The many social justice warriors in leadership positions with the Presbyterian Church in America are working furiously to prepare new and exciting overtures for the 44th General Assembly, upcoming in June. The PCA is hopeful that these new resolutions will atone for the many sins of the old Southern Presbyterians while helping the burgeoning denomination to win social acceptance and the approval of popularly recognized authority figures. Top on the list of new proposals: a formal anathematization of the sin of noticing. The proposal’s co-author, Dr. Sean Lucas, explained, “While the contemptible baseness of noticing is evident to any Christian with a social conscience, we in the PCA want to be at the forefront of formally denouncing this great evil. Too long, we in the faith community have tolerated noticing when we should have been the first to condemn it. As Dr. Tim Keller taught us in Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs, an integral part of Gospel Neighboring is increasing Gospel Attractiveness by connecting the Gospel with baseline cultural narratives, and thereby diminishing Gospel Exclusiveness. We want to make our cities great places for everyone. Nothing I can think of would more broadly increase the appeal of the Gospel to our postmodern society than condemning the sin of noticing.”

Dr. Sean Lucas: Hopes to travel back in time to march with Dr. King.

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, Antonio Gramsci Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, worked hand-in-hand with Dr. Lucas to formulate the new proposal. “If the Nazis hadn’t noticed that the Jews were actively debasing Germany during the Weimar era, the Holocaust would have never occurred, in which 6 million of the 2.4 million Jews in German-occupied Europe were mercilessly slaughtered, and their remains turned into useful household products like soap and lampshades. If white Southerners and South African Boers hadn’t noticed the criminal propensities of blacks, their reckless envy of whites and white accomplishment, and their general affinity for strongman-rule, we would have never had the brutal horrors of Jim Crow and apartheid. If Jesus Himself hadn’t noticed the man-made traditions and self-idolatry of the Pharisees, the specter of anti-Semitism would have never reared its ugly head. Noticing led to the greatest acts of oppression and injustice ever known in human history.”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan: Has plans to translate the Westminster Confession into Ebonics without using the phrase “mother incest”.

As with Lucas, many social justice warriors in the PCA were inspired to action by Dr. Tim Keller’s extensive efforts to spread the social gospel. Keller would not grant Tribal Theocrat an interview, having had some regrettable past experiences when speaking extemporaneously, but sent this prepared statement instead: “Not noticing is the very essence of the Gospel. God does not notice our sins, but instead sees Christ’s righteousness when He looks at us. If we have Gospel Vision, we will not notice other men’s faults, but only see God’s desire that they be saved. Brother John Piper’s excellent work on the 13 wills of God has taught us that His seventh and perfect will is His unrequited love for all men, that they would universally be saved. God’s greatest longing is human flourishing. He wants us to make our cities great places where injustice, oppression, and inequalities are a thing of the past. At its heart, the sin of noticing engenders what my favorite philosopher Georg Lukacs termed a ‘false consciousness’. This is the false representation of dominant social relations in the consciousness of the lower classes that hides the reality of their exploitation. Our scriptures teach us that we are one in Christ, just as all the great faith traditions of the world, on some level, teach the desirability of unity with God. If we view others and see anything but Christ, we don’t have Gospel Vision. Sin doesn’t send anyone to Hell; Heaven is full of sinners. What sends human beings to Hell is self-righteousness, and self-righteousness is the cornerstone of noticing.”

Dr. Tim Keller: Guests at his “dream dinner party” include Simon Magus, Moses Hess, and Louis Cyphre.

Rev. Scott Sauls, author of Hiding Your Light: Going Along to Get Along and a well-known voice in the war on noticing, told Tribal Theocrat, “I spent a lot of time under Dr. Keller, and he is a tireless teacher for any willing pupil. One thing we often discussed during our time together is Scripture’s metanarrative. The overarching theme of our scripture is God’s ceaseless desire to reconcile human beings to each other, and nothing confounds His reconciliatory efforts more than when human beings notice differences. In the Genesis allegory, humanity originally fell from grace when Abel oppressed Cain by refusing to share his offering with Cain. In a moment of shortsightedness, the Lord noticed that Abel’s offering was better, and this led to injustice and division. The Lord pled with Cain to forgive his brother, but the wound was too deep. In His regret over what had happened, the Lord vowed to one day bring a Messiah who would eliminate all differences and unite human beings once again. That reality, of course, was realized in Jesus Christ. When we sinfully notice human differences, we confound the work of Christ, and that makes Him very, very sad.”

Rev. Scott Sauls: Cultural conformist and selective amnesiac (sometimes forgets what denomination he’s in when ordaining women).

Controversial Presbyterian Kinist, Kenneth Martel, Tribal Theocrat’s go-to contrarian, was unsurprisingly disdainful of the new proposal. “This is just as absurd as abominating inductive reasoning! People notice, they classify, they generalize, and yes, they stereotype. This is the way we learn about the world and are able to successfully interact with it. Without it, every encounter is a new encounter; every particular is a new particular, and every fact an unrelated fact. It is the destruction of universals and the destruction of meaning. These so-called theologians have no problem when we notice and classify types of trees or breeds of dogs, but when you notice that a certain group of people tend to make rotten neighbors, the excommunication proceedings begin. Generalizations do not exclude exceptions, but they permit us to anticipate and interact with the world on the basis of past experience. The PCA is dead, and Keller’s a Marxist, just like his favorite philosopher Lukacs! God help us!”

Tribal Theocrat shared Martel’s provocative statement with Drs. Lucas and Duncan, who immediately went to work, revising their resolution to include a condemnation of inductive reasoning. “If we can tweak it just right, we have no doubt that we can usher in a new age of the universal brotherhood of man. What separates us is nothing compared to what brings us together. Let’s quit noticing the differences, and stop this incessant use of inductive reasoning to classify human beings and make generalizations about them. Cynics will doubtlessly call us Utopians, but human nature isn’t so immalleable that it can’t be perfected. After all, as Dr. Keller has shown us, social progress through a synthesis of opposites is historically inevitable.”