“She eats, and wipes her mouth, and says, I have done no wickedness.” Proverbs 30:20

Mike Lawyer posted a comment on the YouTube site wherein he asks Natalie to forgive him. I reposted it below to demonstrate a pattern of Kirk behavior established by Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church, Moscow. This is the pattern:

1. Go completely scorched Earth on the target of animosity, offloading all ammo without mercy.
2. Seek qualified forgiveness for this or that — sometimes apologizing, sometimes not — but the confession and/or apology never rises to the same level as the crime.
3. Let the damage remain, uncorrected, without restitution.

Center for Biblical Counseling
I tried to send this to Natalie privately, but she isn’t receiving messages from me right now. So, I thought I would post it here.

This note is in response to a letter from Natalie to me. She made some comments about a few things I said during an interview I gave to a UI student named Hunter. Here’s my note to Natalie:

Thank you Natalie. Your response helped me to think about what went on when Hunter came to visit me. She told me she was creating a 2 minute documentary for a class she was taking at UI. I let myself get caught up in the discussion without being reflective enough about what I was saying.

All this to say that I need to apologize to you for two things and to ask you to forgive me. First, for me to talk about you, with her, at all was wrong and sinful. This is true even if I had already talked with you, but especially since you and I have never talked before, about anything, let alone the things I talked about on the video. That was sinful and wrong. Please forgive me.

Second, the things I said about you assumed things that I simply don’t know. I can’t read your mind, I don’t know your motives. I don’t even know you. For me to say that you are doing all this in order to “become someone,” goes way beyond anything I actually know. I’m not a mind reader and I should have just kept my mouth shut. I shouldn’t be thinking along those lines anyway, at all. So, that was sinful on my part. I’m very sorry. Please forgive me.

And just in case you’re wondering, I intend to take this as a lesson to be very careful, first to remember that I can’t read minds and thus shouldn’t try to “figure” people out. And second, that I have no business talking about people who are not in the room. Even if they are “public” people.

My interview with Hunter would have gone just fine had I stuck to what I actually know, and not run off into speculation.

So, thank you for writing to me. Thank you for being gracious. And please forgive me for sinning against you in these ways. The last thing you need is someone piling on.

Sincerely,

Mike

Note Mike Lawyer’s careful qualification: “I need to apologize to you for two things . . . please forgive me for sinning against you in these ways.” He hedged it. He doesn’t want forgiveness for what he did. He wants forgiveness “for two things.”

Note also that Mr. Lawyer retracted only one line: “For me to say that you are doing all this in order to ‘become someone,’ goes way beyond anything I actually know.” Mr. Lawyer withdrew this line — and this line only — because it was not a Wilson talking point. That is, Doug Wilson has never accused Natalie of this, at least to my knowledge. Thus he wrote, “My interview with Hunter would have gone just fine had I stuck to what I actually know, and not run off into speculation.”

Now notice what Mr. Lawyer did not retract:

I don’t know if there was anything that we could have done differently and I don’t think that there’s anything that we can do that we haven’t already done with or for Natalie. She’s bitter and she’s angry and she’s upset and she’s grabbing on to being a victim. (@ :08)

Greenfields put Natalie and Jamin next to each other. From what I’ve seen of journals and things like that, Natalie was not opposed to that at the time. In fact, she was madly in love with Jamin. (@ :56)

Then he moved away and got in all kinds of his own trouble separate from that and got kicked out of Greyfriars Hall and then moved away and got engaged to someone else and when that happened then Natalie — the news came out about Natalie. (@ 1:49)

Mike Lawyer let all this stand because these are the Wilson talking points, and Mr. Lawyer does not have permission to disagree with or contradict Doug Wilson.

Mike Lawyer did his job. He emptied his clip in Natalie. Took a few more shots with his apology. And successfully advanced Doug Wilson’s narrative. He did not correct the record and he did not make restitution. Textbook Kirk confession.