The Church and the War Against the Innocent
While I recognize that we live in broken sexual culture and that the threats to a traditional and healthy sexuality abound, I have been hesitant to write about it.
The reason for this is I simply think that it is hypocritical to point out where the world is attacking the God given identities of children without noting that some of the church is worse…and abuses young people in the name of God.
I believe that what I wrote about Daniel one is true…but it applies more broadly than just the secular culture.
One need only look at the scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention (or the myriad cases I’ve written about in Calvary Chapel) to understand that we need to clean our own stall first.
Add to that the fact that numerous polls have shown that the morality in the church closely mirrors that of the surrounding culture so I’m less than comfortable setting my hair on fire about what “they” are doing.
I know a great many teachers and clergy…and I’d leave my kids with most of the teachers before I’d trust many of the clergy.
I will also note again that my godson graduated from the largest secular online school in the state…and it was a good education, taught by both Christian men and women and secular teachers who were of great help and encouragement. They all were a blessing.
My chief concern is always and will always be the church…the “heathen” will always act according to what they know…why don’t we?
May the Lord give us wisdom and the will to repent of our own sins against our future.
Schools have their issues, too. We must run at least one news-reported occurrence of teacher/student sexual abuse a month in my part of California. Often, the abuse isn’t reported until years later and someone (teacher/administrator) had a suspicion. It’s so sad.
Linn,
No doubt it happens in many places…we’ve had it happen in my community.
I live in the same area as Linn and see the same stories… the Principal at our small rural high school in the mid 80s in the motherload was prosecuted for relations with underage seniors. His daughter was my classmate as a freshman and she was a peach. The rest of the family moved out of state right away to escape the shame.
There have been failures in school systems, but the failures in various church systems seem worse.
I am not saying that there are not good churches/clergy/teachers out there. I’m also not saying the sins of others are necessarily indicative of all church leaders/membership. To broadly wave a brush to paint everyone in a denomination/movement because of the sins of it’s “upper level echelon” of leaders is just wrong. I’ve met and know several wonderful leaders in both the SBC and Calvary Chapel movement. Granted, these focus primarily on “staying in their lane” and focusing on their local congregation and are by no means “notable” as the world defines the term.
And I hope it can be understood that there is ZERO excuse for abuse of any sort in God’s church…and that any victims should be heard…and that justice must be served for the abusers.
However,
I suppose “tragic” is the best term I can think of here. It is tragic that, even with a myriad of reporting, media and social media outlets shedding light on these issues, we can only be responsible for ourselves…our churches. I cannot change a place in which I am not involved. In the meantime, we parents (I have an 8 and 10 year old) need to be as discerning and skeptical of our church environment as we should be about social media, tv, movies and school issues.
And, perhaps even more tragically, it seems that we all need to be even more discerning (bordering on skeptical) of clergy/leaders/volunteers.
God help us.
God forgive us.