My Frustrations With Dr. Jordan Cooper

Recently I lost my temper over Cooper's position on the Lord's Supper, and for that I emailed him an apology and I genuinely regret the personal tone of my attacks on him on social media. However, I still need to deliberate on what my frustrations are with his approach to Lutheran theology. 

I genuinely believe that philosophy and Scripture don't mix. Whenever you blend the two historically bad things happen, whether it's the Aristotlean view of the cosmos taken by Catholic scholastics which led to the persecution of Galileo and Copernicus by the church, or the Platonic view of the Lord's Supper originated by Calvin and still in vogue today. And lately I've felt that in his videos when Cooper discusses theology, philosophy wins out, and Scripture takes a back seat, while Cooper takes us through a pot pourri of various views held by the most obscure Lutheran theologians from the post Reformation age.  My frustration with this approach came to a head with a discussion on the Lord's Supper, both on Twitter and on YouTube, where Cooper attacked Lutherans for using terms like 'physical' and 'local' to describe the sacramental nature of Christ's presence in the Supper. In the course of this debate, Cooper didn't clarify his terms and caused more confusion and contradiction, using terms like 'real' and 'substantial' to describe Christ's presence with which I personally don't have any issues. Meanwhile those of us who describe Christ's mysterious presence in the Supper as 'physical', citing Luther's description of orally eating the body and body of Christ in Article VII of the Formula of Concord, were mischaractized as cannibals and believers in transubstantiation in Cooper's debate group on Facebook. This was not a healthy debate, and for some on Twitter, it created unbelief in the Lord's Supper and for others it caused them to walk away from Lutheranism altogether. To which Cooper responded with a seemingly uncaring shrug, and a confessional game of gotcha, where Cooper and his followers held the title of Confessional Gatekeeper over the rest of us, and accused us of not knowing our own confessions. There appears to be a lack of pastoral responsibility and care to Cooper's approach to online debates, where his scholastic and philosophical approach to theological terms results in a lack of clarification, contradiction and confusion that has the potential for spiritual harm. It's not edifying, when his superior knowledge of Lutheran history is sometimes wielded as a weapon rather than something to build us up in the faith. To be fair, I have profited from his podcasts over the years, and his opposition to the influence of Radical Lutheranism is something with which I can stand in solidarity. However I'm concerned with the philosophical and academic influences that maybe seeping into Cooper's thinking. Cooper himself has mischaractized this as anti-intellectualism and a hostile response to perceived East Coast elitism, a charge I deny citing Luther's own opposition to the influence of Aristotle in Christian thought, and the limits of human reason and wisdom to define things that are in essence mysterious and unknowable. "Reason is a whore...the greatest enemy of faith", said Luther during his debates with the Catholic scholar Erasmus, a quote that would be beneficial for all of us including Jordan to refamiliarise ourselves with.

In the name of Christ. Amen.

Autism and Anger Management

At the risk of sounding like an AA 12 Step program: I have a problem. The manifestation of that problem is my anger, irritability and frustration with people, whose volcanic influence can leave me seething for days, and then once it resides comes the guilt, the self-punishment, and the withdrawal. The root problem is my autism spectrum disorder which went undiagnosed until 2015, and was precipitated (I believe) by the sudden onset of cerebral ataxia when I was a five, a neurological disorder that affects the cerebellum, and causes difficulties with speech and hand coordination. You see, my brain doesn't quite work the same way as yours. Because of the stunted development caused by my ataxia, my emotional IQ is not the same as neurotypicals. (see video below).

When stress, anxiety, or anger rears itself, my logical and rational faculties take a back seat to the emotional part of my brain whose thinking and feeling processes are that of an adolescent mind. So you can see how everyday interactions can be more difficult, keeping my cool on social media is an everyday challenge because I get drawn into arguments and confrontations so easily, and then my fight or flight response tends to kick in, and my perceptions of people that disagree with me on various points gets warped so that they become public enemy number one in my mind. Its difficult enough for my autistic brain to understand and interpret social cues and responses in the real world, let alone on social media when I can't see a face or understand the tone of speech being employed.

My self awareness of how my anger manifests has grown the last few years, but my ability to manage it hasn't so much, aside from a few grounding techniques and risperidone that help me more in the outside world. So my options on how to manage myself on social media come down to three options, self isolation, limiting my time on Facebook, and self editing my responses, and trying not to get drawn into every battle. The latter seems the most doable, because outside of social media, I have very few connections to the outside world. Making and keeping friends, and long term relationships, has been a lifelong struggle for me, and my fears of rejection tend to keep me from reaching out. So for the last 20 years the internet has been my primary mode of connecting with the rest of humanity, and its very hard to break that habit especially when people make it hard to connect because they sense there's something different about you, something they'd rather not be around. In that capacity I share a lot of similarities with the YouTuber Autism On The Inside who put out this video with which I could instantly relate:

In conclusion, I'm explaining all this to explain how and why my anger flares up on social media, not to make excuses for it. Because in Lutheran circles, I'm often misunderstood and mischaracterized as some kind of monster, a hangover from my failed marriage. I really don't enjoy being this Jekyll and Hyde character, and by the grace of God, I hope to do better in future. But I can't do it without your support and prayers. In the name of Christ. Amen.