This was big news in my circles. If you missed it, you can watch it here. It is the story of child abuse that seems to fly under the radar. This is one story of many. How is it that things like this are allowed to be buried in our churches? These are churches who claim to have cornered the market on God's Word and the truth. If you aren't of them, then you are not right with God.
The importance of hiding such sin is one of appearances. We have fostered an attitude of appearances above truth. (Please note that not all churches are allowing such corruption to be hidden. There are enough, however, to warrant television media attention.) As long as we appear good to outsiders, then by all means we are good. Christ talked about this when he addressed the pharisees and called them whited sepulchres. They were beautiful outside but the inside was corrupt.
God has given us the means of taking care of sin in our midst. We love to tout Matthew 18 and church discipline. Let's face it, church discipline is hard. It hurts. The thing is, it works to keep us pure. So, instead of dealing with the sins of our leaders, we let it go. We blame the abused and ship them off to places like Hephzibah House. We cause our children to flee our religion because our religion tolerates sin in the leadership because leadership is never wrong. It is never to be called to answer because leadership speaks for God.
What is the proper course of action in questions like this? We must turn the abuser over to the law of the land. This is a crime. We must allow the sin to be pointed out and dealt with publicly in our churches, and then allow the law to take its course. So what if that means a preacher goes to jail for molesting children? So what if that means the good name of the church is called into question? How much better is it for the church to respond nobly and properly than to wait for 20/20 to pull it through the mud?
I Corinthians 11:31 says that if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. What a mockery of Christ's name when we try to cover our sin. Have we not spent years hearing sermons about sin being brought to light? We must be honest people above all others. We must not handle the Word of God deceitfully. We have got to trust that when we do what HE has commanded us, we will be safe in HIS hands. We can trust HIM when we follow HIM.
We saw this happen in 2 out of 3 churches we were in in Oregon. Both times the people just got moved out of state to other churches to pastor in. It mars the body of Christ and the name of Christ. The one fault I hold with the pastor of the NH church now is that he did not explicitly state the one guy is not allowed to do any ministries. Worship here, but you won't serve my people here. He was lilly livered in that way. There are a lot of reasons why our kids stay with us, but this is one of them. We will not put our children's lives to chance knowing that stuff is so often hidden and shoved aside. And sadly, it is the name of Christ that gets muddied in the process. :(
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