Cousin Screwtape,

Your suggestion about the best response to the new "Snipe" website at DBU demonstrates not only your cleverness but also your pathetic grasp of the true situation. The several people who work with that site, and especially that Boone chap, have a thousand weaknesses just waiting to be exploited. You said that if there were any way to get around their one impeccable aspect, their generally high grades, and thereby undermine their credibility, their prophetic impact could possibly be limited.

You pitiful fool of a tempter, Screwtape, don't you see that everything they do is nothing new to DBU? I was well aware of the problem before the Snipe site came along! The solid theology and high view of Scripture were all over the College of Christian Faith (if only William Bell's influence were less potent!); not to mention that inerrancy is the default position of every incoming freshman if not of their most recurrent chapel speaker. The general intelligence at that site perfectly smothers dozens of professors here. The longing of so many to spend their university-related time and money being a good university and giving and receiving a good education, has ever been the driving motive of their Writing Center (may the fires of Hell consume it!).

So you see, foolish cousin, the DBU Snipe site represents nothing new, and your theory that this new development represents a new threat is quite absurd. Allow me to enlighten you: the only threat represented by the DBU Snipe site is their dangerous suggestion that all the good things about DBU--the professors and education and Christian worldview (Lousy Naugle. We'll find a way to stop him yet.)--have any relation to the rest of the school.

For many years now, I have been cultivating a strong culture of mediocrity at DBU in opposition to the University's culture of excellence. Take, for instance, the recent Spring Sing presentation. Now, it's a good thing in itself and contained a lot of talent. But such, as we both know, is the essence of the Mediocre, always our best defense against the Best and the Striving-for-Better. In fact, one might even argue that it was not a mediocre but a good thing. But notice how entirely, how beautifully disconnected it is from the original purpose of the university.

Humans may debate the exact nature of that primal purpose, and their arguments do not concern us here. For surely the purpose of a university can be agreed by all to have something to do with an education. Well, Spring Sing has nothing to do with it. It's a good thing in itself, but not the right good thing. It's not meant to attract students, but people who want to be entertained.

Now don't misunderstand. This is no strategy for attracting prospective students with one thing and then forcing them to something else; draw them in with entertainment, then after they're here force them to study hard and memorize Scripture and listen closely to lectures on the Christian worldview. That could be a dangerous thing for the Christians to use against us; but come now, you don't really think the entertainment will stop once they get here, do you?

First they'll be hit with a heavy dose of entertainment at Student Welcome and Transition week. Twice or thrice a week there will be entertaining worship music followed by an entertaining message typically containing the most mediocre use of Scripture (if we can keep Mac Brunson away it'll help) and not a few bad jokes. They'll be kept bombarded by advertisements for entertaining activities. And all of this (even the bad jokes) not necessarily bad things in themselves. But all of them such glorious Opposites of the Hermeneutics class. Such striking Antitheses to Professor Underwood's detailed teachings on business.

I remember the days when it was our goal to use the notion of democracy you described so well when toasting the Tempters College graduates to make Christians think we'll have to water down the message every now and then to help those who aren't very mature or smart because we have to reach everyone. You and I knew this was only an illusion for we'll have to preach only to the foolish and immature.

Now we've got the Christians to a point where it's simply taken for granted that a year of required chapel at a Christian university includes a grand total of zero explications of the doctrine of the Trinity.

So you see, cousin Screwtape, all is in hand, every detail is safely set in its place. Our response to the Snipe site must never be to undermine their credibility. It is to make as many people as possible think that they're unjust and unbalanced for wanting real theology and real Scripture. (We just won't let those people figure out that they themselves are unbalanced in favor of spiritual milk, in favor of those who want mere entertainment instead of an education and some Scripture to chew on, in favor of mediocrity.)

Your hideous cousin,

The Prince of a City on a Hill,

Snorglak