Posts Tagged by church

I did something a little outside of my comfort zone this week. I stumbled across a blog article written by a guy who claims to follow Christ. He’s written a few books and has achieved some amount of fame writing about his experiences growing up in a fundamentalist church. I’ve heard him speak before and didn’t really care for what he had to say. Not because his content wasn’t good, but because of the tone he took regarding the people from his past. He read from one of his books and from what I heard he threw them all under the bus, cracked some jokes at their expense and then ran them all over. Not real Christ-like and not enjoyable.

Anyway, as I said, I stumbled across his blog and read an article in which he takes a rather large and well-known church to task and accuses them and specifically their well-known pastor of spiritual abuse – a rather serious accusation.

Here’s where it gets a little unusual.

Generally when I read stuff like this I consider the source and move on. I try not to get caught up in other people’s angry tirades. But in this case I couldn’t help myself.

I don’t know if this guy is right or not. My issue isn’t with his accuracy. He may be dead on, though I doubt it. Here’s why. His only source for these blog entries is one disgruntled former member of the church who admitted to some egregiously sinful behavior while a member there. According to this former member, when everything came out, the church leadership didn’t take it lightly. Not at all. He didn’t like the way they handled it and he left the church.

After reading the article, I’m not sure where I stand on the church’s actions. Mainly because I’m not sure I can believe the source. This individual admitted to some fairly heavy deception and careless, unloving behavior. That doesn’t mean that he’s the next Jeffrey Dahmer, but it does mean that you should figure his ability to be truthful into the equation. He may be right and there may be some terrible things going on in this church, but as a follower of Christ we have to be careful with our words and especially accusations of wrongdoing. You may think that’s just my opinion, but look at what Paul had to say to Timothy about this:

Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. (1 Timothy 5:19 ESV)

This seems fairly black and white. Don’t make charges and accusations willy nilly. Be careful. It doesn’t say that its never okay to question an elder, but it does say that you need to get corroboration before you throw an accusation like that out there for public consumption.

So, I called out my brother. I wrote a comment on his blog and then reached out to him on Twitter. To his credit, he responded but when I shared this scripture with him:

The one who states his case first seems right,

until the other comes and examines him. (Proverbs 18:17 ESV)

he brushed it aside and didn’t address it, choosing instead to continue his attack on his brother in Christ and the church the man pastors.

To be honest, I’ve struggled with my anger on this. It bothers me when people attack others in the name of Christ and it especially bothers me when they disregard scripture that clearly applies to the situation at hand. But mostly I think I’ve been angry because I know I’m not going to win on this one. I may be completely right about this, but it’s not going to change anything because even though this guy will probably keep responding to my tweets, he’s not going to change this behavior. He’s not going to stop posting mean-spirited things about other believers on his blog and he’s going to get paid to write more books in which he’ll make fun of his brothers and sisters in Christ. That stinks, but it has nothing to do with me. Maybe I’ll meet the guy at some point and it’ll go better than what I’ve seen so far. Regardless, God is bigger than all this. He knows what’s right in this situation and he’s sovereign. So it’ll all work out one way or another. Wonder if my brother believes that?

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