The Upheaval
Matthew Paul Turner’s story about the young Andrew and the spiritual abuse he received from the members/elders at Mars Hills church has seemed to open up a can of worms…it seems to have hit quite a nerve as comment after comment comes in on MPT’s blog. Matthew even had a friend guest blog for him yesterday – a post that rang true with so many of us as we come forward with our stories about abuse and the church.
My Two Cents
While I could go on and on about this subject…and I’m sure as the months progress and this blog continues I will hit this topic more…I think I’ve come down to this point.
We are ALL hurting, wounded people… Mark Driscoll and the elders at his church are no different. Period.
We can argue till we are blue in the face about how to use scripture and when to use it in an instance like this…yet that won’t really get us to the healing that we ALL desperately need. This line of attack about whether the church’s elders were right or wrong…this won’t heal the churches and make them a place for the sick and hurting to come back to. Focusing in on whether it was abuse or not…this won’t show the world that LOVE we are commanded to show…but only allow the cycle to continue to grow and become larger.
So, how do we solve this issue? Well, if I knew then I would probably be rich selling it to churches and would have a deep and devoted following myself. So, I won’t even pretend to know.
But this much I am convinced of…like I said before – we are ALL hurting, wounded people. This includes the pastors, elders, leaders of our churches that are trying their best to shepherd us from a place of woundedness themselves. They – most likely – haven’t dealt with their own pain and hurts from their childhood…they are most likely Arrested in Development themselves. They are trying to live up to the images they have built of themselves and we have bought into….but underneath they are just as scared, insecure and frightened as we are about how to live in this adult world with the tool chest of a kid.
The Plight of the Pastor/Elder/Leader
Think about it. Think about the pressure that we put on our pastors. They always are in the “fishbowl”…we are always looking out for one little mess up from them…something that we think they are totally off-base on so we can pounce on them and tell them our own two cents. “I”, we think, “I could do a better job than them.”
We forget that they are not some superhuman race…but every day people just like us. They just happen to have followed God’s call or maybe their own into a field because they knew this was where God wanted them. Can we say the same about ourselves?
Since they aren’t some superhuman race, can we expect them to never mess up? Because that sure is what I think most of us would like to think…that our pastors and elders need to be perfect before they can be in that position. And if they show that they are not, if they show that they are struggling with real sin – with lust, worry/doubt, pornography, greed, etc. – just like the rest of us – well…what do we do to them?
I know for myself, in the past, I struggled with holding the bar so much higher for these individuals than I do for myself. That if I heard of any sin a pastor admitted to in a sermon or elsewhere…well I thought he was crazy for sharing such a thing so publicly. Others commented on how it wasn’t right for him/them to share their sin publicly.
Until I stopped to think about how these men/women…how isolated they must sometimes feel. Here they are encouraging all of us to live lives of repentance, of accountability, of realness…yet they feel they cannot live the same lives because of the nature of their jobs. How lonely this must be. How they must just wish they could rip off the mask and just be who they really are…who God has really called them to be…just like us. How they want to help us identify with them as humans…so that we can all say together, “me too…I struggle just like you.”
Is it any wonder that so many of our pastors eventually crumble? They eventually succumb to the weight of the pressure on them and turn to “hidden” sins – such as pornography, adultery, gambling, and other addictions? Or the more prevalent ones of abuse? If you don’t think this is a problem in our churches…well, I beg you to start opening up your eyes and look around.
It takes an enormous amount of courage and vulnerability for a pastor to admit what he/she struggles with, and I applaud these brave men and women who do. For they – prayerfully, in the long run – will have a better chance of finishing the race strong. This doesn’t just mean of leading their congregation well, but of being healthy and whole and more like Christ themselves.
Back To My Point
So, these men & women in these roles hold up the facade that they have it all together in order to please us…or at least some of us. Perhaps they feel they are responsible for our sins…and therefore they have to hold us accountable for our sins…and in trying to do this, they become anxious to get the scriptures right at the expense of extending grace to the actual person(s) involved. In an attempt to follow the scriptures, they don’t realize they are being abusive and power-hungry Pharisees. They have “first deceived themselves and are now convincing themselves they are not deceiving themselves,” that they (pastors/elders/leaders) have any problems themselves. (Quote by Lewis Smedes)
You see, turning their attention and wrath on others who have done wrong is just a way for them to avoid their own sins. It is just a way to deflect their own brokenness and co-dependent tendencies. A propensity to abuse others usually doesn’t come from nothing…it comes from sin. Either their own sin…and from the sin that was done to them as a child. Neither of these – most likely – has never been dealt with.
I think, as I write, that this is a great ploy of the devil…the accuser. He is so good at what he does, isn’t he? He has gotten us so off track…gotten us to point the finger at him or her – at them and those people…He gets us to stereotype each other, to classify one another into groups of he against her, them against us, them against those. He gets us to stop focusing on the Mission of God and instead focus on the Church of God.
So is it any wonder that the Church is a mess? They are run by imperfect humans that are wounded and hurting. They turn around and wound us out of their own woundedness…and we in turn turn around and wound them right back out of our woundedness. The voices grow louder and more abhorrent, the abuse continues, the devil is laughing and God’s kingdom…well it sure the hell isn’t flourishing.
A while ago, God took me to some verses in the beginning of the book of Ezekiel. It felt like He was saying to me that He really wants to purify His church…and I immediately thought I knew how He should do this. Yet, I was wrong…at least I am coming to see that my ways are certainly not His ways, and my thoughts are certainly not His thoughts. That He is infinitely more compassionate and loving – even to those that I would consider the real perpetrators of evil inside our churches…the ones I would say that need to be cast out, sent out to “Gehenna” to the trash dump and let them sit in the city’s filth for a while to see the result, the consequences of their sin.
Yet, as I have thought about this issue …the issue of the brokenness of the body of Christ represented through the Church, God has broken me. Or maybe more likely He has burdened me to see his pastors/elders/leaders and the members as they truly are – Lost & Wounded…screaming out in pain – without ever saying a word.
So, I feel like I just came full circle – asking again how can I…lil’ old me help this downfall of the Church? What can any of us do? Do we just bulldoze the whole system and try to start over again? Is this what Christ did when He came to Earth?
Hmm…I don’t think those would be the answers. But I do think Christ is a good reference point. I do think that He gave us an answer…and instead of pointing fingers at all that is wrong, He wants us to stop being so gosh-darn co-dependent on one another – which is really just a way of saying, “I do not know that I can only control myself…so I am going to try to control you and in turn you can control me.” He wants us to take ownership and control of the ONLY thing we can in this world. This is where Jesus asked us to start … and Michael Jackson sung about…
