RPCNA Synod met last week, and during the week the GLG presbytery met. There have been a lot going on since last years' verdicts:
Immanuel RPC:
IRPC voted to leave the RPCNA. This was rejected at presbytery's last meeting. The Constitution allows for two paths toward exit - transfer to another denomination and dissolution. The underlying issue was what happened to the IRPC church building that was held in trust by the Presbytery.
Since that meeting, IRPC voted again to leave vs. transfer, so apparently GLG Presbytery decided that dissolution was the chosen path. I doubt IRPC will be able to keep their building at this point.
Former IRPC Elders (Keith Magill, Ben Larson, David Carr):
These men pled guilty of their charges, were suspended from their offices for a year, and an oversight committee was assigned to bring reconciliation and restoration. Apparently, these men, as part of the IRPC church rebellion, declared that they were "unable to work with the committee".
Synod voted to depose these men from their office. They are no longer ordained officers in the RPCNA.
Jared Olivetti:
Jared also stopped working with his committee, and rejected his discipline (suspension from communion) by accepting communion late last year at IRPC. Synod voted to excommunicate Jared.
IRPC Elders who served communion to Jared:
Another complaint came because IRPC's session voted to serve communion to Jared. These men were rebuked at the Presbytery level. A complaint against this action (that it was not sufficient discipline against clear insubordination) was sustained by Synod.
IRPC Next Steps:
A reliable source told me that IRPC voted to leave and reorganize under the name "Redeeming Grace" (why, oh why, do abusive churches seem so attracted to the word grace??!!) with former pastor James Faris as the moderator of their session. I'm wondering if their goal is to split the friendly churches off of the RPCNA to form a new denomination.
Just to recap, Jared's relative raped a bunch of kids. The church leadership circled the wagons around Jared while pretending that he had been recused from oversight of the situation. The leadership then downplayed the rapes as "normal teenage hormones" - re-victimizing the victims, failed to report the crimes to the authorities, and subsequently refused any counsel from presbytery. The leadership's complete disregard for what was right led to a huge expose in the Indy Star and disgrace for IRPC, the presbytery and denomination. Now they want to recast the church as "grace" - the opposite of what they displayed to the victims and their families. Instead, it's always about what the leadership wants for themselves, not for their congregation. It's a doubling down on the abuse. Not only will they abuse the victims, but when those in leadership face accountability, they demand grace, or else walk away. How brainwashed do you need to be to stick with a church that obviously cares only about protecting its leaders?
56 comments:
Thanks for the update.
Your "Recent Comments" gadget doesn't appear to be showing any recent comments, which makes it difficult to keep up with the blog.
Maybe fixed it... We'll see.
I sat under Jared's leadership for many years and heard multiple sermons about submitting to church authorities and discipline even if we don't agree with it. I've heard him say consequences do not go away if one repents of sin. Those who don't recognize the double standards are spiritually blind. Jared and the elders broke their vows in front of all of us. I didn't realize I was in a cult until I was out.
That is always going to be the challenge. When confronted with your own sin, do you double down or repent? There is a problem with the Book of Discipline that shows itself a lot in these sorts of cases: "In order to institute a formal judicial process, the accuser or the special prosecutor shall sign and submit a charge in writing. It shall name the specific offense, the time, place and circumstances of its commission."
This completely ignores the concept of abuse, which is a pattern of behavior. So, maybe Jared repented of each "time, place and circumstance" - as he claimed, but that still does not get to the matter of the heart that he put his own status and the status of his relative above what is right, what was needed for the church and what was needed for the victims. That phrasing ignores what Jesus says, that what proceeds out of the mouth (time, place and circumstance) is inextricably linked to what is in the heart. This case brought to light that the hearts of these men are in the wrong place. They refused outside help and handled it themselves, ignorantly or purposefully botching it at every opportunity.
You state things with such clarity and have served as a counselor-of-sorts for me. I'm a victim of the sins of the IRPC church leaadership. To say that it was extraordinarily painful to watch men that I grew up respecting and honoring would be an understatement. And to add insult to injury one of the elders of the Lafayette church (who has since resigned) prayed a very hurtful church knowing that victims were present in the congregation for the IRPC ministry to grow and multiply when he should have prayed for their repentance when they were under church discipline. To this day, he is making excuses for them and claiming the victims haven't forgiven them. Forgiveness is not the issue. Honoring vows and submitting to their governing authorities is what he is intentionally ignoring. I know victims who wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats after having nightmares that one of her children is locked in a closet with the perpetrator. Where is the compassion for the victims?!!! I have lost faith in the church because of the stumbling blocks these supposed "men of God" placed in front of the entire church. They are the cause of the exposure. Judgment begins in the House of God.
I think I posted on forgiveness. It's butchered in the church. For Keith Magill to pray a prayer of repentance and asking for grace, then refuse to work with a reconciliation committee suggests that he wasn't really repentant. He at least grossly underestimated the depth of what he needed to repent of. I think that goes for all the men. I think they thought to themselves that covering up and minimizing the offenses while protecting the abuse to the extent of violating Indiana law was only worthy of a slap on the wrist. When the media and church exposed what they did and it blew up, they resorted to DARVO - calling themselves victims of slander and libel, instead of owning up to the severity of what they had done.
Forgiveness is not the issue. Since these men have demonstrated consistent lack of repentance for the depth of what they did, there is no possibility of forgiveness. It would be like me chopping someone's leg off, repenting for the "small cut to their leg", and then bitterly complaining (like Jared did) when I "repented to everyone about everything" and still faced charges. It just doesn't work that way!
I was in a church with an abusive elder. I left. In a sort of exit interview, I met with another elder, who acknowledged the abuse, but said "we know about it and we're dealing with it." There was no public acknowledgement of his abuse, no formal restriction of his responsibilities, no attempt for the session to call him out on his exceeding his authority, and he remains an elder to this day. Oh, and the other elder said, "are you going to stay now that you understand we have this under control?"
No, this wasn't under control, unless it's "damage" control.
I think the Commission's response to Olivetti gets at this latter idea of some kind of outward compliance with a clear lack of heart change: “We acknowledge that Mr. Olivetti has followed the court’s instructions (and we have been most appreciative of his willingness to meet with us) but we are still waiting to see a greater measure of acceptance of the Synod’s brotherly counsel.” Of course, if you're of the opinion that Olivetti has all along been mistreated and denied justice by the RPCNA, then this is just more heavy-handedness and abuse of power.
Speaking of abuse and its insufficiency in the Book of Discipline, there was a committee report this year that recommended a denomination-level advisory committee on abuse (1 man and 1 woman from each presbytery plus 1 elder named by the Synod), a definition of abuse to be added to the RP Testimony, and a study committee to edit the Book of Discipline. None of this actually happened.
The first motion on the floor in response was to kill the report. After that failed, the recommendation for the advisory committee was edited (successfully) to review the committee's existence after 5 years. Then there was a motion to replace all the recommendations with something else (also defeated). In the end, the Synod didn't vote on any of the recommendations and just sent the whole the paper back to the committee "to continue its work, getting feedback from the sessions and the presbyteries." Presumably it will be up for discussion again next year.
From the 2023 Synod:
“A major work that was sent back to committee was a paper seeking to set up a task force to response to claims of abuse. The paper sought a standing committee of thirteen made up of pastors, elders and professionals in various fields (medical, social work, police, etc.) that would serve as a resource for those with questions as to whether certain cases in the church would qualify as abuse. The synod debated this extensively before returning the paper that it may be improved.”
‘Improved.’ AKA ‘delayed as long as possible until someone gives up.’
The pastor’s relative is his son.
His son abused boys.
Boys who abuse boys are overwhelmingly found to have been abused by their fathers. This is not normal teenage hormones, and a real Christian knows better. Children often model what they see and experience, mainly in the first 4-6 years of life when character is forming. It’s downright demonic, the whole thing, and there is much that’s been being covered up in the RPCNA. Most people will not even talk about this out of fear and that is covering it up further.
The denomination talks about Jesus, but where is His character among them? When we cover up abuse for our own ends, we are “loving our own life,” and may well “lose it.” They talk a high game of suffering, but they are not willing to suffer for His righteousness and that His Name not be blasphemed in the world by this behavior. The rules definitely don’t apply to them. When they become elders, they come off the church roll. They spend crazy amounts of time with study committees and everything and are ignoring the things Jesus told us to do.
Did you submit a complaint to the Symod about this?
It would be helpful to know why they won’t work with the committees. Of course we may never know.
This was the proposed definition of abuse from the ad-interim study committee: "Patterns of mistreatment, where one’s power, privilege, or advantage is used to oppress another (commonly referred to as abuse), fail to properly value fellow image bearers of God and are clear sins against God and neighbor." As far as I know, there were no attempts by the Synod to change the definition, but I suppose it could be changed by the committee before next year.
I think abuse can arise through other means, perhaps an abusive relative, but what I do consider to fall at the feet of Jared and Lisa is that they long knew that this child had issues and steadfastly refused to get the child professional help. Just like Josh Duggar - if he had received actual help and not just more abuse at the hands of the church and family, he could have dealt with his issues.
The identity of the child is pretty much an open secret, I saw it published in some of the court documents in one of the lawsuits, before it was taken offline and scrubbed. That said, still following the lead of the IndyStar which uses "pastor's relative".
No, there's no use in complaining about domineering elders. First of all, there's the issue that abuse is a pattern of behavior and bringing up infraction after infraction may or may not prove abuse. Second, the Session didn't publish minutes, so an elder telling me "they know and are taking care of it" doesn't mean that there is any official action.
A member can only "appeal" or "complain" to presbytery. There was no trial and nothing to "appeal", and a "complaint" generally has to be about a decision the Session made, and without a record, nothing to complain about.
Okay, so the only real option I would have would be to bring charges against that elder, which would have been extremely difficult to prove. The Presbytery apparently told Sessions not to keep such verbose minutes, so how would someone prove that an elder acted on his own versus delivering a message from the Session, and would a Session say that it's domineering/abusive for an elder to imply that the Session had an opinion it never had, or would they prefer to circle the wagons around their elder and try to theologically justify that an elder can speak on behalf of the Session even when the Session had made no decision. So, the elder is acquitted by the Session, and the Presbytery would not sustain a complaint for various reasons. That's assuming the actors followed the law and order of the church.
If you read carefully, one cannot complain to Synod without going through the proper channels. First the local Session, then the Presbytery through the Session, and then Synod through at least Presbytery.
I did write a paper I intended to take before Synod. My pastor told me the Session had decided not to act on it. What I discovered later was that the Session had decided not to even read it before deciding not to act on it, which, from what I understand is a violation of the Constitution. If I had known, I probably would have written a complaint, but again, when a pastor tells you what happened, he may be speaking on his own behalf or on the behalf of the Session, and especially when he uses language like "we decided" it implies that they read what I wrote and then decided, but in fact, no one read it at all. The pastor assumed, then told the Session, who assumed and to this day I don't know if there was even a vote.
Is all of the voting and minutes to everything public?
Not typically, this issue comes up over and over again because the "old guard" is very concerned that the church ought to be transparent and open, and the "new guard" seems to believe that the discussions of the church leaders might be needlessly hindered if they had to be concerned about what members might think. To me it smells of two things - first the false shepherds. When the issue came up regarding the other Lafayette church, one of the arguments was that elders might say something unwise and they wouldn't want that to be public, so better to hide their faults than to put them on display for all to see. The second issue was that the session talking about people in the congregation might lead to gossip. Which suggests that if the Session is gossiping (what they are really saying!) then the congregation might be encouraged to spread the gossip.
Maybe I didn't sufficiently portray their argument, but essentially, they want to discuss all sorts of stuff happening in the congregation that they don't think the congregation should know, like maybe the pastor's relative raping other children. Who says it's women who are prone to gossip? I think the men are quite good at it.
I was the subject of semi-official session spying where I'd have a conversation with an elder or deacon only to lead to a conversation with another elder telling me whether I passed or failed their test or telling me that somehow my off-the-cuff answer was being taken as an official response.
I think the problem with the above definition is that some elders specifically believe that they have the right to demand obedience on any and all matters because that's what "authority" means. My dad, for example, said "if the Session requests you to do something, you should have a very good reason to turn them down, if you must." He didn't qualify what the session could or could not request. I know of a session that liked to put the people they were scrutinizing under gag orders - I consider that clearly abusive, but they certainly didn't, and in order to define something as sin, it generally has to be spelled out. It has the general marks of RP failure to write policies. It doesn't really convey the vision of what they are trying to accomplish, and it really doesn't create anything enforceable. I'm sure it would be quite controversial if abuse were partially defined as "demanding anything of members beyond what is required in scripture, the Constitution or necessary to fulfill legal obligations."
The definition is hopelessly vague. Abuse isn’t only a pattern. Abuse becomes a pattern, if unchecked, but any singular act of abuse towards a person is still abuse. If I beat up my cat only 1 time, I’ve abused her. It’s also really hard to observe patterns when individual occurrences are ‘managed’ in various ungodly ways.
Kids who go to therapy reveal their own abuse.
I think the root of "properly value fellow image bearers" is a correct root. Abuse is always about the exercise of force/pressure (financial, physical, spiritual) to elevate one's position against another. The reason it's difficult to pin down is that there is a sense in which authorities can apply pressure in non-abusive ways. So, a session applying a gag order to protect victims from further damage, or a defendant from prejudice might be a proper use of authority, but a session using a gag order to avoid any potential criticism of their actions - that's abusive. A pastor preaching Total Depravity because that's Reformed doctrine is probably not abusive, but a pastor preaching it and then (as often happens) underscores why we need godly men over us to point out our sin is being abusive. He's using the doctrine (ignoring its effects on leaders) to apply spiritual pressure to conform to the desires of the leaders.
Not just kids. I went to counseling post-RPCNA for what I thought was being unable to overcome the spiritual abuse I had received, ten years of being treated like dirt. Pretty soon it was, "and what was your family like?"
Looks like that's fixed it, thanks!
The response wasn't narrowing something to kids, it was giving a possible reason why the child in this situation may not have been taken to therapy.
Abuse isn't confined to any one definition, and people don't only abuse for one reason. There are multiple reasons why people abuse. Limiting these definitions and the underlying motives definitely slows down any progress. People are always trying to make things fit in some kind of box, but not everything fits neatly in one box or another. Abuse is complex, just like some mental illness. Abusers often have some underlying mental health issues themselves, but those of higher intelligence are better at keeping this under wraps so it often goes undetected (or unrecognized, at least). Things could be pinned down easily if each person was honest, really. All the tedium we see in these cases is just the gymnastics of sin, twisting and turning this way and that to avoid the light of detection and repentance.
I can only view this website on my phone, it's not working in Firefox or Chrome.
I sent you an email to your Gmail (batteredrp...)
Got it! I was thinking in the sense that they start understanding it, not from the perspective that what the child revealed could bring criminal charges against the parents. Your comment makes a lot more sense now.
I agree, so the issue is that in the RPCNA, it's rare that a lay member can charge a person in office without clear charges that are written in the Constitution. On one hand, specifying abuse as a chargeable sin is a huge step in the right direction, but on the other hand, having language that is easy to manipulate makes it difficult to hold leaders accountable, and it opens the door for leaders to charge lay members. The second isn't as critical because RP leaders have all sorts of weapons in their arsenal to charge members so adding abuse doesn't make much of a difference.
I'm viewing it in Chrome. I'm concerned that the comments gadget, which is extraordinarily useful, might use some code that doesn't work on some browsers, or gets turned off in some security settings. There are other methods to get posts, like RSS feeds that might work, but since it's Blogger, there's not much control I have over how it shows up on browsers.
This all sounds like the goings on of a hellish group of followers devoted to Satan. And this is supposed to be Christ’s church. ‘Having language that is easy to manipulate” is exactly what I was thinking when I read that sham of a definition. People who care about what is true and right don’t operate this way.
I think the Pharisees and Galatians. Pharisees / Judaizers were all about power and control using the guise of religion. That is one faction. The other faction is, IMO, naive Christians who are caught up in the glow of the conservative fringe of Evangelicalism. I believe people who cared brought this to the attention of the church and tried to make stuff happen, but they are being shot down by those who see any recognition of abuse (and what happened to IRPC leadership) as an affront to their desire to manipulate and control their members. Wolves hate accountability.
An abuser may have suffered childhood abuse or they may have mental issues but those are not excuses that explain why a person would abuse other person(s). There are many people who have mental problems and/or suffered terrible abuse in their past who do not become abusers. I speak from experience. At some point, for various reasons, people make a choice to abuse. Abusers intend to abuse. They plan to abuse. They carry out their abuse on others. Abusers are responsible for the abuse they perpetrate on others.
I mostly agree. I would say I was deceived into abuse. RP parents are told that children must be taught to obey authority "instant unquestioned obedience" because if they don't obey their parents, how will they obey God. We are also taught that when our child disobeys, they are setting themselves up against God, and we are forced to choose between the child (permissive parenting) or God (spanking). So, in a way, we chose to abuse, but abuse was portrayed as the only way to produce godly children. For my children, it means a lot to them that we were trying to do what was best for them, vs. just trying to manipulate and control them for our own ends, and I think that has provided a path to reconciliation. I'm sure there are RP parents who are knowingly abusing and are choosing their church based on their desire to abuse, but that was not my experience growing up, and hopefully not my children's either.
A very sad quote I've found reflects reality: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."
― Steven Weinberg
I think a person can unknowingly be tricked into perpetuating abuse because they have been sucked into an abususive system. I was married to an abusive husband and father of my kids for many years and was coerced to tow the line. But there is a difference between the abuser who intentionally creates the toxic environment to serve his warped sense of entitlement and other people who are sucked into the vortex with him especially if the victims are conditioned to have a simplistic, naive approach to Scripture, and they are programmed to trust the abuser for the biblical interpretation as he chooses to apply it to their situation.
The abuser intentionally uses his place of power and authority to justify and establish his dominance over people. That is what thrills him. It gives him his rush to move people around a board like chess pieces. Are the other participants doing that? Mostly not, although abusive people learn how to abuse by example. I'm stating this all pretty bluntly to save space. It's more complicated than my description, but I wanted to get these distinctions out there. My point is that I want to describe the calculated mental planning that an abuser does so I can pull back the curtain to show where the culpibility lies.
Now as things play out, we do see what is in other people's hearts. We see some people start to become disturbed and alarmed and start to distance themselves from the abuser and his schemes or speak out against him, and then unfortunately, we see other people scurry around and make terrible aliences and concessions in order to protect their own reputations. All people involved are responsible for how they respond to abuse over the long-term.
A Striped Sheep: I agree with you 100%
I agree with you here again, A Striped Sheep. Thank you for bringing up the calculated mental planning- this is absolutely huge. The attempts to hide, cover, and disguise require an intense amount of mental work.
Thanks for this! Have you seen anything by Sheila Gregoire? She specifically talks about how complementarian views of marriage (husband as head, submissive wife) lead to all sorts of problems. She initially researched how it destroys sex for both, but then started recognizing about how the doctrine ends up putting everything on the wife's plate. Either by directly blaming the wife for lack of submission or by winking at the husband's abuse and telling the wife she cannot leave. She was a comp working with Focus on the Family and has now distanced herself and called them out on multiple occasions.
I also like how you call out entitlement. I think that is a root of abuse. In church systems, I would say it corresponds to "positional authority" - serve me not because I care but because I hold a title. Same goes for patriarchy. There is a difference between people who don't feel entitled, but are trying to do what they think is right within an abusive system, versus those who want to use that system to their own ends.
Sheila Gregoire is a gift and an important voice - so thankful for her. I've read two of her books: "She Deserves Better" and "The Great Sex Rescue." I highly recommend both. The purity culture needs to be in our rearview mirror. We need to stop blaming girls and women for causing boys and men to lust when girls don't follow random pharisaical dress-code rules. This lays a burden on women that they shouldn't have to bear and dehumanizes men to brutes.
People who blame the scriptural truths of roles of men and women (I don’t care about the manmade doctrines, only the actual scriptures that say the man is head of household) are laying at the feet of God blame for the offended of man. If some people are fat, should I then not eat? If some people speed and kill others on the highway, should I not drive? If others shoot people, stab people, etc., should I clear my household of all weapons?
The Bible is not to blame for the sinful hearts and actions of men. It is the HEARTS that are to blame for each and every case were anything is destroyed, abused, and everything else that’s sick and sinful. When my wife and I (and by the way, we are no longer ‘reformed,’ became Christian’s and entered a relationship with our Lord and Savior, we began reading the scriptures. We were deeply convicted about our roles- and you know what? We’ve never been happier in our lives. Absolutely everything is better now, and we see the truth as it’s plain: it’s HEARTS- sinful hearts- that take ANY scripture and use it to any person’s own twisted benefit. God help any of us for laying at the feet of our LORD the sins of men!! This is what Catholics did during the Reformation, try to keep people from reading the Bible because it would lead to heresy in some. People will always try explaining away scripture because others abuse it. People will always try banning things (alcohol, guns, etc) because some people abuse them. We will never be rid of evil in this life, and evil will wield anything to its purposes.
No real Christian who knows the words of Jesus will ever think a woman is at fault for a man’s lust. Jesus said if your eyes causes you to sin…He was clear that sin is in our own hearts, and it doesn’t matter what a woman is wearing. Men who blame women for their lust are cowards who haven’t surrendered their sin to Jesus.
We don’t need writers or anyone to affirm our positions. We all need Jesus Christ, and until He is the sole center of our hearts, we will always be focused on every wind of what people are saying and writing about this or that. Jesus said for wives to obey and husbands to love- that is so simple. A wife like this feels joy to obey (she is never expected to obey sinful nonsensical abuse and domestic terrorism), and a husband like this loves his wife and treats her with the utmost love and care and respect.
The solutions are simple to our problems. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord and hold men alone responsible for abusing the Holy Scriptures. Don’t you see? It’s what Satan wants. He wants people to start changing the meaning of scriptures because sinful, wicked, abusive men twist the scriptures to their ends. Well not me, no sir. I loveGod, His Word, and God help these men and any women who would twist His Word for their gain. I am the head of my household, and I have one very joyful, happy wife who is treated like a queen.
I believe that the Holy Spirit leads us from where we are. The Israelites could not abandon polygamy and divorce, so polygamy and divorce are allowed in scripture. Does Jesus say, "divorce is fine, see what Moses wrote about it"? No, he says that God never intended for divorce exist and he says the scripture says the two become one flesh, which also speaks to polygamy. That principle Jesus quotes is from the very beginning of the Bible - that one man and one woman become one flesh in marriage.
Do we then say, David was a horrible person because he was a polygamist? No! Scripture says David was a man after God's own heart.
So, we have a few principles to lean into:
1) Scripture is written to an audience within a culture completely blind to certain sins (polygamy, slavery, domineering, patriarchy, to name a few)
2) Scripture is written to help people in those situations recognize the ills of their sins and move towards righteousness - gradual revelation
3) Scripture does express guiding principles by which the cultural sins can be dealt with
4) Peoples' positions on many doctrines are mostly idle speculations in the light of a Spirit-led life desiring to do what pleases God
In light of that, I believe that complementarianism is a sinful view, which is answered by the guiding principle of being "one in Christ Jesus" and the fact that the Cultural Mandate was given to both the man and the woman. However, if you hold the view and are not abusive and your wife is on board, I doubt it holds any eternal significance. My wife and I were complementarian and I can't say our marriage really changed when we came to the egalitarian view.
That said, I'm concerned about the view among comp. scholars that our marriage was never complementarian. For example, Russell Moore states:
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This therapeutic orientation of contemporary evangelicalism is the reason, Wilcox explains, evangelicals do not seem to speak often of male headship in terms of authority (and certainly not patriarchy), but usually in terms of a “servant leadership” defined as watching out for the best interests of one’s family—without specifics on what this leadership looks like. Thus “headship has been reorganized along expressive lines, emptying the concept of virtually all of its authoritative character.” This understanding of “servant leadership” (read as titular, undefined, non-authoritative leadership) is precisely the model of “complementarianism” several other recent works have observed in the evangelical subculture.
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In other words, the root of headship, in Moore's view, is authority, and husbands who claim complementarian theology MUST express that authority to be complementarian. In other words, being egalitarian in practice means one is not complementarian. I can't quite wrap my mind around how I could have expressed "authority" in my marriage unless it involved overruling my wife - telling her to do something over her objections. That seems abusive in my opinion, unless my wife is also a child, and that is the traditional patriarchal view - that everyone in a household is under the paterfamilia, and subject to obedience or punishment.
My conclusion is, that since I can't imagine any situation where my "authority" gives me the right to do something that is not warranted by my "equality", I can't justify why the Bible and modern Evangelicals are so adamant that authority is necessary. It comes down to abuse, in my opinion.
FYI: Russell Moore's paper is here: https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/49/49-3/JETS_49-3_569-576_Moore.pdf
I actually don't like either of those terms to describe biblical marriage. They're not scriptural words and they have both become ladened down with antagonistic baggage.
Yes, any label is going to have proponents and detractors. Like gentle/permissive/attachment parenting vs. strict/corporal/authoritarian. Often times, those who hold the view don't really agree with the way it's presented. Being a strict parent doesn't mean you spank your kid for each and every offense like Ezzo prescribes, or spank until they are "sweet" like Pearl's prescribe.
It's hard to find terms that are correct and precise that people agree to, especially when it's used to describe them or others.
You got a point.
No sir, we have a marriage that is biblical, man head of household, done rightly. Once again, a charge has been laid against the Holy Scriptures for the offenses of man. When any Christian is living according to God, everything is a joy and there is no abuse. I’m sorry so many have had their thinking and reasoning poisoned by the abuses of people. Growing up in the denomination messed a lot with our thinking, and it was also my first mistake coming out that everything they taught was wrong. But it’s not the teaching that’s wrong about complementarían marriage-it’s the way these men actually lived that was not in keeping with what they taught. Jesus addressed this too- telling us to mind what is taught but not what was lived by these Pharisees. These people who abuse and distort scriptures by their wicked witness are storing up wrath for themselves. We must all take heed to this last point.
You say non-abusive and joy filled. What exactly is it that you say makes your marriage definitionally complementarian? My marriage hasn't change at all externally between the time I was comp and now, only that there was this pressure to somehow "lead" and "guide" my wife when I would say that there have been many times in our marriage where I was the one needing guidance and many times where she was the one needing guidance. There was baggage I brought into the marriage that she helped me with and likewise baggage I brought into the marriage that she helped me with. Abuse and lack of joy aside, I've never felt comfortable with the idea of mediating between her and Jesus.
Welcome, Striped Sheep! Good to see a new sheep-themed nickname.
It certainly sounds like you've been through a lot. I'm glad you've found this site, and hope it may be helpful to you as it has to us. May you find healing by the stripes of our Lord.
What do you mean mediating between her and Jesus?
First off, the website you pointed to is really bad. It doesn't do justice to either position. Here are some examples:
"God restricts women from serving in certain church leadership roles and instead calls women to serve in equally important, but complementary roles." -- Neither the article nor CBMW have ever adequately defined what those complementary roles are. If it is "submission" to "leadership", then how is female submission to church leadership different than lay male submission to church leadership?
The article states: "What is truly the crux of this argument, and what many egalitarians fail to understand, is that a difference in role does not equate to a difference in quality, importance, or value." This is a blatant lie. I have yet to see any complementarian define a single thing that women can do in the church that men cannot. If the role of women is a subset of the role of men in the church (as complementarians claim by silence) then one cannot argue that women are equal to men. If one person is given $1000 in gold and the other $1000 in diamonds, you could say that they are equal, but if you give two people $1000 in gold and only one $1000 in diamonds, then they are not equal.
As to the "mediator" role... a quick search gives this example: https://www.derekprince.com/radio/172
"For the rest of my talk today, I’m going to speak about the father as the priest of his home, the father representing his family to God in intercession and prayer."
"We read that Job, at the end of every week, rose up early and offered sacrifice on behalf of all his sons, saying in his heart, “[regarding Job] Maybe they failed and they’re not right with God. Let me offer this sacrifice on their behalf.” The offering of that sacrifice in Old Testament terminology corresponds to the ministry of intercessory prayer on behalf of our children under the New Covenant in Jesus Christ."
"[regarding Passover] It was his responsibility to see that God’s provision of salvation was made effective in his particular home and, as far as I understand the revelation of Scripture, no one else could do the father’s job for him."
"I was gripped by the realization one day that Jesus held the father responsible to believe for his son. The son, because of his condition, obviously couldn’t exercise much faith for himself, but in any case Jesus didn’t ask the son to exercise faith. He required the father to exercise faith on behalf of his son. I believe that’s a responsibility of parents to exercise faith in intercessory prayer on behalf of our children to bring them to God through Jesus Christ.
Let me say again, and you can search the Scriptures for yourself, Jesus never ministered to a child unless there was at least one parent exercising faith on behalf of that child. He would not go contrary to such a deeply entrenched principle of God."
You may claim that Prince isn't talking about wives when if comes to "exercising faith on behalf", but he doesn't clarify this - he claims the father is priest of "his family" (including wife) and then goes on to explain that being a priest involves exercising faith on another's behalf. This is similar to many claims I've seen about husband/father as priest, but it often is mediatorial in the sense that the husband also represents God/Jesus to the wife in his priestly role.
You've described your marriage as you "love" and she "obeys". My marriage is similar, but we both love and we both submit. We obey Jesus first and foremost and when we can't agree on something that isn't critically urgent we step back and reconsider without making a decision or casting a tiebreaker. When we disagree, we often are able to find ways where we don't force the others' hand. If I crave Wendy's and she craves Taco Bell, we can always split up, or we can agree to do one restaurant today and one tomorrow. Even with childrearing, we had a disagreement and decided that it would be reasonable to take different approaches. I eventually saw the wisdom in her approach and changed. If she had to "obey" me, it would not have been joyful for her. That is why I ask you for specific examples because in my experience forcing obedience to something that doesn't feel right doesn't seem to bring about joy. It has gone both ways, but in that case, her conscience was pricked by something that she didn't have a theological argument for, and if she had obeyed (which complementarians teach her she ought to have) she would have gone against her conscience, and in retrospect, harmed our children.
I was very sad to read the following article about John MacArthur shaming a battered wife with excommunication: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/pastor-publicly-shames-woman-for-leaving-abusive-husband/
In fairness, it doesn't seem that MacArthur was involved in the issue except for being the mouthpiece for the Board; but it sounds like they all messed up terribly.
This is a feature of the authoritarian system. It's considered more important to preserve and protect the hierarchy than it is to preserve and protect those who are under it. 15-14 GLG was split over whether it was more important to protect the authority of the Southside session, or to oppose what is obviously the session using their position to silence any voice that disagrees with them.
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