Cleansing history

I just did a little mental math, subtracting 1989 from 2014, and realized one need not be so very young to not have a lived memory of the Soviet Union. Thus, today's youngsters may not know that while the USSR's consumer products were notoriously shoddy, it was nonetheless quite advanced in photo manipulation technology. In the West, a whole subset of Soviet-watchers were experts in studying old group portraits of communist party members. By comparing older with newer printed accounts, they discovered when individuals had fallen out of favor with the party hierarchy because their faces had disappeared from the photographic record.

The USSR was brought to mind by a report by another pastor in my presbytery, Shawn Mathis, on "the disappearing works of Doug Phillips." As an internet search will quickly inform you, Doug Phillips was a prominent leader in the family-centric and patriarchial segments of evangelicalism until discredited by revelations of an adulterous affair. As Mr. Mathis reports, "Doug Phillips' lectures, sermons, articles and interviews are disappearing from... the website of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches (NCFIC) (which organization he founded)" and also from the websites of other former Phillips associates.

One can empathize readily with the shock felt when a friend is exposed as a hypocrite and a liar, and can understand why shame might motivate one to disavow the relationship entirely. However, the impulse is strange among Christians. As many critics of our faith have noted, some of the more prominent Biblical figures, such as the patriarch Jacob and King David, behaved quite shamefully (the former a deceiver and the latter an adulterer and murderer). The mature believer, of course, understands these men are not in the Bible in order to be admired and emulated, but instead to give testimony to God's grace to sinners through Christ. Such a Christian can sing David's psalms without feeling any need to deny or cover up David's sins.

Some people once admired Doug Phillips and commended his teachings, but now are attempting to remove their assocation with him from the internet's historical record. Such actions lead one to wonder whether such people lead their lives on the basis of Christian grace or on something more like the principles of the old Soviet Union.