Semper Reformanda and the chilling effect of heavy-handed discipline

The RPCNA claims her roots in the historical Reformation, started by the nailing of the ninety-five theses on the door of the Wittenburg church by Martin Luther. Once the Reformation was in full swing, there was an overwhelming cry for the church to be open to the need for continual reformation. From Luther's initial claim that salvation was by faith alone, not by works, and that the church could not "sell" forgiveness for sins through the practice of indulgences, the Reformation led to study and insight into the sacraments, the authority structure of the church, the separation between ecclesiastical and secular authority, and many more.

It would be naive to believe that the church prayerfully and scripturally considered each issue with Christian charity towards those who held divergent views, but there was at least a concept that any stated position of the church was subject to scrutiny, no matter how strongly held.

Again, the RPCNA would probably consider the Westminster Assembly to be a worthy model - ministers from different beliefs and backgrounds came together to debate and agree on a common set of core principles that would establish the beliefs of the church. Yet, even the reverence that is reserved for the Westminster Confession of Faith does not preclude prayerful and scriptural consideration, and as the RP church has done, clarification and disagreement with principles held by the Assembly.

Unfortunately, the more deeply held a belief is, and the more power derived from that view, the more difficult it is to prayerfully and scripturally evaluate it. In fact, many views that have changed throughout RPCNA history have not been a result of deep, scriptural analysis, but rather a changing of the guard. This is the definition of "conservative" - a person or organization that is resistant to change - not necessarily resistant because it is true but resistant because it is change.

For example, perhaps 60 years ago, members of the RP church were not allowed to drink alcohol at all. It was also a violation to own any business that profited from the sale of alcohol. I'm not sure when that was overturned, but I do know that when I was a child in Sunday School, certain teachers were insistent that we children said the WCTU pledge - a vow not to drink alcohol - before each class.

About 30 years ago, alcohol was allowed for membership, but forbidden for ordained officers. Certain men took exception to vowing to abstain from alcohol, and war broke out, not surprisingly between the old guard - the WCTU generation who felt alcohol in any form was sinful and the new generation of elders and pastors who felt otherwise. The church had to wrestle through all sorts of issues, including whether these men who rejected these vows were appropriately ordained.

At the same time, a few women challenged the denominational position on women elders. Despite having their paper rejected and calls for church discipline, the denomination made a very interesting statement - that the church ought to have a forum to deal with controversial matters prayerfully and scripturally without the specter of church discipline.

This principle was, albeit grudgingly, applied when deeply held convictions of a capella and exclusive psalmody were challenged with papers. It was applied as "closed" session meetings were considered, when grape juice was challenged as the proper element of communion.

But... a generation passed and the need to provide an avenue for reformation was squashed by the newly minted need to enforce doctrinal purity. A doctrinal purity that was at odds with the RPCNA Constitution - specifically, rejecting the parity between pastors and elders, rejecting that deacons are non-authoritative officers, and rejecting that women can be deacons.

As a consequence, issues that are outside the "new RPCNA doctrine" have been met with strong opposition, not only in rejecting papers, but now the Diet of Worms - style recant or else...  As the world is waking up to the evil of sexual abuse, RPTS was commanded to take a strong stand - against using sexual abuse as a grounds for divorce. Not surprising, since domineering is not grounds for being deposed, but insubordination is.

More wisdom from Rachael Denhollander

This was buried deep in Rachael's response to Sovereign Grace Ministries. I think it is critically applicable to how we hear victims of institutional abuse. We see this repeated over and over. From President Trump defending his wife-beating press secretary, Rob Porter, to Sovereign Grace Ministries circling the wagons trying to justify ignoring their statutory requirements as mandatory reporters to protect their own.

I think I've gotten the same response here - just because others have had a good experience in the RP church doesn't mean that the church isn't abusive. I'm sure many, many members in SGM had a great experience, but does that really justify ignoring and denying victims of sexual abuse because that wasn't their experience?

I believe the vast majority of RP members are willfully blind to the spiritual abuse that happens in her midst.

Wisdom from Rachel below:

The Evangelical Response

This is not a case of being asked to be “judge and jury”, anymore than any of us were, or ought to have been, “judge and jury” in other instances where similar allegations and concerns were raised against other institutions. What is being asked is that we apply the same level of intellectual honesty and scrutiny that we apply to groups outside our own community where such allegations are made. Given the standard set in Scripture for what a Christian ought to be and in particular a Christian leader, I would suggest this standard ought to be even higher than we require of, say, state universities.

Put simply, what we ought to have done is treat the concerns and allegations expressed as very serious. As potentially damaging to the Gospel. As potentially deeply damaging to God’s children. We ought to have truly listened and considered that those close to us could have fallen in serious ways or made serious mistakes. We ought to have to urged and required that serious matters like this be subject to a transparent, public, independent investigation that is conducted by a group the survivors also trust, just as we expect and require such accountability for secular institutions.

Penn State University is a byword for sexual assault scandals. Yet it took Penn State a mere six days to commission a truly independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Jerry Sandusky. It took Michigan State University an excruciating seventeen months to finally request a similar investigation into the Larry Nassar case. Yet, it has been more than seven years and Sovereign Grace has steadfastly refused this sort of accountability in the face of multiple instances of abuse within the organization – even though they have been asked multiple times to clear the air.

Not only has there been no loving but firm pressure to submit to accountability and openness, the very dynamic I warned about in the Christianity Today article has been repeated. My gospel presentation and offer of forgiveness to my abuser was heralded nationally... until I applied those same principles to my own community of Reformed evangelicals.

The skill, precision, passion for truth and commitment to Christ that received wide acclaim was instantly denigrated as “zeal without knowledge”, “false accusations” and acting “without the facts”, damaging the gospel. Yet not a single person who levied or repeated this accusation asked, even once, what facts or research I had done, before making that judgment regarding me. As soon as I raised concerns about issues in my own community, it was immediately determined by some that none of the abilities and attention to detail I demonstrated to bring Nassar to justice had been utilized in raising concerns with Sovereign Grace. That I was carelessly and ignorantly damaging the gospel that I had been praised for articulating so well and courageously to Larry Nassar two days earlier.

This is institutional and community protectionism. Brothers and sisters, this is it. We need to realize that the reason we are gaining a reputation for handling these situations so poorly is not because people hate the gospel and make up lies about us, but because we have a real problem in how we think about sexual abuse and how we think about our leaders and institutions.

Rachael Denhollander on how the church minimizes abuse victims in Christianity Today

For those who don't know who Rachael Denhollander is, she was the first gymnast to publicly come forward, accuse Dr. Larry Nassar of sexual assault, and press charges against him. This led to a cascade of other brave women and girls coming forward to join the accusation, and ultimately, a guilty verdict and 175-year sentence.

The entire article is a great read... I think the interview is really enlightening about sexual abuse specifically, but much of what she says applies to any abuse situation. I think it also provides more color to the discussion about emotions - it's very tempting to, as Rachael says, tell the victim to simply forgive and that all the emotions will just go away, but that just doesn't happen.

I'm happy that she has been able to forgive her abuser and let go of the bitterness and anger. The answers, I think, hint at the length of the process involved for her to get there. It was not overnight. Instead it was a long process of first understanding, perhaps a different God than she was taught, using that knowledge to study scripture and put things in perspective and ultimately to be willing to trust in the God of goodness and love to provide true justice, whether it was only eternal or temporal, too.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-web-only/rachael-denhollander-larry-nassar-forgiveness-gospel.html

A few excerpts:

Was there a particular Bible verse or passage that you felt spoke to your situation?

One was from John 6, where Jesus asks Peter, “Do you want to leave too?” Peter says, “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 that he was love. 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. 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.

In your impact statement, you mention that it took you a long time to reveal your own abuse with other people. Was church included in that?

Yes. 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. 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.

Given your concerns that Christians can use God’s call to forgive as a weapon against survivors, did you feel at all apprehensive telling Nassar that you forgive him?

I did to an extent, because forgiveness can really be misapplied. 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 those represent Christ. We do not do well when we focus on only one of them.

...

The damage of sexual assault is extreme and it is lifelong. As much as someone forgives their abuser, as much hope as is found in the gospel, we don’t get complete restoration this side of heaven. It does not happen—that’s why the hope of heaven is so glorious. But the suffering here on earth is very real, and it does not go away simply because you forgive and release bitterness. These women are going to live, myself included, with lifelong consequences of the sexual assault, and the vast majority of this never needed to happen.

What does it mean to you that you forgive Larry Nassar?

It means that I trust in 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.

Understanding emotions and their abuse to further the RP agenda

Sorry that this took so long to post. I've been really mulling over how best to make a case and gain understanding. This is really a fundamental disconnect with RPs and many evangelicals and I have pretty much given up trying to approach this in an acceptable way.

I grew up under a brand of RP intellectualism. There were good things that happened and bad things that happened, there were things I wanted and things that revulsed me. Yet, the consistent word was that Christians were called to subject their emotions to their intellect.

For example, if we do not have "joy" in worship, we should subject our emotions to our intellect and somehow create that joy. In fact, if you read Piper, any true Christian ought to have joy by subjecting their emotions to intellect? Abusive boss? Joy! Abusive spouse? Joy! Hit your finger with a hammer? Joy!

In the same way, we are taught that there are "good" emotions and "bad" emotions in very subtle ways. For example, we learn about Jesus in Away in a Manger: "The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes." Of course, nowhere in scripture does it even hint that Jesus never cried, or that crying is somehow bad. Crying is one of the few ways babies have of expressing needs. Babies cry when they need to be held, or when they need to be fed, or when they need to have their diaper changed. Babies might express anger or frustration when their needs are not being met - when their need for food is mistaken for needing to be held, for example. Yet, we make judgments about babies based on the emotions they express - good babies don't cry or show their temper. Bad babies are easily agitated, easily angered and don't immediately calm down when given what the caregivers consider to be adequate care and attention.

We have negative terms - "terrible twos", "teenagers" to express important stages of life where children begin to understand and respond in ways that show they are separate people from their parents with sometimes conflicting desires and needs. The church recommends books where these important stages of life are met with firm, consistent discipline meant to show children who is the superior (the parent) and who is the inferior (the child). In fact, one pastor at the International Conference had sage advice. It was the parents' responsibility to upstage the child. If the child shouted, the parent had to raise their voice to talk over the child. It was so important to this pastor that the parents were superior in every way to the child.

Perhaps my experience is different, but I grew up in an RP house where strong emotions were discouraged. My quest to develop into my own person was met with strong resistance, and my negative (bad) reactions to that resistance were met with even stronger resistance. Part of the problem was that my parents were extremely sensitive to loud noises, so their knee-jerk reaction to anger was to squash it. But, this is complicated by the fact that the church generally directs teaching at the person under authority, not the authority itself, and the teaching is not how to "submit in the Lord", but how to "obey". So, not only did my parents squash strong negative emotions, they also squashed strong positive emotions. Not only was this backed by the church that said, if my parents don't require me to sin, I must blindly and unquestioningly obey them, but it was also backed by written and unwritten rules about decorum in the church. People who raised their hands in worship or shouted "amen" were brow-beaten for daring to break the decorum.

What has baffled me recently is how Covie's can so strongly emphasize singing and knowing the Psalms yet completely miss the point of the very words they sing.

(strong joy in the Psalms)
"You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever." Psalm 30:11-12

(strong anger in the Psalms)
"Appoint a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is judged, let him come forth guilty, And let his prayer become sin.
Let his days be few; Let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless And his wife a widow. 
Let his children wander about and beg; And let them seek sustenance far from their ruined homes.
Let the creditor seize all that he has, And let strangers plunder the product of his labor.
Let there be none to extend lovingkindness to him, Nor any to be gracious to his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; In a following generation let their name be blotted out." Psalm 109:6-13

RP's like to prooftext passages that appear to forbid things like anger, but they refuse to understand the context. For example, this is a favorite:

"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice." (Eph. 4:31)

Yet, how is that to be understood in juxtaposition with this?

"I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate [cut off their male organs] themselves." (Gal. 5:12)

This is just one of the places where Paul's anger is clearly shown in Galatians. So, how is it okay for Paul to write, on the one hand, to put away anger, and on the other hand to very clearly demonstrate his anger?

Paul doesn't go very far in Ephesians before he enlightens us... "Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity."

Interestingly, Calvin takes the shoving emotions position, which pervades the RPCNA:

Most appropriately, therefore, did Paul, when he wished to describe the proper limitation of anger, employ the well-known passage, Be ye angry, and sin not. We comply with this injunction, if the objects of our anger are sought, not in others, but in ourselves, -- if we pour out our indignation against our own faults. With respect to others, we ought to be angry, not at their persons, but at their faults; nor ought we to be excited to anger by private offenses, but by zeal for the glory of the Lord. Lastly, our anger, after a reasonable time, ought to be allowed to subside, without mixing itself with the violence of carnal passions. (Commentary on Eph. 4)

So, Calvin's solution to anger. (1) ignore the injustice committed by someone else and instead blame yourself - victim blaming. (2) ignore that the wrong committed against you potentially came out of a heart that is black and instead of "judging the tree by its fruit" naively separate the person from their sin. (3) it's not okay to be angry when you are personally offended, and only okay to be angry if you're angry on God's behalf - maybe this is why it was okay for John Calvin/RPCNA leaders to be angry because any wrong against them is against "God's Elect". (4) If more than 24 hours has gone by and you're still angry, shove it in a box. I don't think that is what Paul is saying in this passage, but it's clear how this approach to anger pervades the RPCNA:
1) Victim blaming. The person who breaks the peace of the church is the sinner, not the person who committed the wrong.
2) Sin leveling and minimization. Someone who has done life-changing sin ought to be forgiven and restored. We're all sinners, so we ought to be ready to forgive even the most vile sin in our midst and welcome the sinner. For our own sin, we must recognize that it comes out of our personal idolatry and evil, but for another, of course, we must assume (despite what scripture says) that their intent was really pure and it was an honest mistake.
3) Maintaining an inordinate focus on theological error and insubordination while ignoring significant personal sins. (For example, coddling an elder known to be domineering, while ostracizing a member for holding an 'incompatible' theological view)
4) Sin statute of limitations.... members who bring up offenses that are not ongoing or within the last few weeks are called bitter, sin harborers, uncharitable, etc.

How is anger satisfied Biblically? Through justice.

"When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also." (Rev. 6:9-11)

I think this is one of the most powerful answers about anger. Here we see that, even in the perfection of Heaven, there is this unresolved anger. The saints are angry because the wrath that their enemies deserve has not yet been poured out in full. Heaven recognizes the temporary injustice, while God completes history and brings final justice.

This is what the church misses. It's easy to use Biblical double-speak and spiritual authority to shut people up and drive anger under the surface, but it's justice and reconciliation that actually brings conclusion to the anger. Churches that turn the victim into the offender (bitterness, anyone?), instead of bringing truth and reconciliation, drive the bitterness under the surface to fester.

In fact, this just another aspect of the same oppression we've seen of the weak by the powerful.

"‘Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’" (Deut 27:19)

"Woe to those who enact evil statutes And to those who constantly record unjust decisions,
So as to deprive the needy of justice And rob the poor of My people of their rights,
So that widows may be their spoil And that they may plunder the orphans.
Now what will you do in the day of punishment, And in the devastation which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help? And where will you leave your wealth?" (Isaiah 10:1-3)

The church leadership is no stranger to this. Under the guise of caring for the sheep, they enact decisions to protect the wolves in leadership from the flock. They cover over child abuse, member abuse, and spousal abuse, maybe in some deep way so that they can keep tithes coming in from the powerful, maybe to preserve the hierarchy, I don't know. They preach a gospel of captivity to church leaders, and then emotionally and physically drain the members who believe it for their own benefit. Yet, when members speak out against this oppression, they are called angry, bitter and mean.

Again, to focus on Christ, we need to understand human emotions from the perspective of a human who, first of all, had these emotions, and yet expressed them perfectly. Does that make sense? If anger is a sinful emotion, then how did Jesus, in a demonstration of his sinless humanity, express anger? If sadness is a sinful emotion, why did Jesus cry? If anguish is wrong, why was Jesus anguished?