Not too long ago a therapist friend sent me an article and said she’d thought about the church and mental health component of my blog when she read it. The article, titled 7 Spiritual Ideas That Enable Abuse and Shame the Victim covers some of the basic cultural stances toward spirituality that, while well meaning, can be counterproductive when it comes to abuse and survivors of abuse.
Recently, megachurch pastor Andy Savage made the news when he publicly admitted to sexually assaulting a 17 year old girl as a youth pastor. Pastor and theologian Ed Stetzer wrote an excellent article on the subject so I won’t try to re-hash it, just read it here.
To be fair, any problem we encounter in our culture we’re going to encounter in our churches as well. The church isn’t a magical bubble that keeps “good people” in and “bad people” out. It’s a group of broken, imperfect people being honest about that fact and finding grace, mercy, and forgiveness. I’ve heard it said that the church is a hospital for sinners not a museum of saints.
With all that in mind, I’ve been thinking though about some of the things in our own church culture that, while well meaning, can enable abuse and create environments that are enticing to abusers and dangerous for abused. Put another way, how do we make our “hospitals” safer for everyone? I don’t have all the answers but I can think of a few things that might help:
Not talking about it
Ok, number one right out of the gate: our silence isn’t helping. I do have to give the church in America (yes, I realize that’s broad) high marks for improvement in this area. Most of the time I hear it talked about though, it’s in an article or sermon. It’s good that church leaders and pastors are starting to really engage this topic meaningfully, but if we’re going to see real cultural change in our churches, it needs to come from the ground up also. From small groups that meet in homes throughout the week to our day to day interactions with other believers, it’s on us to begin bringing this topic into the light so that survivors feel safe to open up about it and abusers don’t feel safe to abuse members of the church with impunity.
Reputation over integrity
At a conference once, I heard a pastor say to a group of other pastors: “be more concerned with the integrity of your heart than with the integrity of your reputation”. Let’s face it, the church in America doesn’t always have it easy with how they get handled by the media and the culture at large. Pastors want to protect the body of Christ from slander and unfair accusation.
Can I submit that one good way to accomplish this would be to be honest about our own house cleaning. I’ve seen many pastors (including my own) do this very well and handle abuse in the church in a way that protects the abused and not the abuser, but it seems like there’s still some work to be done if the Andy Savages are getting standing ovations because their sexual assault is framed as some sort of story of redemption on their part. This leads us to….
Calling sin, sin
Abuse, of any kind, is a sin.
We need to be able to say it. From the pulpit, in the pews, in our homes. EVERY human being is an image bearer of God. The way we talk about abuse needs to reflect that.
Forgiveness
Quick pivot here: what is forgiveness? Is it a state we arrive at? A decision we make while we wait for our emotions to catch up? Is it a process we go through? If so, how long should that process take?
The conversation about abuse in the church almost always involves forgiveness in some capacity at some point. While I certainly think, at the appropriate time, that forgiveness can be a necessary part of that conversation; the way we talk about it isn’t always helpful. In fact, I’ve decided to dedicate an entire blog to the topic because I think it warrants that much nuance.
To be clear though, the way we talk to survivors of abuse in the church needs to lead with empathy, compassion, and making sure they know that the church (the relationships not just the building) is a safe place for them. The more nuanced things like what does a path to forgiveness look like, or what does forgiveness even entail for that matter, can come later when the survivor is ready.
Naive about predators
One last thought: the sexual predators and abusive people of the world know that our churches are fertile hunting grounds. In fact as I’m writing this, it occurs to me that a post on what predators look for in a church might be helpful although I don’t know how many of you all (my readers) are pastors. Bottom line: Christians can be kind, trusting, forgiving, and gracious, and predators can see that as a weakness to be exploited. Keep Matthew 10:16 in mind, being “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” means that we keep a realistic view of the world and how it works while engaging it in a Christlike way.