We've failed as Christians

This is an article about a sexual abuse scandal. A lot of what is said is hitting home in terms of what I have experienced in how the church handles any form of abuse.

Larry N. Victim Calls Out the Church for Enabling Sexual Abuse: "We've Failed Abhorrently as Christians" (excerpts)

With a call to repentance, a demand for justice, and a lesson in forgiveness, the former gymnast delivered a 36-minute speech that was appropriately met with standing ovation.

But although (she) has been hailed a courtroom hero...,her mission to speak out against the heinous crime of sexual abuse is far from over. In an interview with Christianity Today, (she) expressed her concern over the church mishandling sexual abuse cases and the Christian media misrepresenting God's justice by focusing wholly on "forgiveness."

"One of the area where Christians don't do well is in acknowledging the devastation of the wound," she said. "We can tend to gloss over the devastation of any kind in suffering but especially sexual assault, with Christian platitudes like God works all things together for good or God is sovereign. Those are very good and glorious biblical truths, but when they are misapplied in a way to dampen the horror of evil, they ultimately dampen the goodness of God. Goodness and darkness exist as opposites. If we pretend that the darkness isn't dark, it dampens the beauty of the light."

(She) said she spent the last 18 years poring over Scripture in search of God's perspective on sexual abuse, which had been a big pain point for her.

After a lot of tears and lot of studying the Word, she explains how she partly found her answer in John 6 where Jesus asks Peter, "Do you want to leave too?" and Peter replies, "Where else would I go, Lord? You have the words of life."

"There was a point in my faith where I had to simply cling to the fact that although I didn't understand or have the answers, I knew that God was good and the he was love," said (she). "Whatever else I didn't understand couldn't be a contradiction to that."

"Beyond that, it was learning more about God's justice, that contrast between darkness and light and how to properly interpret God's sovereignty and Bible verses that command us to give thanks or reveal God's promises of bringing goodness out of evil," she continued. "When those verses are interpreted properly they are glorious and beautiful truths. More often than not, particularly in the case of sexual assault, they're really used to mitigate and to minimize-almost as if the victim handles it 'properly,' if the victim just forgives, all of the feelings are going to go away. That's not true and that's not what Scripture teaches."

She explains that the one place that should have been her safe haven to seek help and support actually became the place that would shun her for speaking out: the church.

"Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counseled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim," (she) lamented. "There is an abhorrent lack of knowledge for the damage and devastation that sexual assault brings. It is with deep regret that I say the church is one of the worst places to go for help. That's a hard thing to say because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth. There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church."

In her impact statement, (she) had mentioned that her advocacy for victims of sexual assault "cost me my church," which she elaborated on with Christianity Today:

"The reason I lost my church was not specifically because I spoke up. It was because we were advocating for other victims of sexual assault within the evangelical community, crimes which had been perpetrated by people in the church and whose abuse had been enabled, very clearly, by prominent leaders in the evangelical community. That is not a message that evangelical leaders want to hear, because it would cost to speak out about the community. It would cost to take a stand against these very prominent leaders, despite the fact that the situation we were dealing with is widely recognized as one of the worst, if not the worst, instances of evangelical cover-up of sexual abuse. Because I had taken that position, and because we were not in agreement with our church's support of this organization and these leaders, it cost us dearly."

The situation she was referring to was the Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM) scandal. Though not a direct participant of an SGM church, (she) had "mountains of evidence" that could have been useful in the case per her church's heavy involvement in restoring former SGM president C.J. Mahaney.

"When I did come forward as an abuse victim, this part of my past was wielded like a weapon by some of the elders to further discredit my concern, essentially saying that I was imposing my own perspective or that my judgment was too clouded," she said. "One of them accused me of sitting around reading angry blog posts all day, which is not the way I do research. That's never been the way I do research. But my status as a victim was used against my advocacy."

She further asserts that we've "failed abhorrently as Christians" when it comes to the test of taking a stand against a trusted person in the church or community, but says, "we are very happy to use sexual assault as a convenient whipping block when it's outside of our community."

(She) charges that we must be willing to shine the light on the evil in our own communities, as well as others. The church seems to be just fine with pointing the finger when the sexual assault claims are targeted at the likes of USA Gymnastics, for instance, but the double-standard sets in when the abuse is happening within their four walls:

"You have that dynamic within evangelical churches where you have the reputation on the line and the perceived reputation of the gospel of Christ. But often, if not always, people are motivated by poor theology and a poor understanding of grace and repentance that causes them to handle sexual assault in a way where that a lot of predators go unchecked, often for decades. When you see a theological commitment to handling sexual assault inappropriately, you have the least hope of every changing it."

"It's devastating enough when money and medals are put against sexual assault victims. But when the gospel of Christ is wielded like a weapon against sexual assault victims, that's wicked. There's no other way to say it."

Speaking of her choice to tell N. she forgave him, (she) also addressed the problem of the church misinterpreting what forgiveness really means:

"Forgiveness can really be misapplied," she explained. "Taken within the context of my statement, with the call for justice and with what I have done to couple forgiveness and justice, it should not be misunderstood. But I have found it very interesting, to be honest, that every single Christian publication or speaker that has mentioned my statement has only ever focused on the aspect of forgiveness. Very few, if any of them, have recognized what else came with that statement, which was a swift and intentional pursuit of God's justice. Both of those are biblical concepts. Both of these represent Christ. We do not do well when we focus on only one of them."

Contrary to the forgiveness ideals projected by many Christians, (she) says THIS is what it truly means to forgive Larry N.:

"It means that I trust God's justice and I release bitterness and anger and a desire for personal vengeance. It does not mean that I minimize or mitigate or excuse what he has done. It does not mean that I pursue justice on earth any less zealously. It simply means that I release personal vengeance against him, and I trust God's justice, whether he chooses to mete that out purely, eternally, or both in heaven and on earth."

The former gymnast, who is passionate about proclaiming the gospel in all its glory while simultaneously seeking justice for victims, says there's one takeaway that she wants readers to leave with:

"First, the gospel of Jesus Christ does not need your protection. It defies the gospel of Christ when we do not call out abuse and enable abuse in our own church. Jesus Christ does not need your protection; he needs your obedience. Obedience means that you pursue justice and you stand up for the oppressed and you stand up for the victimized, and you tell the truth about the evil of sexual assault and the evil of covering it up.

Second, that obedience costs. It means that you will have to speak out against your own community. It will cost to stand up for the oppressed, and it should. If we're not speaking out when it costs, then it doesn't matter to us enough."