy conspiracy theories, is of absolutely no help at all.

What’s needed is specific allegations of poor logic, with specific references.  Page numbers would be helpful.  Airy dismissals of apologetics generally and vague gestures in the direction of unspecified problems serve to communicate disapproval and disdain, it’s true, but otherwise convey nothing at all, and they can’t be evaluated.

I’m reminded of a very famous passage from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Paris Sorbonne on 23 April 1910:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

But, frankly, I would be less put off by such a critic if he actually tried to point out how we stumble, or where we could have done better.  When all he says is that he finds what we do uninteresting, silly, and/or poorly reasoned, without offering specifics, I confess that I’m disinclined to take him seriously, or to care what he has to say, or to appreciate it.  I have little patience for such comments.

End of rant.

***

I had an enjoyable dinner this evening with Joseph Spencer, Ralph Hancock, Noel Reynolds, and my former student Nathan Oman — possibly Noel’s and Ralph’s former student, as well — who is visiting from Williamsburg, Virginia.  Interesting conversation is one of life’s greatest pleasures.