I will admit that John Piper lost me a long time ago. He writes one good book and then everyone seemed to start giving him a free pass on everything else he started churning out. If you haven’t read Piper, I can sum up all of his points in one sentence: “your argument against Calvinism is invalid because you are secretly a closet Calvinist and just won’t admit it.”

Piper really tries hard, but he just can’t seem to really understand how anybody that thinks differently than he does sees the world. He really just can’t see things through any other lens than his own. And this blind spot has spread among his cronies, everyone from Jared Wilson to John Ensor all fall into the same fallacy.

Recent proof of this is Ensor’s article “An Olympic Lesson for Husbands and Wives” (published on Piper’s website, and also tweeted about by Piper). The basic idea is that ice skating is an example of men leading women, and women submitting to men.

Huh?

I mean, really – was he watching the same Olympic broadcast I was? The one were the women looked more in charge than men by a long shot? I guess because it looked like the men were grunting like cavemen during the lifts… that implied headship or dominance?

First, let’s talk about the childish swipe Ensor made at egalitarians. Take out the immaturity aspect of it, and it still displays a complete misunderstanding of the egalitarian viewpoint. Its not even close by a long shot. However, it is very common idea expressed in Piper’s circles. Oh, and if someone like Rachel Held Evans had made comments like that? You would bet all of her Piper-loving critics would be all over it like the plague.

Second, let’s talk about Ensor’s completely inaccurate description of how ice skating works. I don’t even really like ice skating that much, and I still did several face palms at his ignorance. All I know is what I learn from the announcers at the Winter Olympics every four years. So how did Ensor listen to the same announcers and completely miss the statements about the woman leading this segment or that segment that the announcers made every other minute?

Distorted Reality.

You can read plenty of take downs of Ensor’s logic by other dancers and ice skaters (well, at least movies kind of about ice skaters). I want to focus on the complete distortion of what any average person should have obviously noticed about ice skating. I have always assumed the woman was the leader in ice skating. I have never met anyone that thinks a man is the leader in pairs figure skating. Piper and Ensor and other’s like them see it that way simply because they want to. They don’t let reality shape their views, they distort reality around their own views.

Look, if you want to interpret scriptures the way you want, and then completely distort reality around those interpretations… its a free country. Just quit being a prick to those that see it a different way. Which means quit lobbing stones at others accusing them of the exact same distortions and logical fallacies that you and your cronies are committing.