Recently, my friends over at GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) shared a Facebook post asking, “What are reasons why sexual assault survivors don’t feel safe sharing about their abuse to professing Christians?” The responses are all things that I hear often from survivors of abuse. Survivors are often hurt by these cliches and church leaders, ironically, think they are helping survivors by using them. It’s a shame that sexual assault survivors have survived their abuse only to be forced to survive churches. It’s akin to someone showing up at a hospital with critical gunshot wounds only to be shamed, lectured, told to forgive the shooter, or turned away by the trauma doctor for being too disruptive to the hospital. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s exactly how spiritual wounds are (mis)treated in many churches. Pastors are spiritual doctors, so why do so many of them verbally assault the wounded and protect the ones who caused the wounds? Here are some of the most common cliches abuse survivors hear from church leaders and other Christians:
You need to forgive and move on
Forgive and forget.
A sin is a sin, so what your abuser did is no worse than any of your sins.
This is too ugly/inappropriate so please don’t discuss it again.
I understand exactly how you feel.
Why didn’t you scream if you didn’t want this to happen?
If you knew that sex was wrong, why didn’t you stop it?
What did you do/wear to “tempt” the perpetrator?
Because I’m a minister, I know many intricacies of church leadership and routinely witness bad theology breeding bad practices. The overwhelming majority of churches I’ve personally interacted with are sympathetic to the abuser and rarely mention victims of abuse. Here are some of the most common questions I’ve been asked by church leaders, in order of frequency:
How do we keep the offender involved in the life of the church?
Please tell us that you believe they (the offenders) can repent.
He was really remorseful, don’t you think asking us to set these boundaries is unfair?
How can we keep the offender here and still keep kids safe?
Do you think the offender was sexually abused as a child?
Isn’t it unfair to ask probing questions about his past?
In addition to these questions (some of them rhetorical), here are some of the most common statements church leaders give about the abusers:
He is one of my best friends.
He’s a good, good man and just got caught up in sin.
He did so much good and is well respected by the whole church and community.
He has so many struggles in his own life.
We love this brother and want to restore him gently.
What’s become blatantly obvious to me is that churches are incredibly good at telling survivors what they must do to “get right with God” and are even better at defending the offenders whom they assume are already right with God. It’s troubling that we go to such great lengths to ensure abusers remain active in the life of the church while their victims are told to just move on. When we place blame on victims of oppression while defending the oppressor, we fail to hate the things God hates and love the things God loves. There is no excuse for leaders who take the above approach.
I am a full time minister. I also happen to have turned my own father in when I learned that he had performed sex acts against children. Rather than just get angry with church leaders, though, I want to understand why they almost always defend a child rapist over the innocent children who’ve been raped by them. If we understand why, perhaps we can give them a more accurate view of God’s position. The very foundation of God’s throne is righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14). We cannot understand God’s love unless we understand that God’s core foundation is righteousness (doing what’s right and fair) and justice (doing what is deserved). If we strip away God’s righteousness and justice, love becomes twisted and it ceases to be love. A neighbor once told me her boyfriend was cheating on her and beating her. She was crying and said, “He loves me.” I told her that he, in fact, did not love her. When she asked how I was so certain I said, “Because he’s cheating on you and beating you.” I submit to you that, by very definition, love cannot protect a predator while ignoring or ridiculing the wounded. So why are so many church leaders doing it? I offer some reasons below:
1. Our theology doesn’t allow us to believe that this level of wickedness exists, especially in the church–Most of the time when I’m invited to speak places, I’m asked to ensure that I won’t say anything too graphic or that will offend someone. Christians sanitize the Bible. God doesn’t. Read Judges 19. It’s graphic. Very graphic. A kind woman was thrown out like a piece of trash to be gang raped all night long. Literally. In the morning her fingers were embedded in the threshold of the very house she was thrown from because she was trying to claw her way back to safety. The abuse was so violent that at some point she died. As she lay there lifeless, her master said these chilling words to her corpse, “Get up.” She didn’t move because she was dead. Those of you who’ve been repeatedly raped, molested, and humiliated from the time you were young children don’t want people like me to use “nice” words because what happened to you was not nice. Neither was the person who did those things. I hear the following phrase almost every time a church leader is tiptoeing around telling me that there is a predator in their church: “I don’t want to believe that he is capable of this.” Frankly, I don’t want to believe that church leaders embrace, protect, and harbor felons. But they do. I didn’t want to believe that my dad molested dozens of children in horrible, humiliating ways. But he did. My not wanting to believe it doesn’t make the abuse any less real. Some people we love and respect are capable of secretly and intentionally inflicting harm on God’s most innocent creatures for their own twisted pleasure. If we deny it, we’ll never be able to hear the pleas of victims.
2. Church leaders prefer cardboard testimonies and oftentimes confuse them with reality–Remember the wildly popular cardboard testimonies? People are paraded across the church stage holding a cardboard sign that says what they used to be then they turn it around and it says who they are now in Christ. Soft music is played and, admittedly, like many of you, I get teary eyed watching them. As a minister, I sometimes get caught up in the western idea that conversions are quick, easy, and lasting. But then I remember that life is messy. My own life is a mess. Most of the people who attend my church are a mess. We don’t have fairy tale endings to our stories.
It’s been almost 6 years since I found out that my childhood hero is a serial pedophile. I still have days where I don’t want to get out of bed. And I wasn’t sexually abused. Many survivors are struggling every. Single. Day. Some battle depression. Some have recurring nightmares. Some are medicated for severe anxiety. Some are battling eating disorders. Many have thought of or attempted suicide. The sad reality is that your story doesn’t fit nicely onto a piece of cardboard. For the millions of you who are struggling every day, who wants to see the backside of your cardboard? Your name won’t be selected to write a cardboard testimony. What in the world would you write? Your ending just doesn’t fit. Ministers aren’t comfortable with your story because a messy life to them indicates that either somehow Christ hasn’t transformed you or you’re resistant to his grace. This is a lie, of course, but it’s what they believe. This is why they tell you things like, “Forgive and move on.” Or, “Just have more faith and God will heal you.” What they really mean is, “Your story makes me uncomfortable and makes Jesus look weak.”
And I’ll give you one guess as to who has the perfect cardboard testimony. That’s right…the sex offender who spent time in prison and who now can waltz into the church professing that he had a prison epiphany. Predators give church leaders precisely what survivors can’t. There is no ongoing therapy. There are no relapses with drug addiction. They don’t have to be told to “move on.” The sex offender can be paraded before the church (and sometimes they are)–here is someone who was once lost but is now found, which leads me to my next point.
3. We no longer require evidence of repentance. . . unless you’re a survivor–John the Baptist was clear. “Bear fruit in keeping with your repentance.” All of us who claim to be repentant must bear fruit in keeping with that repentance. What are the deeds that back our words? A repentant alcoholic isn’t found at a bar. A repentant adulterer isn’t found alone in the homes of other people’s spouses. A repentant swindler doesn’t become the church treasurer. And a repentant child molester doesn’t suggest that it’s “unfair, unChristian, or unforgiving” to ask that he or she not be in the mixed company of children. Yet time and time again we witness Christians caving to the offender’s demands who claim that it is unChristian to keep them from being near children. It’s as if God looks at adult-only worship as blasphemous. Yet churches have adult-only Bible studies all the time. It’s only when we ask child rapists to participate in adult-only Bible studies that suddenly we’re being unfair.
So if churches continually cave to the demands of the offender, why do they do the opposite to their victims? At the same time churches cave to the offenders’ demands, they heap their own demands on the shoulders of victims. You need to forgive. Why don’t you move on? Don’t bring this up again.
I think we can do better. I think we must do better. There are 100 reasons why child rapists are treated better than their victims, but it all boils down to bad theology (protecting the oppressor while hurting the oppressed) and the bad theology is exasperated by the charisma of the offenders. They are incredibly convincing and are good at getting others to look anywhere but at the actual sin and crimes they committed. As long as they can divert our focus, the darkness will never be exposed and we will never be able to resist the devil.
Re: “Yet time and time again we witness Christians caving to the offender’s demands who claim that it is unChristian to put them within close proximity of children.”
I agree with your post. This sentence needs work, better editing. The offenders you are describing do not claim it is unChristian to put them in close proximity, rather they claim it is unChristian to keep them away from children.
You are correct on the editing:-) Glad you caught that error because you are exactly right–the offenders demand it is unChristian to keep them away from children. In my father’s case–he said, “How can I prove that I am well if people don’t ever let me near children?” Interesting line of reasoning. Sadly many church leaders fall for this garbage.
Sad that well-meaning people do fall for this reasoning and in the end harm more and more families by enabling the sex offender.
Such churches are incredibly phony.
Wow! First, I’m wondering if you have read Dan Allendar’s books, The Wounded Heart, and The Healing Path? If you are working with victims of sexual abuse, those two books are vital resources.
Secondly, your article resonates with me because I am a thriving survivor of child sexual abuse. My earliest memories begin at age 7, and last to age 17. I was the victim of my father (although no penetration from him), my grandfather, two men who were neighbors, and the man who farmed our land (all penetration, repeatedly, often daily). In addition, I withstood other physical, mental, verbal, and emotional abuse. My family didn’t attend church. However a sweet couple invited me to church, and at age 14, received Christ as Savior. The abuse continued; I was trapped; and told no one. I was in my late 30’s before I began to confront the past.
One area you mentioned where the church fails victims is in that of forgiveness. If I had a dollar for everytime I have been told that I have to forgive these perpetrators, I would be quite wealthy. It used to make me mad that I was being told to do something that God did not do. There is a little two letter word upon which our forgiveness hinges. It is “IF.” “IF you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Roman’s 10:9 Another place we see that word is in I John 1:9, “IF we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Recently, in a conversation with our new pastor (we recently moved), I was telling him how I had confronted my perpetrators, and told them I forgave them; (even though I still wrestled with that notion). He stopped me and asked, “How is it possible to forgive that which has not been acknowledged or confessed? You can’t.” I nearly fell out of my seat! It was not the first time I had heard that in recent months, but the first I actually heard someone say it. Now, our pastor is a true man of God. He was also raped as a child in a boarding school. It is this wrath of God, this unrighteousness, the sin I am not able to forgive, that nailed Jesus to a cross, and poured out on Him, the iniquities of us all. The forgiveness those men needed was not from me, but from God. For the first time I was totally free of them!
When ministers tell victims they MUST forgive when there has been no remorse, no acknowledgement of the horror and harm they have done, no confession, and no mention of any retribution of the cost of therapy, etc., it is as if the victim has to take care of the very person who raped them! There is something inheritantly backwards about it.
One Christian counselor I went to, when I got brave enough to tell what happened, told me I needed to seek forgiveness! It was a secular therapist who gently told me, “Carolyn, 10 year old girls do not choose to become sexually active.” This was after I put age 10 on an intake form because age 7 seemed ridiculous. I had so much to sort out! I was in therapy for 7 years, and then again for another 5, before I could finally live with it all. While the wounds have healed, I will forever bear the scars of my childhood. Like many scars, I sometimes suffer from adhesion, and they need attention. The true healing will come when I see Jesus.
Finally, I don’t let those who don’t like hearing about it keep me silent. It is not my shame, and rather than let it define me, I must acknowledge that it shaped who I am, and I am not unhappy with that. If we don’t talk about it, two very sad things happen. One is that it will remain a problem in our churches. The second is that those who have been so terribly wronged will not know the healing balm found in Jesus Christ. It is through the testimony of people like myself and others, who have had a close encounter with Jesus, that we can offer company and hope. There were a lot of rough spots along the way, but I was not alone!
Dear Carolyn, I really value your hard-won wisdom and the gift you share in letting us glimpse the harsh life of abuse and re-abuse you lived as a child and a young adult. Your experience with evil and with God is expressed so eloquently and touches many who read or hear!
Speak on! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏💕💕💕💕
Always!
I applaud you!
This is why I am currently “un-churched.” I cannot find a church where the pastoral and diaconate teams can even come close to properly handling what happened to me as a kid and the resulting PTSD.
I appeared on The 700 Club with my testimony. Non-Christians and atheists had better reactions to the testimony than espousing/professing Christians.
This situation within the church has caused me to give up looking for a responsible pastor.
Robbie357 I don’t attend church either. For a myriad of reasons. The church is just not safe. Period. I wouldn’t put myself in harms way in any other scenario why would I do it in a place that was used to destroy me as a child?
I listen to good preachers online and They have been scrutinized ruthlessly. Lol
“At the same time churches cave to the offenders’ demands, they heap their own demands on the shoulders of victims. You need to forgive. Why don’t you move on? Don’t bring this up again.”
It’s utterly appalling that this is the reality in a place which claims to represent Jesus Christ! And it’s worth noting that this reality applies to other types of abuse in the church, too. Many people, myself included, have experienced serious spiritual abuse in the church – and I’m not the only one who ended up struggling with severe anxiety and depression as a result. But the response too many times is just “forgive and move on”. In fact, when I asked for fruit in keeping with the “sorry” that was easily said, I was told that I was being “abusive” and that my words were from “the pit of hell”.
It’s absolutely heart-breaking! No wonder people are leaving the IC in droves…
Yes, this definitely applies to all kinds of abuse. Spiritual abuse is devastating to the ones who are being abused. We need to hold the abusers’ feet to the fire and keep demanding answers from churches who embrace them at the expense of their victims.
Amen!
HI Jimmy – great post!
Quick tip for your friendly fellow blogger who has a bit of an eye for proofreading:
I think you meant ‘exacerbated’ rather than ‘exasperated’.
Aha! ‘Exacerbated’ was the word I was trying to find–thank you for finding it!
You are correct, good catch!!
Jimmy, in Judges 19, there is no explicit evidence that the woman was dead on the threshold after that night of being gang raped.
All it says is that when the Levite told her “Get up, let us be going!” she was unresponsive.
She might have been unconscious but not dead.
The Levite may in fact have wielded the final death blow when he cut her body into pieces some time later.
I go into this in my YouTube presentation on The Levite’s Concubine.
https://youtu.be/lcrkUsq69lk
Barbara, that is a good point. I think the text is probably intentionally ambiguous. Whether she was dead or unconscious, it is still a horrible reminder of how evil a person can become.
So true. I’ve recently realized that I need to do a study of what the Bible says about justice because of all of the silencing messages I’ve received over the years. It’s as though the Church message is “God is just, but you don’t really want justice b/c you’d go to hell. So be grateful for His grace and mercy and just go on.” Making justice theoretical means we don’t have to DO anything uncomfortable…we can just turn a blind eye and go on with our own little lives. Yet Scripture God encourages the voice of those crying out for justice…that’s something I need to soak in b/c I too often feel as if He’s detached, b/c the Church is.
Yes, the church has not helped people’s understanding of biblical justice. Justice is a good thing. God’s foundation is righteousness and justice (Ps. 89:14). If we don’t even understand his foundation, how will we get anything else right? God’s justice means that he gives people what is owed. We will have a difficult understanding grace and mercy in their context if we don’t understand God’s justice.
Pastor, I left this comment on Facebook; was unsure if you are still reading comments from this post:
I love reading Pastor Jimmy’s work! He has such an honest but direct way of speaking.
(I was unsure if he’s still reading comments on his blog)
IMO, pastors focus more on the abusers because they feel it’s their “duty” to save them from hell, and the church is the place for such a person. How else will they hear the good news?
OR if they believe such an abuser is a Christian, they do not want this “poor person who succumbed to temptation” to feel shunned, simply b/c they were weak. They so badly want to keep them in the church so they feel loved enough to change their ways.
Pastors also tend to relish such testimonies of a person going from extreme evil to becoming “extreme for Christ.” Such a person can then encourage OTHER abusers that God still loves them, and there’s hope for them, too!
The victims/survivors of abuse simply don’t fall into any of these categories. They did nothing wrong, but since they were probably targeted, they may or may not be at least somewhat responsible in some way. So they may not deserve a full embrace from the church.
Victims may or may not know the Lord, but pastors simply don’t know what to do with them. If they know the Lord, they feel led to counsel “forgiveness and reconciliation.” Um, I was just abused and now you’re telling me to forgive and act like one big happy church family, because God says so and I must obey?
If they don’t know the Lord, they feel led to counsel them about their sinfulness and how they need a Savior. Um, I was just abused, and how you’re trying to tell me that I’m a sinner and need to be forgiven?
Can pastors hear themselves, how ridiculous that sounds??
“love cannot protect a predator while ignoring or ridiculing the wounded.” Thank you Jimmy!!
Anu, I do still read comments here (as best as I can keep up!). I think you are exactly right. It’s strange, but there is a gradual shift in our thinking where it is subtle enough that we don’t notice it unless we are intentionally aware. I often say that we know way too much about way too many people, which makes it easier to start blurring the lines between people’s motives for sin. We see lots of good in people, but we see lots of bad too. Over the years, it makes it difficult to discern who is abusive to others, who is self-injurious, who is selfish, who just struggles with temptation, etc. It’s less exhausting to just say, “Everyone is a sinner and they all need grace.” But the abusers are kind, charismatic, and convincing. That makes it even easier for church leaders to gravitate towards them and start identifying with them. This is where the “duty” to save them from hell comes in. You are just spot on.
Thank you for your insight Pastor. I completely agree about the blurred lines. And motives are very hard to discern. Even in the legal system, trying to prove intent to harm is extremely difficult.
I’ve heard that even experts and well-trained persons will be fooled by an abuser. Their disguise is so well-tailored that it’s like a second skin! A mask that is so close fitting and cleverly made to hide who they really are.
I feel for Pastors in that sense. They’re not all knowing. Including you—because of your history—perhaps you feel intense pressure to spot abusers and predators around you. So your margin for error is much less acceptable? Not fair to you at all.
My prayer is that such evil will absolutely be exposed and rooted out! And that victims/survivors will experience that warmth and acceptance they need.
Whatever He is leading you do to (and boy, is is helping so many), please continue to do so. Please know you’re being prayed for, however, and do not be too hard on yourself (if that is a struggle you have).
Carolyn
I too survived rape, sexual abuse at the hands of many. From ages 2.5 -18+ …adding more months but I am supremely in a blur over those last months.
I am beyond frustrated that people cannot tolerate the details. Sometimes I just want to get up in front of people and tell them , this is what it is really like.
Not only do we have to keep it stuffed up to only a select few, it usually ends up being the one paid who has to listen.
I think if people in the church knew how horrific it was and the utter devastation that is sometimes irrepairable , they might not be so effing hard on the survivor.
About repentance that shows fruit. I have thought a lot about this. It makes me stark raving mad inside that most of believers think that an apology or a little emotion from an abuser is suffice.
I call BS.
It says to show fruit. How do you get fruit?
First off if your tree is rotton it needs to be axed and burnt up.
So the abuser has to grow a new tree. How long does that take before that tree bears fruit? How does that new seed germinate? What kind of soil us it falling on?
I don’t know how long trees take to grow before they produce fruit. But I do know it has to have good roots. Be watered , pruned, fertilized…..and disease free for good fruit. Then it has to be polinated and grown to maturity. Even then how much fruit does a young tree produce? How many years does it take to produce a lot of good fruit?
Why then if the Bible is full of parables is fruit not taken seriously?
Why is good fruit from an evil person who is clearly producing rotten fruit all of a sudden supposedly producing good fruit after an apology?
Why does the church see that as sufficient?
There is a whole part about trees and fruit, and axes and burning bp in scripture but that doesn’t seem to matter.
To me , the whole process takes a long time to see the fruit of repentance, there are a lot of steps. Its not right that the church is so quick to say oh he’s repented. It makes me angry.
I completely agree with you. I think the heart of the issue is that tears are convincing and abusers know it. If an abuser cries on demand and says the right words, they know that people won’t demand to see fruits of repentance because they’ll feel like they are being too judgmental. It’s a highly effective dog and pony technique.