Jul 29, 2010

Unfolding My Story: Why Christians Must Act

By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 10:20 PM

A year ago today, I spent most of the day on the phone. Fear knotted up my stomach as I looked towards the meeting scheduled the next day with my old pastor before one of the deans at my school. One of the mediators at the company the old pastor sits on the board of was trying to pressure me into signing a dangerously vague legal agreement and suggesting I would get myself in trouble with the school if I did not (which wasn't true, but was still unnerving to hear suggested). By this point I had watched as the pastor and those helping him mercilessly attacked not just me, but twice as cruelly had begun to try to undermine my mom.

Every time another person's story comes to light and I hear the fear, the pain, the brokenness that I experienced come to surface in another person — another victim — I know more than ever two things. First, if only Christians would take action against churches gone wrong, this would not happen. Second, as a Christian, I am amongst those who bears responsibility to act, as I will explain below.

I have tried to back away from this church and pastor — to put out of my mind the haunting stories of the injured. Yet I find myself unable to. Every time I distance myself, something happens to reveal new, disturbing details about what is happening there. Could it be that God does not want me to ignore what is happening there?

My family and I begged for a real hearing of the evidence of abuse and the leadership decided they didn't have time for it. Instead, they spent their time looking to find faults (real or imagined) in our actions that could somehow excuse the abuse. If they were the only ones who might face the abusive pastor in the future, I don't think this would continue to gnaw at me because they want the status quo.

Trouble is, they are not the only ones in danger.

Not only are there many people within that church who are still unaware of what is happening, there are all the people who might think about visiting that church and go into it blissfully unaware. The church has kind people in it and on the surface, it appears to be a pretty standard, evangelical church. I was there for years without realizing what was going on behind closed doors. How is a visitor suppose to know after just a few Sundays?

The leader of the mediation company the pastor is deeply involved with — he is one of just three organizational directors registered with the secretary of state — advised the pastor to take many of the abusive actions he took (at least according to the pastor's own verbal and written statements). This organization, allegedly existing to help heal people facing issues such as abuse and church conflict, is a clear and present danger to the health of churches it works with. Those claiming to help Christ's people with matters such as abuse are doing the very things they are suppose to help people recover from. And, not only is the mediation company expanding its relationships with churches here in St. Louis, it just launched a Chicago office and previously opened one near Modesto, CA.

Just as Donne's famous words remind us that “no man is an island,” so too, no church is an island. This is doubly true when the church's pastor is actively attempting to influence other churches. And succeeding. When is it time for Christians to finally speak up boldly and directly?

You will not find my pieces when you look up either the church or the mediation organization, because I have not wanted to seem “unchristian” by naming names. This really does bother me. We were studying Paul in a Bible study I am in and Paul's words to the Galatians concerning the Judaizers struck me afresh. When Paul saw the Judaizers laying legalistic burdens over the Gospel, he named names. In Gal. 2, he even singled out the Apostle Peter for being led astray by the Judaizers.

I can hear people saying, “But, Tim, you aren't Paul! Are you delusional?” I know I am not Paul. I don't want to imply I think otherwise. But, when we look at what Christ tells us and what Paul tells us, we find that we are called to imitate them (1 Cor. 11.1, Phil. 3.17), looking to Jesus (Heb. 12.2). So, we should ask what God's Son would do and what his apostles would do. Following them is the cost of discipleship.

(Note the Bereans in Acts 17 are praised in Scripture for testing even the Apostles' teachings.)

How have I, how have we as the people of God become so disinterested and detached? How have we forgotten the urgency with which those who went before us defended the pure and true doctrine of the church? I know many people, certainly many of those at the old church — but not only people there — who would argue that you must overlook a pastor or priest's abuses for the greater good and to demonstrate Christian forgiveness.

Throughout the church's history, such arguments would have had devastating results. If the defenders of the Trinity had refused to fight, the heresy that rejected Christ's divinity would have almost certainly triumphed. If Augustine had seen forgiveness as necessitating never speaking out against wrongs in the church, the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith may have been entirely lost. If Tyndale, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin and countless others we don't even know the names of had forgotten the urgent need to defend the people of God from abuses in the church, where would we be today?

Consider if ten, twenty or thirty years ago people in the Catholic church had voted with their voices, their feet and, yes, even their wallets when the church tried to hide how priests were abusing children. Not only would that have assured the victims that the church actually does care, it also would have prevented the much larger scandal that is now rocking the Catholic church and undermining its mission.

Each of us bears ownership in wrongs we do nothing to right.

Many Christians (including those in the old church) won't bat an eye at attacking politicians — and applaud talking heads on TV who do the same — when they pass bills that seem to impinge on our freedoms. Why is it that we seem to accept and even applaud passionate outrage against our political leaders' public and even private misdeeds, yet think nothing of looking the other way when church leaders soil the very Bride of Christ, the Church?

Do we value our country's constitution more than we value the people bought by our savior's blood? If this were not so, would we not protest abuse by pastors and coverups by church leaders more than a president or congress passing a seemingly unconstitutional measure?

Reading Scripture reveals how odd our reactions really are. Note that while Jesus in passages such as Matthew 23 holds nothing back against religious leaders who are hurting the people of God and, as I have already mentioned, Paul does the same on numerous occasions, both our Lord and the apostle urged respect and honor to those in government (Mt. 22.21, Rom. 13.1-7). Why then do we timidly look away when clergy and church leaders — people who are ostensibly God's most visible “face” to the world — do great wrongs, but pounce with gusto on those in government, who may not even be committed to serving Christ, when they do far less wrongs?

Our priorities are messed up.

Jesus and Paul both exemplified forgiveness and love in what they teach us in the New Testament. Yet they also teach us it is right to be passionate and direct when people are harming the Church. They teach us that to value the church is to act in the defense of what is true.

I want to value what Christ does.

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