Naghmeh Panahi Calls Calvary Boise “Dangerous”
The former wife of Saeed Abedini has left Calvary Boise after many years, calling out the leadership and speakers as dangerous.
She posted a lengthy video on Facebook detailing the churches alleged lack of concern for the poor and alleging support for abusive practices and abusers.
Listening to her testimony on Facebook was a text book example of everything we’ve spoken of as abusive and unbiblical in Calvary Chapels.
The final straw for Panahi was this sermon preached at Calvary Boise by Paul LeBoutillier.
LeBoutillier is a regional director for the Calvary Chapel Association.
Having listened to this exposition, I hope the rest of the congregation follows Panahi out the door.
It seems like a standard Calvary Chapel exposition on piety, but people inside that system will hear it as cover for abusers and a rebuke for the abused.
I think she has ears to hear…
Wouldn’t let me comment, maybe that’s for the best.
Without your $5 million, how we gonna help da poor?! Huh!!? Huh!?
There’s a point where a church gets too big to truly function as a church.
Two or three is enough for me.
Right now it’s myself, my wife and the dog.
Good for Naghmeh!
She got out.
I left Calvary Chapel many years ago and haven’t looked back.
This is one of the good things about our modern pluralistic society’s stress on individualism, much as I hear it decried from many sides today: when you recognize you are in a place of systematic abuse, you will not be stopped by the powers that be, by the civic authorities, from freely exiting that place, whether it is a religion, a marriage, or any other institution, and the civic authorities will not punish you for doing so. If we lose this option, we have lost freedom to come out from under abuse; that is one of the things at stake in the struggle for democracy in our country today.
Here is the word-for-word faulty exposition:
This is the passage: But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27,28 ESV)
This is what he said:
“Verses 27 and 28 let me put them on the screen just to remind you of what these verses say.
Chapter six, verse 27 and 28 says, But I say to you who hear Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
And this is what I meant just a moment ago when I said Jesus said, more than just love one another.
It gets a lot deeper than that, doesn’t it?
Now the verse that you see up there, you know, that you saw on the screen, contains some really strong words,words you know like hate, people that hate you, people that curse you,people that abuse you
and and those are, those are, those are trigger words in our society today, what you actually read on the screen, even though we we read the verses we’re going to cover today.
We read them from the New King James. What I put up on the screen for you was this those verses that Tucker covered from the ESV. They’re from the English Standard Version. I did it on purpose because the words are a little more impactful. Frankly, the New King James, instead of saying those that abuse you. It says those who spitefully use you. And you know, there’s nothing inaccurate about that wording, but those aren’t the kind of words that I would typically use, and I don’t think they’re probably the kind of words that you would typically use, either we would use however words like those who abuse you. I mean that those are, those are, those are words that we know and understand. In fact, the New American Standard Bible says For those who are abusive to you, and words like abuse and abusive, they make those passages really hard, very hard, because, you see, we live in a culture today where we’ve elevated abuse or abusive behavior to, well, we’ve, let’s just say we’ve elevated it, okay.
I mean, as a pastor, if I had $1 for every time somebody asked me about divorce and whether or not abuse
was ground biblical grounds for divorce, I would be a very wealthy man.
And it’s interesting that they don’t ask about other possible grounds for divorce, but abuse is the number one question that I get as it relates to understanding perhaps grounds for divorce. And let me just let me just say, abuse is terrible. It’s hard to even find the words to describe the devastation that abuse brings into a person’s life. But as horrible as abuse is,
you’ll notice that Jesus didn’t say Love your enemies unless, of course, they abuse you, and then all bets are off.
You don’t have to worry about loving them then, because he didn’t say that.
In fact, Jesus said, love those who abuse you.
That puts it into a whole different realm than just going by a sign and seeing Jesus says, Love one another.
You see, we got to go a lot deeper than that. Jesus goes a lot deeper than that, and we have to follow him there, even though comfortable, because we’re following Jesus, we’re not following culture, we’re not following our own inclinations, we’re not following our own feelings here in this matter, we’re following Jesus. Amen.”
This should empty the pews…but it won’t.
10 years ago I would have got all wound up about this…but it’s par for the course in these churches.
This is typical Calvary Chapel-speak – avoid saying the definitively offensive thing, but hint around it enough to make sure your message gets across. In this case, he won’t outright say the offensive thing – i.e. wives should stay with their abusive husbands – but he strongly hints around it as he makes his case for the primary importance of male leadership in the home and the primacy of leadership in the church by a singular (male) pastor.
Those who would speak like this want to make sure that nothing usurps the power of the pastor or the power of the man of the household, so that is where they keep their emphases, and they will avoid directly addressing or speaking clearly to abusive situations because the implications of doing so could interfere with the power of the pastor or the man of the house. Making sure that the pastor of the church and man of the house is given and maintains their power is of primary importance, other issues are secondary. But they do so in a way to give themselves cover and able to say, “We never actually said an abused woman has to stay with their husband”, while also never actually clearly saying that she can or even should leave him and/or divorce him, or showing real concern for the abused.
If I believed that being Christian required an abused person to stay in their relationship in order to show love for their abuser, I would stop being Christian, but I don’t believe it. It’s funny that the very people who counsel others to subject themselves to abuse in marital relationships in the name of obedience to Jesus Christ, don’t always give their earthly riches to anyone who asks (not even the Amish!), as Jesus in the gospels demands; or turn the other cheek every time they, or their loved ones, are threatened (notice that Jesus made no exception to this directive, not even for protection of ones family); or give the shirt off their backs — when they have only one shirt, as would be the case with common people in Jesus’s time — to those who ask. No they don’t, but they do demand that women stay in marriages with abusive husbands.
That guy is a huge reason I’m no longer in CC. I used to work for him… Thank you Michael for posting and Naghmeh.
Feel free to remove this link she did with Julie Roys if you don’t want other sites published here:
https://julieroys.com/podcast/patriarchy-abuse-the-bible-responding-calvary-chapel-pastor/
I was just fixing to post it…thanks.