“I was just four when a hired teenage field hand attempted to molest me. Miraculously, I got away, and I told my dad. My father made three important choices that day: He listened to me, he believed me, and he took action. I was one of the fortunate ones–I had a childhood.” ― Carolyn Byers Ruch link
My view as I write.
[Trigger warning]
For the remainder of this series we will be discussing the issues surrounding child sex abuse via the Internet. It may cause those who have been wounded by such abuse to experience flashbacks, PTSD, serious anxiety and depression. I wish that I didn't have to write about this subject but I must expose the tragedy of child sex abuse in the church. Please know that i pray for you as i write this series. May God give you the peace that passes all understanding.
I am gazing out over placid blue green waters of Seacrest Beach in Florida. Yet it hides danger like sharks, rip currents, and jelly fish. I have been contemplating how often the church portrays itself as a gentle, kindly place but underneath there is danger. There is a danger because, for all of the talk about obedience, Christians and those posing as Christians are sinners.
Yesterday a reader pointed me to this post, The Loveliest Church in All the Land written by Lore Ferguson
Every time I proclaim how much I love my church, I feel somewhat suspect. I sit under teaching weekly most people only experience at conferences and special events. I sit at the feet of some of the best thinkers and teachers, men and women, in the Church today. Not for one second do I forget it.
Towards the end of this post, she admits that there are still some blemishes but they are dealing with this via church discipline!
We have faults and failures and holes and lacks. We spend much time pressing back darkness and engaging in discipline.
I am glad she wrote this before The Village Church discipline became major evangelical news. She demonstrates the stark naïveté that often leads to problems of cover up in today's evangelical church. No, Lore, your church is not the loveliest in the land. Your church engages in sinful behavior just as much as any other church. We must never forget that at The Village Church (TVC from this point) and many other churches, "There be sharks here."
Let us hope your visions of TVC's loveliness are demonstrated in the days to come.
Child pornography is child sex abuse (Graphic but necessary to make my point.)
For the duration of our series on TVC and Jordan Root, I will be referring the child pornography as child sex abuse. I am stunned at the number of people who think child pornography is a victimless crime. Already I am seeing tweets from poorly educated individuals asking the question "But did he actually harm children or only look?"
I will be writing a post on the issues surrounding child pornography later next week. Do you know that people rape little children online while children are crying for their mommies, while they are drugged, while they have been sold into child sex slavery? Did you know that babies are raped online?
Folks, we are not dealing with some guy who is drooling upon a woman who has decided to show her surgically altered enormous frontage online. (Aside, many of these women have been trafficked as well. ) We are dealing with a guy is being sexually gratified by looking at scared, traficked or drugged children being violated in all sorts of ways.
The implications of this are enormous. We are dealing with violence, violation, felony, a seriously flawed sexual identity, the willingness to cause harm to another, etc. By viewing these images, Jordan Root participated in the exploitation of little children and keep this wretched industry alive. This is like driving the getaway car for a guy who just killed his wife.
For the duration of this series, I would ask that those of you who understand this, refer to Jordan Root's crime as participating in Internet based child sex abuse. I will be writing the narrative of the Jordan Root story on Monday which will fill in some blanks. I have been in contact with Karen and she will have the final word on what is said and not said. She is an amazingly brave woman who has carefully thought through her motives in exposing this story. I am so grateful to have gotten to know her.
Two more revelations: Josh Duggar and Matt Makela (Graphic)
As you probably know, I am on vacation. I would love to post the narrative of the TVC/Root story today but my time is limited since this is a special time with my family. I want to carefully write the story and it will take many hours to do justice to it. So, here are two stories in the news right now.
Josh Duggar
The Duggar family has benefited greatly from their willingness to put their family into the public eye. They have portrayed a family that knows "how to prevent sexual sin in kids" by courtship dating, their refusal to go to beaches because of bikinis, and teaching hte boys to look to the ground when a certified Duggar immodest™ woman walks by. They show just how lovely they all are. Except, their family sins, and sins badly, just like the rest of of us sinners who go to beaches which I am about to do momentarily, wretch that I am.
The quick version:
Josh reportedly sexually molested 5 girls, some of whom are allegedly his sisters, when he was 14-15 years old. It was reported to the police one year later but the guy they reported it to is now serving 56 years for Internet based child sex abuse (56 years- Take note TVC). He was sent away by his parents for a few months to physically work very hard. His mother said he did not receive counseling but his wife said he did. Of course, they do not define *counseling.* Link and Link Both sides of the mouth still talking…Josh has resigned from his job at the Family Research Counsel in which he made a number of declarations on how to keep children safe.
My concern:
Josh Duggar is now the father of 3 children with another expected in June. Has he received professional counseling for his problem? Also, kids who molest have often been molested themselves. Has the angle been explored carefully? I wonder if there are more things swimming under the radar?
Matt Makela
A Lutheran pastor with an alleged penchant for being anti-LGBT, was allegedly found advertising for services on Grindr-a gay meet up site. He has since resigned from his church. He allegedly told one teen who cam to him for counseling that:
he (teen) would go to hell for being gay.
Here is a report from NBC news.
Christian Janeway's Story
I'm going to share a story of loss with you. It's personal, it's painful, and I hate going back through the memory, even to write this. However, I feel like it's vital that the Christian community understands this type of loss, because they're about to experience it this weekend. (ed. note: The Village Church Scandal)
The Innocence
I was eighteen. My dad sat in the driver's seat, admiring his new wedding band.
“This is perfect,” he said, “A gift from my soul mate.”
We were chatting in the car while we waited for my mom and and sister to finish getting ready for dinner. Our family had finally weathered a nasty storm, where my mother was certain my dad was having an affair with a woman at his office. (Let's call her Cassandra. She was his employer's daughter.) However, he'd worked for over a year to regain my mom's trust, and now we were all about to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.
My parents had already found new rings. His band had a little row of diamonds across the center, and they glinted in the fading sunlight.
“I don't see how your mother could ever think I would go out on her,” he said. He smiled, and spoke the words softly, with such love. “She's been with me through so much. I love her deeply, and I don't know how I could ever live without her.”
They had been through a lot. My father had a rags-to-riches career, marked by loss of dreams, recovery from drug addiction, and alcoholism. My mother had devoted herself to getting him well, and had often lost her own identity in the process. However, things changed when my dad tripled his salary by taking a new job in a different state. We'd lived there for three years, and finally felt like life was returning to normal. It was nice to see my mom relaxing a bit, and her own personality unfolding.
“No one could ever replace your mother.” I loved the winsome, tender way he said that. “Besides,” his smile turned to a sneer, “Cassandra is such a pig.”
I was a bit taken aback—why did he have to insult Cassandra to insist that he wasn't sleeping with her? Well…she did have a reputation of being promiscuous. Maybe she'd propositioned him at some point, and he was disgusted by her actions.
That made sense.
My dad was a good man. He lavished gifts on me and my sister, he was well-respected, he supported our local church, and he was even playing the part of Jesus in an Easter play that I'd written. Someone like my dad would sneer at such a come-on.
College Graduation…
Four years later, I found out my dad was leaving my mom–for a woman he'd been having an affair with for two years.
My mom attempted suicide. Three times.
I won't go into all of the horrid details of that season of my life. However, let's fast-forward to a year after my dad remarried.
Then Comes Marriage…
I was a new mom, and took my baby daughter to visit my dad and stepmom at Thanksgiving, while my husband was dealing with the insanity of final exams. I don't know why my father did this, but the day after all the other family went home, he told me directly, “I had an affair with Cassandra.”
It started right after he'd taken the new job. He said his boss wanted him to leave my mom, and marry Cassandra, but that she was a “pig,” and he wouldn't do it. “She was in love with me, though,” he said, “and used to follow me all over the office.”
He smiled, like he was proud of it. (Before you say, “You're reading meaning into his facial expressions that you don't know is there,” remember, this is my father. I know the difference between pride and shame on his face. Pride is when I won the blue ribbon in the swim meet. Shame is when I lost to one of his buddies' kids.)
The Loss
According to my white-haired sociology professor, most human beings have the ability to normalize what they're experiencing. When we look at a situation, our first tendency is to believe nothing is really wrong, and that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what's happening.
As an extreme example, he told the story of a serial killer who hid the bodies of his victims in dumpsters. As serial killers are prone to do, he became more and more bold, and started hiding dismembered legs and arms and torsos in his own household garbage. One day, a leg was sticking out of the covered garbage can that was sitting on his curb. A neighbor saw it, and (seriously?? seriously!?!?!?!) went to the serial killer's house to ask,
“Why do you have a leg sticking out of your trash?”
“Oh, I'm sorry, it was part of a medical experiment at school. Was it smelling up your house??”
“Yeah, and the flies are all over the place! Can you get rid of it?”
“Sure, I'm so, so, sorry. I'll have it out of here today.”
Two more women were killed between that neighborly request for pest control and the police finally tracking down the serial killer.
(I've looked for a source for this for over ten years. All I can tell you is that it was a part of a sociology class lecture in 2002 or 2003. I may have some details wrong. If you can find a link or a source for it, please let me know at XianJaneway@gmail.com)
This is why parents will often say, “My child could never do that!” to a beleaguered teacher who's trying to stop a bully from escalating. They raised that child, and they're sure he could never hit someone.
This is why people don't go to the ER when they first feel chest pains, because they're sure the spicy chili they had the night before is causing it.
This is why no one believes the preacher they love could be protecting a pedophile, because they've been so blessed by the preacher's teaching and pastoral care.
However, the day that my father told me the truth about his affair, I lost the ability to “normalize” anything.
I can never again see a sincere, sweet, smiling man who played Jesus in an Easter play, and automatically assume that his sweetness, sincerity, and church attendance meant he was telling the truth.
Yes, my father knelt down beside my bed and prayed with me when I was a child. Yes, he provided well, and gave me so much affection. Yes, he supported my missions trips, and bought me a car.
None of that changes the fact that he is a skilled, manipulative liar.
Plenty of people have told me that my father has “repented.” However, none of them heard the tender, soft, heart-felt denial of his affair that night in our family garage. None of them heard how much affection he can put into a lie. None of them had heard him swear on the Bible that he had not touched any drugs. None of them had to re-evaluate every childhood memory, and realize, “Oh no, he actually chose jobs that would allow him to sleep around, do drugs, and swindle money from his employers and family.”
(I later found out he bragged about having *hundreds* of women while on the road. Also, he never stopped doing drugs—he only found a better way to hide it. He even “borrowed” tens of thousands of dollars from family members and employers, claiming he was going through hard times. They're still waiting for repayment. Let me know how that works out for you!)
I can't look at my father, no matter how many tears he cries, and believe him. Now, I need evidence of repentance.
Why Am I Telling You This?
I don't share this story because I want sympathy, or need additional healing. I share this story because a loss of this magnitude is often difficult to accept. People want to believe that they're blowing things out of proportion—he's not really a lying adulterous scoundrel, he was just abused as a child, or mentally ill, or “a sinner like the rest of us,” and needs forgiveness and healing. No one wants to believe they've been scammed, taken advantage of, or had the wool pulled over their eyes. No one wants to believe they've been deceived. They want everything back to normal, and the family portrait ready for the Christmas party.
Unfortunately, the Christian community is about to experience a painful loss.
Wartburg is sharing one of the most disgusting stories of spiritual abuse I've ever heard. You will recognize the names. You will cringe at the situation. You will wonder, “How could anyone in their right mind do these things?” However, you may be tempted to say, “Oh, it's not possible that THIS GUY could actually do this. We know THIS GUY. We love THIS GUY.”
I'm here to tell you, THAT GUY can do such things. Wolves in sheep's clothing look like sheep. They live around sheep, smell like sheep, and know sheep's language. However, you'll notice that they take special care to develop systems that give them power over other sheep, and insist that you get in line. Sheep that mysteriously disappear are labeled heretics or haters. (To this day, my family believes I broke contact with my father because I'm “bitter” over his divorce. They seem to forget I sang at his wedding.)
Brace yourself: a painful revelation is coming. Once you see it, you may want to reevaluate everything this person has taught you. It's hard, but sifting through the chaff to get to the truth is worth it. It's easier to focus on God when there's no wool over your eyes.
(Quote removed at request of author)