ENABLING ABUSE INVITES JUDGMENT
As various abuse scandals continue to rock the Evangelical church, in the UK we are waiting for the publication of a series of four independent review reports involving high profile figures (Jonathan Fletcher and John Smyth) who have cast a long shadow. It is important that such reports are engaged with, lamented, and reflected upon from a number of different perspectives.
One vital angle to take into account is the human viewpoint as, for example, we listen to and amplify the voice of the survivors who have been too often silenced and minimised. Another important perspective is the governance and safeguarding lens, ensuring that lessons are learned so that structures can be put in place to ensure churches and organisations are healthy and safe.
But ironically, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how to view these scandals from the most important perspective of all, the spiritual perspective. And I would go so far as to say that if we don’t see what’s happening spiritually, then all the other perspectives are lacking, because the spiritual aspect pervades and profoundly impacts all the others.
How should we view what has been happening in terms of the spiritual dynamics? Are the abuse scandals ‘the devil having a field day’ (a phrase I have heard contemporaries say a number of times) or is something more going on? How should we view abusers? Are they sinners whom we should pray for, longing for their repentance and forgiveness? Is it right to say things like ‘but for the grace of God there go I’?
1. Abuse is not ‘just sin’
The Apostle Paul, whilst not indulging in hyperbole, says he is the ‘foremost’ or ‘worst’ of sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15). Does this therefore mean that anyone could become an abuser? As evangelicals, we can be good at not ‘cartoon-ising’ people. We know the world does not divide up into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23 ESV).
However, we need to avoid the contrasting danger of normalising sin and particularly normalising egregious sin like abuse. Abuse is not ‘just sin’, but as Dr. Diane Langberg points out, because abuse means literally to ‘misuse power’, ‘Any study of power misused is also always a study of deception, first of the self and then of others.’[1]
This self-deception requires a persistent hardening of heart to the conscience. Well does Scripture warn of ‘the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared’ (1 Timothy 4:2 ESV). It requires a deep distortion of how someone views others, no longer image bearers but mere pawns in a game of satisfying their lusts (sexual, power, or other). To abuse someone, and then even worse to abuse repeatedly and cover it up, requires a long and concerted journey down a very dark road. So whilst, yes because sin is so evil, every human being has the capacity for such egregious sin, no there is nothing ‘normal’ about abuse at all.
Similarly this means we need to be starkly realistic about the prospects of repentance. We should note that whilst Jesus urges us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44), he pronounces woe on spiritual leaders who abuse their position (Matthew 23:13-39). There is something fundamentally different between the spiritual state of a non-Christian who sins, even to the extent of persecuting Christ’s people (like Paul for example), and a ‘Christian’ leader who has tasted the heavenly gift, and has shared in the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 6:4) but has chosen such a path of self-deceit. God’s grace in Christ is so remarkable and shocking that it may be sufficient for their forgiveness, but the layers of calluses on their hearts, and their seared conscience means that Scripture more normally sees them as having ‘taken the way of Cain… they have been destroyed by Korah’s rebellion’ (Jude 11).
2. The devil isn’t the only one at work
Of course we are in a spiritual battle, and whilst in no way diminishing personal responsibility or the Lord’s sovereignty, the devil is behind the evil of abuse. We need to draw confidence and minister grace to those wounded or shaken by such abuse, that the Good Shepherd who has laid down his life for his sheep, will not let them be snatched from his hand (John 10:11, 28).
However, depending on how churches, organisations, or even the wider evangelical subculture responds, we need to see that there may be more going on. When a Christian organisation is shaken or risks being shut down, we are quick to assign it to ‘the devil getting his way’. But where such a church or organisation has responded in an ungodly way, then Scripture more readily assigns it to the Lord’s chastening hand and judgement. Think of Paul’s warning to the Corinthians in how they were treating the Lord’s supper and their resultant illness and even deaths (1 Corinthians 11:27-32), think of the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 warning, for example, the church in Ephesus that if they do not remember their first love and repent that the lampstand will be removed (Revelation 2:4-5).
It seems that in large swathes of evangelicalism, we have been so concerned to emphasise the assurance of justification by faith, that we have neglected the active presence of God in the lives of believers and his church. By our sinful actions we can grieve the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30), God may chasten us if we are stubbornly unrepentant (Hebrews 12:6), and a church and organisation that sins egregiously can find themselves having the lampstand of God’s Spirit and the witness of the gospel removed (Revelation 2:5) or even the Lord fighting against leaders within that church (Revelation 2:16).
Ultimately God will cleanse and keep his church and throughout history where sections of the church have fallen into unrepentant sin, time and again God has cleaned house. We must consider that where there are abusive patterns of leadership, and failures to respond appropriately by churches and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic, God’s hand may be actively against us. An authentic spiritual response of really seeing this spiritual perspective is that of Isaiah as he throws himself on God’s mercy and intercedes ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’ (Isaiah 6:5 ESV). It’s important to ask, where are the Isaiah’s who see this perspective and are leading us in such a response today?
Pete Nicholas is Senior Minister of inspire Saint James Clerkenwell, London.
He is co-author of ‘Virtually Human’ (IVP)
[1] Langberg, Diane. Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church. Brazos Press. 2020.