A bit funny how this perfect confluence formed in my life, kind of like the way three rivers converge, and by “funny” I don’t mean “ha,” I mean “what a peculiar and curious synchronicity.”
So first off, Vice wrote a bit of an expose on Pastor Wilson. Naturally he just calls it a, “hit piece.” Yeah well, at the very least what you have here are several fractured relationships and multiple wounded people you are continuing to dismiss, ignore, and attack. Near as I can tell that movement is just going to grow, and more power to them because as far as I’m concerned when you just try silence people who come to you in distress, you pretty much deserve whatever comes your way. By the way, this is not a “fluke,” this is just one of dozens of articles written about Wilson over the years. Are they all valid? Probably not, but when there is that much smoke, there is a fire somewhere.
Also, he still doesn’t care. The victims might as well be an inanimate object, a pot hole in his road to success. Think about that one, I care more about the collateral damage Christ church has strewn about than their pastors do.
The SBC, that would be the Southern Baptists, also this past week continued to show a certain kind of stubborn indifference or hard heartedness towards some actual victims of abuse, too. Same vibe, we don’t care. You don’t matter.
Which brings me to Danny Silk’s book “Unpunishable” which I bought and read, and although I like him very much and I think he hit on some good points, I was struck by the same feelings. If this were a game of Jeopardy, I’ll just take wrath for 200, Alex. It’s a good book, repentance, restoration and healing, at least for perpetrators, for the bad guys. Victims are hardly mentioned, they’re either the co-conspirators or the generic back up characters in our tale about who is really important. Right? Even on the jacket of his book it says, “living with humans is messy.”
Wow. “Messy” is leaving your socks on the floor or stuffing garbage under the sofa cushions. People in leadership engaging in predatory sexual behavior is not “messy.” It is not on the same level as missing the hamper when you toss your dirty clothes in a heap.
PTSD is messy, Danny. Eating disorders are messy, depression, suicide, self harm, addiction. A lifetime of grief and bad relationships, shame and confusion, abandonment issues and rejection. But hey, at least we can help offenders ditch that orphan mentality and step into their rightful inheritance, preserve their marriages, and not lose their leadership positions! Whew, glad we could mitigate that harm and protect what’s really important….
I was also not pleased with his analogy around the prodigal son. It reminded me very much of the saying, “boys will be boys.” So your prodigal, your predator repents and comes back, and now the son who stayed is the actual bad guy, the unrepentant victim who won’t just forgive and realize that all sins are equal? Nope, not working for me at all.
Was Ravi Zacharias just a “hot mess?” Did he kind of just have a run in his stocking and some smeared mascara? Because my heart was sure not prepared for the revelations about him and I was super not prepared for the support he received from Christians who pretty much just dismissed his, “little mess.” For those who don’t know, we aren’t talking about an illicit affair, but rather, running brothels and importing foreign sex workers.
Later in the week someone went and pleaded with me to, “just comply with the state so things can get back to normal.” I was very polite on the outside, but on the inside I was more like, Oh heck no, two years into this secular horror show, I better start seeing some indictments! You don’t destroy people’s jobs, businesses, lives, families, housing, healthcare, peace of mind, right to hold a funeral or say goodbye to a loved one and then try to make it all go away with promises of a, “return to normal.” Restoration.
I don’t want “normal” anymore, now I want justice, even vengeance. I want my safety back, I want security, I want these people held accountable and I want some assurance it will never be allowed to happen again.
Yeah well, and people in hell probably want ice water.
But that’s what victims want, too. They want their illusions back, they want a sense of safety and to believe that they matter, that they have worth and value. Yes well, if they “mattered” to people, bad things wouldn’t have happened to them in the first place. We don’t violate, abuse, silence, and dismiss those who we think have value.
Restoration is not about, how can we heal perpetrators, it is about, how can we restore what has been stolen from victims, how can we give you back what was lost and taken, ten fold over??? Go read the book of Job, God’s wrath was directed towards Job’s, “helpful Christian friends,” and His restoration was directed towards everything Job lost. God made sure Job was cared for and restored.
We’ve got it all backwards. The only consistent thing here is how wrong we are.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Reblogged this on clydeherrin.
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Thank you, Clyde. 🙂
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You sound a little like Theodor Adorno.
[the critique of domination] “According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the source of today’s disaster is a pattern of blind domination, domination in a triple sense: the domination of nature by human beings, the domination of nature within human beings, and, in both of these forms of domination, the domination of some human beings by others. What motivates such triple domination is an irrational fear of the unknown … In an unfree society whose culture pursues so-called progress no matter what the cost, that which is “other,” whether human or nonhuman, gets shoved aside, exploited, or destroyed.”
[the goal of metaphysics] “Adorno appeals to the experience that thought which “does not decapitate itself” flows into the idea of a world where “not only extant suffering would be abolished but also suffering that is irrevocably past would be revoked” (Negative Dialectics, 403).”
(From https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/ )
Not a bad thing, in my book.
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Oh, interesting! I think I do agree. I’m often trying to explain how dominion is not domination. Taking dominion is a good thing, owning your stuff, looking out for your people, tending your garden. But as he has said, “domination is an irrational fear of the unknown.” Domination is all about power and control which is usually rooted in fear and tends to do a whole lot of damage to those around us.
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Yes. I would probably never use the word “dominion” myself, and would be more likely to use the word “authority,” but I would sure go along with maintaining a distinction between “having some kind of responsibility for people and things, and so needing to make decisions and exercise judgment and set limits,” all of which is not necessarily bad, and “trying to force compel coerce reality to bow to your wishes without regard for the well-being of the other,” which always is. Adorno also said “the need to give a voice to suffering is a condition of all truth.” Which implies that letting people off the hook for abusive behavior, while shushing the expressions of the suffering caused by that behavior, is fundamentally a form of lying.
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Good points. It occurs to me that what bothers me about all these things is that they are fear based which means power and control, force, things that violate our freewill.
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I love this, IB! The thing that makes Christianity so unique is the mercy and grace of God towards sinners. But when we focus on that one aspect and ignore the victims’ needs, we’re ignoring God’s justice, and even unbelievers know how wrong that is. ESPECIALLY when there’s no repentance! 🤦
PS I don’t know who Pastor Wilson is. I don’t think I want to know… 😒
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Great point about how even unbelievers know how wrong that is. Also, there’s probably a big difference between getting right with God and getting right with those around you. Repentance is supposed to be about conversion, transformation, metanoia, not manipulating the behavior of those around you.
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Exactly!
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Even though my early Christian upbringing was based on heavy law and very little Gospel, it helped me realize that the differences in sin were nothing in God’s eyes. All sin is the same, from the lusting to the actual act of fornication – from the act of hatred leading to violence or even murder. The fact that Jesus paid for all those sins is hard for most people to understand. Even the best of Christians will still look down on one sin over another. God’s mercy is inconceivable. His love is inconceivable. His forgivesness is beyond our comprehension, but it is the hope of the hoppeless and the promise that everyone can hang tight to. The idea of sin has been whitewashed by man today. No one likes to hear how bad they are, so they just ignore it. A little law never hurts.
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Ha! I certainly prescribe a great deal more gospel. more mercy and grace, more patience and forgiveness towards one another, but you are right, “a little law never hurts.” That’s a cute way to put it.
Ironically, I don’t think any of these people fully grasp the concept of empathy. He “made a mess of his marriage, he almost lost his job” are really self absorbed and materialistic views of the consequences of sin. Godly sorrow requires some empathy, some awareness of the suffering we cause others.
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Absolutely. Empathy is the way Christ lived and gave us a perfect example of how to care for each other. Once we step outside of ourselves and try to put ourselves into another’s shoes that door will open.
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I may often be a little more heathen than I admit. But I think a man who beats his wife has already divorced her in every way, just has he has divorced himself from Christ. Ephesians 5:
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Nah, not heathen at all, that’s spot on! I really love those verses in the Bible because they speak some real truth. You have to love yourself first, in order to love your wife. Grace is really reflective, what we first receive from the Father is going to be poured out on those around us.
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I was just listening to a talk on Catholic social teachings. There are two main pillars: justice and charity. What’s happening with the restoration of perpetrators is all charity and no justice. God expects us to maintain justice. He will destroy our society if we don’t. One red flag to me with Christians is the push for a patriarchy. Those people will hide abusers; it seems to go with their domination philosophy. Complementarian is just patriarchy in disguise. I believe that’s why the same problems exist in the SBC as in more hardcore fundamentalist churches.
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Good point about charity and justice. Those things have to be held in tension, you simply cannot have one without the other.
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Reblogged this on For Such A Time As This.
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Thanks for the reblog. 🙂
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While I don’t know the people you mentioned in your post, I understand exactly what you are saying. I was born and raised in the church (well, born in a hospital, of course… 🙂 ). For the past decade, I’ve found it hard to be a part of any church–part of that has to do with the church in general and the other part is circumstances. We have so thoroughly “Americanized” Christianity… so much so that it doesn’t even remotely look like what the church was back when it started in the Book of Acts. And too often we tend to “eat our own.” So there are a lot of victims out there with open wounds, and a lot of naysayers who don’t want to hear about the Gospel. It’s a travesty, and there is only one cure.
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I hear you! We really have Americanized our Christianity, and sometimes that’s not in a good way, like when it begins to run contrary to what the Bible teaches, to what Jesus actually said. A more humorous example is how Jesus spoke about how “the last shall go first,” and “follow me,” and then our churches are all about leadership training and how to be number one in whatever you are doing! Humorous because where is the “followers training” or the “how to be last in the kingdom?” We in America would find that kind of thing “weird,” often forgetting that the type of victory that Jesus spoke of is not necessarily what the modern West would define as success.
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When I stated “eat our own” I meant “judge each other harshly” or worse yet, mock. You made a great point when you asked where is the “followers training” or “how to be last in the kingdom?” I did read the Vice article. Wow, but then when I was much younger I knew of churches that were like that.
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not being Baptist or of the Mega Evangelical tribes, since I’ve just sat and stewed over the Episcopal and Anglican messes for the last two decades….
However, a few years back I ran into the blog and videos by a most zealous Christian convert,
Nabeel Qureshi.
He was great.
And it so happened that his “mentor” was the Zacharias fellow.
I learned of Nabeel while he was battling cancer, an earthly battle he would lose.
I was so taken by his zeal for his faith, his strong fight against his cancer and his never-ending fight that Islam was not a peaceful happy religion anything near Christianity.
Since his death and having listened to the eulogy given by Zacharias for Nabeel, I thought what a grand man.
Not long after it seems the grandest began to unravel.
He died and the really bad stuff came out.
I think I’m not a fan of the large and in charge “preachers” or the televangelists as they seem to be really messy folks who have no idea of their own mess.
Find me the quiet man who simply lives the word out in his day to day interactions and I think I’ll listen then.
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Ahh, amen, Julie! Yep, you betcha, “Find me the quiet man who simply lives the word out in his day to day interactions and I think I’ll listen then.” Me too! I do that everyday too, I value the words and experiences of many Christian bloggers, those without much fame and fortune who are just walking this stuff out in a very real way.
I followed the story of Nabeel Qureshi and Ravi, too. It made me feel a bit sick because the first question was, how do we protect Ravi, and then protect Ravi’s ministry? That’s the wrong question, a better one would be, how do you protect all the people who now doubt their own perceptions, who are now asking, well if he lied about that, what else did he lie about?
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I always wondered if Nabeel had any inkling as to his mentor’s dubious double life— and that makes me sad for all sorts of folks
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@Julie
I use to listen to Ravi Zacharias. In retrospect, he talked a bit too much about himself, but public speakers often do that. We talk about what we know about, our favorite subject.
Zacharias had a gift for teaching Biblical apologetics. After he died, we apparently discovered he had done some stuff he should not have done. Kind of interesting this stuff came up AFTER he died, but I suppose it could be true anyway.
King David was a a treacherous fellow. He was a murderer and an adulterer. When people acquire wealth and power, they all too often abuse it. All we can say about King David is that he was a better man because He loved God. Let’s pray that was also true of Zacharias, and let’s also pray for whoever he might have wronged.
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It made me sad Tom as I loved listening to and sharing Nabeel’s testimony even here on the blog— and I found Zacharais’s sermon at the funeral very moving— and I was really stunned learning about this secretive second life — so frustrating— I know we are all fallen but it seems more stinging when it comes from the teachers of our faith
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That’s why we put our faith in God, not man.
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Exactly
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@insanitybytes22
I have a difficult time taking anything that calls itself “Vice” seriously. Are we supposed to be surprised that an outfit dedicated to promoting sexual vices would do a “hit piece” on a Baptist pastor and his church?
I attend a Baptist Church that is Reformed. That means it has a Calvinist bent. So, I am somewhat familiar with John Calvin, and I know that Calvin has been worked over by character assassins, as have the Puritans. Frankly, the entire Christian church has been slandered and libeled by Pagans from the start.
Since you live in an area that is a hotbed of Paganism, I would imagine Conservative Baptist churches are a rarity. Do Baptists insist that the leaders in the church be men? Yes. Are their wives happy with that? They seem to be at the church that I attend.
One of the things that the Bible observes is that with respect to religion men tend to follow the lead of their wives. Why? I suspect most women would understand that better than men, but my guess is that women think Christian men make better husbands, and wives are always trying to do a makeover on their husbands.
The headache with liberal churches of our era is that they are designed to make women happy, that is, they have feminized the Gospel and the Bible. So, most men want nothing to do with these churches and “their Bible,” and that is one reason why liberal churches are slowly dying. Whereas men tend to follow the lead of their wives with respect to religion, children tend imitate their fathers. Why? I don’t know, but that seems to be Biblical too.
So, what about Pastor Wilson? Just because the Liberal Democrat news media blows a bunch of smoke doesn’t mean anything. Too many of Liberal Democrat journalists are liars, and it is a given that they would hate someone like Pastor Wilson.
That said, I don’t have much interest in Pastor Wil son’s blog. The only time I visit it is when you link to it. The posts I have read seem relatively harmless, but I have not read too many of his posts. I suppose it struck me that he made the Gospel too much about himself, but the Gospel belongs to God. I hope neither I nor Wilson are guilty of using the Bible to suit our own agenda, but I suppose Wilson’s cocksureness made me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t think he argues his case well enough. I just hope I have not been guilty of pridefulness, forgetting that it is the Bible, not Tom, that makes the best case for a moral argument.
Anyway, that cocksureness makes Pastor Wilson an irresistible target for Liberal Democrat journalists. To make an example of him, they will do anything they can away with.
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I know “feminine” is the dirtiest of all dirty words to most Christian men, but I can rarely get them to define what that means. They will often claim it’s the music, and then when it turns out most praise songs are still written by men, they are “feminized” men. I honestly don’t understand the hatred men have for anything feminine. Why do they want to marry us, anyway? Has everyone gone Greek? Men are spiritual and intellectual and women are base material beings like animals? It’s a mystery to me.
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@jilldomschot
Have you ever read the Iliad and the Odyssey? UnChristianized men tend to be full of themselves and quite brutal. That is the theme that comes across in the Illiad. Prideful men fighting over a beautiful woman.
The Odyssey is oddly quite different. Perhaps the difference is the woman, but the violence seems far less gratuitous. Odysseus comes home to his loyal and clever wife, Penelope, and he does away with the suitors who are trying to force Penelope to marry one of them, and thereby steal Odysseus’ and Penelope’s home.
There is nothing wrong with the word “feminine.” There is something wrong with trying to make a man feminine or trying to make a woman masculine.
In heaven I don’t suppose it will make any difference, but I don’t think God expects men and women love Jesus the same way.
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Okay, but what then do you mean by the church being “feminized”? It is clearly used as a disparaging adjective, despite God calling the church his “bride”…which means he feminized it from the start. But I can honestly say I don’t want a church to be skewed masculine or feminine, but to be both because the human race is composed of both. But I’m still floundering to understand what men mean when they criticize the church for being feminized. What does that actually mean? Even after some denominations allowed female pastors, few women have stepped up. So what does it mean to be feminized?
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@jilldomschot
Well, there have been books written about the subject.
https://www.biola.edu/blogs/biola-magazine/2006/the-feminization-of-the-church
We live in a culture that finds it politically correct to attack the valuing of and displays of masculinity. Hence, I am not surprised by your question, but I think you already know the answer. Without masculinity, what is the point of femininity? If one is irrelevant, so is the other.
Think about separate restrooms and locker room for men and women. According to LGBTQ activists, our gender choice is what matters. So, if he is feeling feminine, a man should be able to go into the ladies room, right? You okay with that?
Women nurture. Men keep and protect. Men stress logic and reason — the theology — of Christianity. Women show us how to love. Men seek the adventure of spiritual battles. Women give us the patience to wait for our Lord to give us victory.
The roles of men and women are age-old, and both are still needed.
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And yet, you didn’t answer the question. What aspects of church are feminized? I’m not going to buy a book. I just want examples from you. One supposed character trait of men is directness, and you are being anything but direct in your answer. Telling me I already know the answer is not an answer. You’re assuming I’m asking a disingenuous question, and I’m not. I’ve asked this question from a number of men, and the best I got back was the praise songs (mostly songs written by men) and the colors chosen for curtains and pews. I hadn’t realized until then that men wanted to decorate.
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@jilldomschot
When people say the church has been feminized, that addresses the state of of the church, not who is to blame or how exactly this feminization happened.
The Bible is the revelation of God. When we read the Bible correctly, then the Bible tells us about the character of the One we must love with all our heart, soul, strength, soul, and mind. When we impose our own desires upon the Bible, we create an idol.
What does the Liberal church believe?
— we can pick and choose from the Bible what we want to believe (discard the “myths”). This leads lots of people to become red letter Christians, and they don’t even pay much attention to those red letters.
— God is love, love, love; He will accept us exactly as we are
— Jesus was just a good, moral teacher
— Hell does not exist.
— God is into “social justice,” not justice.
Consider the converse. What would a masculinized church look like? Islam, perhaps. The extreme would be radical Islam.
Islam is a warrior’s religion. The Apostle Paul used the soldier as an example of how we should behave in the defense of our faith, but he did not call for spreading the faith by conquest and brute force, which to a large extent how Islam has been spread. Allah and the God of the Bible have very different characters.
Another difference is that in Islam the faithful must earn salvation. The Bible says salvation is a gift and portrays God as a Father who disciplines us, not just someone who loves us and fulfills our wants. Men are not especially happy to be treated like a child, but God is God, I am not.
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It looks to me as if you really are claiming that all wrong/heretical aspects of the church are feminine in nature. That is eye opening to me. It also eye opening that what is considered highly masculine, e.g. Islam, engages neither in apologetics nor in adventures but in religious ritual. I suppose you could say the extremists engage in risky warfare, but they aren’t the majority of followers. In my opinion, the church will only be helpful if it is both feminine and masculine. And as far as I can see, from my time in numerous denominations, most churches are. Most western denominations engage in a highly westernized suppressed emotional state based off logic and reason and also run charitable organizations…which might be considered typically feminine. I’m not sure modern Christians even recognize how much they are trapped in an Aristotelian worldview with dashes of stoicism, cynicism, etc stirred in. That is one reason why I’m constantly surprised at men claiming they can’t find churches that deliver expository sermons — they all do, to some extent, except perhaps some small pentecostal churches. Some of the charismatic churches have grown exponentially, and I think it’s precisely because they begin with emotional worship. Humans are ultimately not robots, not even men, and after living all week in a culture that values suppressing emotions and being intellectual, it’s a relief to find something different in a church service. The aftereffects of our modern rationalism, of course, spills out in crazy people everywhere who’ve gone post-postmodern and pagan to have something to fill their souls.
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@jilldomschot
I am not your boogeyman. I have not claimed that everything that is wrong with the church arose from feminism. Since it is difficult to define what is masculine and what is feminine, it is difficult to point to anything in particular and blame it on either masculinism or feminism.
Nevertheless, the modern Christian church is not in a good state, and I think it is fair to say we have an imbalance of the masculine and feminine. Note that you yourself have just said that such a balance is needed. When is the appropriate balance achieved?
You may find this interesting.
https://citizentom.com/2021/10/02/what-does-it-mean-to-feminize-the-church/
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I’m not looking for bogeyman, but an explanation of what it means when the church is feminized. To that question, you gave a list of heresies of the liberal church. I assumed you were claiming a liberal church = a feminized church.
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It’s interesting Tom, I pretty much knew what your response was going to be. No offense either, no hard feelings, I just find the tribalism fascinating! Without really knowing the situation or the evidence or any of the people involved, you have already decided Wilson is being unfairly persecuted by liberal pagans, and sexually immoral ones too boot. So if I were to tell you the truth of something that ran counter to your worldview, you would be unable to believe it. Therefore if I were a victim and those in power were part of your tribe, I’d just be out of luck. I would not be believed. Worse, I would probably be maligned and dismissed. Tribalism is actually where the truth goes to die.
The fruit of that notion is what we see going on out in the world all around us today and part of the reason why Republicans are not in power. No one is interested in the truth anymore, we are all just interested in protecting the tribe.
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@insanitybytes22
Tribalism? 😆
The church is supposed to be like family. We are supposed to be brothers and sisters. You are a sister. If you made an accusation against a brother, of course I would have to take it seriously.
Think about where you got that word “tribalism” from, Liberal Democrats. These are the people who invented identity politics. Could anything be more tribal? Yet, the people who insist upon making everything about identity politics (race, sex, gender, creed, and so forth) accuse Conservatives of being racists and tribal. That’s balderdash!
You said you don’t know if the accusation is true, but you already have the man convicted, and you accuse me of being tribal. That makes no sense.
I don’t know what Pastor Wilson has done, but the Liberal Democrat news media has a track record. They have no problem abusing women (pornographic ads) and children (abortion and “sex education”), but they positively revel in destroying Conservatives with accusations of sexual misbehavior. That’s rank hypocrisy. So, I see no point in taking the Liberal Democrat news media seriously until they have presented irrefutable proof.
When I don’t have any reason to trust the accuser, why should I convict the accused?
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“So, I see no point in taking the Liberal Democrat news media seriously until they have presented irrefutable proof.”
Before any of these gals were members of the “liberal democrat news media,” they WERE “reformed baptist calvinistic members of the family,” Tom. Maybe if we had taken the time to listen to them when they first came to us in distress, and actually addressed the injustices they were suffering, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are in today.
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@insanitybytes22
Do husbands abuse their wives? Yes! Are their foolish pastors who tell abused wives to return to abusive husbands? Yes.
Louisiana at one time had a law regulating the thickness of a rod that a husband could use to beat his wife. Was not supposed to be thicker than his thumb. I doubt there were many Southern Baptists in Louisiana back then, but there are plenty of nasty people everywhere.
Liberal Democrats hate Southern Baptists. So, they look for opportunities to caricature us and hope to pit Christians against each other.
The whole point of identity politics is to create division and pit people against each other. Then the government can destroy whoever it wishes, one little identity group, and frighten everyone else.
If some guy beats his wife the lady should have him arrested and locked up. If a guy beats his wife, he has violated the marriage oath. If he has done so repeatedly, he has no excuse, and she has problems too. How many times does someone have to get burnt by a stove before they stop sticking their fingers on a hot burner?
Is there anything simple about such problems? No. People are broken and people sin. That is why many communities have places for wives who fear their husbands to hide. The problem is not exclusive to one church.
We are sheep. We think we know more than we do. We often think we know how to solve other people’s problems when we don’t even know how to solve our own. We forget we are just sheep, and Liberal Democrats politicians appeal to our pride.
When a guy beats and abuses his wife, he hides that abuse. The members of his church don’t see it. Even the judge and the police have limited knowledge of the crime. So, none of us know exactly what any particular wife beater is capable of doing to his wife. That is why we need to let the lady make her own decision about trusting her husband again.
Unfortunately, we tend to take sides and point fingers. Is it likely that some people in a church will wrongly disbelieve an abused wife and take the husband’s side? Yes. That’s human nature, but that’s not necessarily a church failure. That’s human gullibility. Caution and commonsense would suggest that even if we don’t believe the wife we still should not take the chance she is telling the truth. But who wants to believe the worst about someone they think they know and like?
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You know what I’m looking for? An acknowledgement of the harm that’s been done and the suffering that was caused by these examples of poor leadership. There are 3 stories here in this post, Wilson’s is only one. I feel just as frustrated by the lib/dems and their covid tyranny as I do about Danny Silk and his inability to consider things from a victim’s perspective. Tyranny is tyranny and it really makes no difference to me what flavor it presents itself as. These are all major leadership failures having to do with power and control that have caused great injury to real live people. The whole idea of not taking sides is poppycock. Not taking sides is actually a way of condoning evil.
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@insanitybytes22
The Liberal/Democrat news media is looking for scalps. There is lawyer involved too, of course. So, I doubt you are going to see anything that looks like a confession. That would be like handing your head over to these people.
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I mean an acknowledgment of the harm done coming from us, from the body of Christ that was supposed to be surrounding these people and looking out for them.
You, like many others, can only see a need to protect the accused which was pretty much the whole point of my post.
It also explains why church attendance has declined and why conservatism/republicanism has fallen out of favor. None of these systems, organizations, tribes, will ever have my back. They do not protect the weak and vulnerable. They do not listen or care about the wounded. By nature they can only align themselves with power and status.
Ironically Tom, that is the very definition of a, “feminized church.”
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@insanitybytes22
What makes you think Baptists don’t consider the abuse of women sinful? What is wrong is to assume guilt before it is proven. That is what all this “believe the women” nonsense was about until Liberal Democrats became the target.
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Right, but when we just declare that victims are lying and that believing women is nonsense, we have gone and assumed guilt, the guilt of victims, all before it is even proven.
I’m telling you that as a woman, I would never go to a church for help with anything, ever, nor would I turn to the Republican party. Now take that philosophical truth out into the larger community. Given those conditions, why would anyone want the church or conservatives to be in charge of anything?
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@insanitybytes22
It strikes me that you are cursing the darkness instead of lighting a candle. So, step back a minute. Survey the situation with a broader perspective.
Do you actually have high expectations of human beings? Why?
As I have grown older, I have have begun to realize my own inadequacies. Instead of just being ashamed of my weaknesses, I have discerned that I am not unusual. Wisdom is a rare commodity. I don’t have much, but very few people do. It seems to me that God put us here to gain wisdom, not to demonstrate to Him that we already have wisdom. Almost none of us even have the wisdom to discern who is actually wise. Therefore, because we pick the people we put in charge our government and our churches function poorly.
What is commonplace? Seeing people doing marvelous things or dumb things?
There are organizations that focus on helping women who have been beaten and abused by their husband. Because they have more experience with the problem, my guess is that many of them are far more likely to know how to help a woman than her church. Sorry, but that is just the way I think it is. Should it be that way? Why not? You think Jesus called us sheep because we are smart?
The rarity of wisdom is the primary reason I don’t want a big government. The rarity of wisdom is why I think the church ought to focus upon teaching what the bible says to us. When we expect either the government or the church to solve too many of our problems, we expect other sheep to do that which only our Great Shepherd is capable of doing.
Am I saying we have no responsibility towards each other? No. I am just saying that we should love and protect ourselves and each other as best we can. What we can do won’t be perfect, but it is a start.
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Isn’t it funny what you happen to run across when you’re reading the news about something completely different. I haven’t, of course, read to book the see if the quote is right, but it pretty well sums up my views on mega-churches and tele-evangelists:
“I sometimes wonder whether God is much interested in big movements. I know He is intensely interested in individual souls who are wholly consecrated to Him, and wholly devoted to His cause.” — Stanley Frodsham, Wholly for God: A Call to Complete Consecration (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1934), p. 20.
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Don’t shoot. I admit. Give mercy. While watching news tonight, I said, “Of course, another flakey woman.” After reading this string of comments, know what I’ll say tomorrow night? “Of course, another flakey woman.” 😀
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I once heard John MacArthur say, You only get one chance at integrity. I like that thought. That mentality keeps us on the straight and narrow. Just forgive your leaders and let them go is just wrong. Leaders and pastors should be held to a higher standard. They are supposed to have some things sorted out. If they learn along the way that they have lost that then they should stop leading their people down the same dead end road. Good word sister.
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Oh, I really like that definition. We need our leaders to “have some things sorted out.” The past few years have been kind of rotten because we suddenly have all these people in leadership who have nothing sorted out, not in the church, not in the secular world, and not in business. Worse, we can’t even seem to agree that the whole reason we follow people in the first place is because they might have some things sorted out.
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Do you ever just get fed up with “believers” who live like they want to, with no thought as to what He wants?
Ahh Lord God! You are so patient with us.
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