Crimes in the Church

I subscribe to a google feed that sends me news of new church and spiritual scandals. Everyday there are two e-mails in my inbox with some distressing and shameful scandal.

Not all church scandals involve a cult steeped in aberrant doctrines. Many of them involve churches similar to the one down the street from you and I. The ones that make the news are usually the ones that make it to court because someone filed a complaint. All too often, churches choose to keep their dirty linen inside the church walls. This in itself is a scandal, but one known only to God and to those who are scandalized by the complacency of it's members.

This is more than just my opinion as I've followed these church failures, and yes, they are failures and more than that, they're putting the name of Christ to an open shame...but it seems to me that most of these scandals involve either a money crime or a sexual crime. And for every crime involving churches, there has to be a victim. Sometimes it may be money donated by the congregation and then misused or stolen by the clergy, usually the pastor. The congregation is made up not only of the middle class and/or those who can afford a loss without it hurting them, but also of those who can scarcely afford to put food on their table.
Then, on the other hand, a sexual crime usually, but not always involves a young child, such as the 9yr old girl raped and victimized by her pastor.

How often when a church scandal happens and a rogue pastor is exposed do you hear that we are just supposed to pray for him and then forgive him? I agree that we need to do that as well, but we clearly do NOT need to place him back in a place of leadership. The very fact that an ungodly crime happened in the first place is an indication that there is something very wrong going on in whatever church is involved. For example, why wasn't the said wolf in sheep's clothing and his behavior discerned by someone accountable? Isn't that what elders are for?

Back when I was still a young in the LORD Christian, I sought God not only in church, but in His Word and in my prayer closet. I began to get "vibes" if you will that there were things going on in the church, (in this case, a spiritfilled church where such things as sex or money crimes should NEVER happen. The Holy Spirit was warning me, but the leadership seemed to be oblivious.

Like I said, it always seems to be about either sex or money....two of the deadliest sins that man is prone to be capable of. And two that God takes most seriously.

My friend told me that 3 years prior, during a men and boys only church outing that her son had been molested by the church youth minister. He was 13 at the time, but was so confused and ashamed that he didn't tell his mother until he was 16. At that time, she told a friend who was in leadership in the church, who then told the pastor. What happened then was beyond belief. Instead of confronting this perpertrator, the pastor preached what I heard was a firey sermon the next Sunday, and the perp ran to the altar bawling and squalling. The church took this action as "repentance" and then without any form of counseling, or removing him from his position as youth minister. What were they thinking!??

Sadly, this damaged my friend's son beyond belief. This happened many years ago, and although this young man is now grown, married and with a family, he still bears scars from this molestation. However, during the interim period he went through many difficult times that went unministered to. He'd just refused to go back to that church without telling anyone why.

And the church? Well, sexual molestation of a minor child is first of all a CRIME punishable by law. This perp should have been arrested, taken to court and jailed. Also, the church could have been sued to the max by my friend. Neither happened and he went scot free to continue his hidden agenda in the church behind closed doors. Almost.......you see, what happened a few years later, this same perp died (in perfect health" of a heart attack. The first thing that came to me was...."God will not be mocked", especially in his own house called by his name. The next thing that came to me was, "vengance is mine, saith the LORD, I will repay". Apparently, he wasn't kidding when he said that. There was simply no other answer, or reason for this person to die.

God's eye is on the sparrow, and he watches over his little ones. He warned those not to touch one of them, and what would happen if they did. Lest we not forget, we are held responsible if we turn a blind eye toward blatant and obvious sins and misconduct in the household of God.


Link: http://www.thenassauguardian.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17178:how-should-the-church-respond-to-the-rev-albert-whyley-scandal&catid=50:letters&Itemid=87

Being Told to "Get Over It and Move On"

"Just get over it and move on with God." We hear this phrase way too many times coming from well-intentioned people regarding our spiritually abusive experiences. It sounds great on paper, but in reality it is impossible. You will never "get over" spiritual abuse - you just need to get through it. For example, a rape victim cannot just "get over it and move on". They need to process their grief, and deal with the pain and emotional trauma. It's the same for spiritual abuse victims. You cannot just stuff it all to be "religiously correct", because it will never go away.

The phrase "get over it and move on" is a term that was authored and abused by authoritarian spiritual abusers to get their followers to turn their brains off so that they won't think for themselves. I can remember this phrase being used on me so many times. Whenever I showed any human emotion whatsoever, I was told to "rise up" and "get over it and move on". I would choke back my pain and grief, and stuff my emotions. While it may be the only way to win on a battlefield, it is simply not a healthy way to deal with all of life's issues. It simply serves to get you to stop analyzing and thinking for yourself.

I was an emotional basket case for the first few years after escaping my spiritually abusive situation. All of the pent-up grief, stifled anger, and repressed frustrations came tumbling out of the closet that I had been stuffing it in for years. It took quite a while to sort through all of it. Fortunately I turned immediately to educating myself about spiritual abuse, which made it much more understandable. Many people deal with spiritual abuse and don't even know what it is. It really helps to get educated on the topic.

Let's face it, if there really was a healthy way to "get over it and move on", there would not be a need for websites like this one. In my opinion, you cannot just "move on" or escape from a spiritually abusive experience. You must go through it (the recovery process), and eventually you get to the other side. It's a journey that takes time. The only way to "move on" would be to go back and erase the abuse that you experienced. Since you cannot do that, you just go through it. I think of it as a withdrawal from a dangerous addictive drug.

I have found that before I was able to go through a grieving process, I had to allow myself to become angry about the abuse I suffered. In the group that I was involved with, we were taught to passively allow someone to use and abuse us. Through this process we learn to stuff all of our emotions. This can result in people not allowing themselves to get angry when someone violates your personal boundaries - or when they do, it becomes passive/aggressive. I'm not talking about going out and beating your abuser with a ball bat, but rather, just getting mad enough inside to evict the passivity that we allowed to rule us. This passivity is the force that caused us to not only allow the abuse, but also to stuff sadness, anger, grief, and even our ability to be analytical and skeptical about what we were being taught.

Once we begin thinking for ourselves again and getting our ability to say "no" back, a flood of emotions may come back to us: anger, grief, and sometimes even hate. Anger will turn to grief, and then we can process the grief to get rid of the anger. Tolerance of our abuse will turn to hate, and then we can process the hate to bring about true forgiveness and build healthy boundaries to keep it from happening again. Sadness about being a victim will drive us to break out of our isolation, and we can begin to trust again.

Notice: The articles on this website are derived from the opinions of the webmaster of this website, and nothing more.