What is JOY and how does the RPCNA destroy it?

I've mentioned before how I believe Reformed/Evangelical legalists equivocate between happiness and joy in a way that destroys people's motivation and self-esteem. I'll briefly revisit that, and then propose a definition of joy that is distinct from happiness and helps put this teaching in perspective.

The sermons on joy seem to go in a definitional circle. First, joy is promoted as an essential of the Christian life [i.e. a legalistic requirement]. If you do not have joy, you cannot be a Christian, because the life of the Christian is a life of joy. Then, joy is juxtaposed with happiness [equivocation part 1] - that is, the non-Christians seek "happiness" [a fleeting emotion], not "joy" [which at this point is some ethereal, non-fleeting emotion and will never be defined] and that is ultimately a worthless endeavor. Examples of joy are given. People are described in terms indistinguishable from happiness. Paul sang in prison, martyrs sang while being burned, people work demeaning jobs with a smile on their faces. Examples are paraded of people who were not brought down by horrible circumstances  The unstated definition of "joy" throughout is "spiritual, deep, non-fleeting happiness". This is then brought full circle by the reiteration that we Christians should experience joy in all circumstances, which as far as we can understand from the sermon equates to, "Christians need to "look and feel happy", no matter the circumstances." Sometimes there is even the claim that God provides harsh circumstances for the Christian to put us face to face with our lack of joy.

The conclusions are that: (1) joy is deep, emotional happiness, exemplified by a happy demeanor. (2) The church has no responsibility to encourage or create joy in us because the way to create joy is to put us face-to-face with our lack of joy. (3) We should not try to avoid or change joyless circumstances, other than find a way to divorce our emotions from our worldly circumstances.

My definition: Joy is an emotional response of being a valued member of a larger group.

I like this definition because it shows how the Reformed church misses it completely.

1) Our joy in Christ. We Reformed Christians are supposed to find joy in our relationship with Christ and God; however, the Reformed church destroys our sense of value. Yes, we are adopted heirs, whatever, but when it comes to value, the church shoves Total Depravity in our faces. Worm Theology is ultimately one that removes our joy by making our relationship with God one that is valueless. Yes, in a sense, we are not worthy. That is true! BUT! In Jesus we are MADE WORTHY! We can claim worth and value through Christ. The church blurs and ignores that message to maintain abusive control.

We should have joy in Christ, because we are a valued part of God's redemptive plan. He loves us and wants to overflow our lives so that our joy can flow into others. While I do believe that God can remove our joy in something that is replacing our joy in him, I don't believe that is a primary method, especially in a church/family system where shame and legalism are present. Imagine the story of The Horse and His Boy, but instead of Shasta, newly discovered son of the king and heir to the throne, being treated like royalty, the king says, I need to treat you like a slave so that you can find your own joy within. NO! He was treated like a slave his entire life, why would the king treat his son like that?

I'm not a fan of John Piper, who I think follows the same approach, but read a Neocalvinist rebuttal of Piper:

Do true believers, who have turned toward God in repentance, and come to Christ in faith, and know the joy of sins forgiven, seek after happiness?  Of course not!  They have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, adopted into the family of God, and know God as their heavenly Father; their names are written in the Lamb’s book of life; they are risen with Christ, and they seek those things which are above, for ‘their life is hid with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3.1-4).  Believers are exhorted to ‘put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness’ (Ephesians 4.24). The joy of serving the risen Christ is the greatest joy known to man this side of heaven.  True believers do not seek after worldly happiness, for they know the blessings of their heavenly Father.

There is not one hint of value here, only legalistic duty and, quite frankly, the juxtaposition of happiness and joy (Do true believers ... seek after happiness?) suggests that the mere thought of Christians desiring happiness is evil. (Another equivocation, mind you, now happiness and joy are opposites!)

2) Our joy in the Church. The visible church is an organization that seeks to provide a place of growth and service for the individual Christian. The church should demonstrate and represent Christ's love to the world, but also to the individuals. We should receive joy as part of the church to see how God builds up his saints and how our individual gifts contribute and matter to the greater good. It is fundamentally joy destructive for Christians to be treated as unnecessary or unimportant or sideline observers in the church, yet this is a tenet of the Neocalvinist church where the "ministers" do the ministry and the laity obey their leaders and praise them at every opportunity.

This is also why authoritarianism is so tempting in the visible church. People desire joy and see their leaders as being joyful because they are fulfilling their ministerial call, so they want to be leaders themselves. We have a lot of people becoming leaders simply because the church does not value non-leaders. Not only that, but when non-leaders complain about a lack of joy, they are told that their relationship with God should be their source of joy and they are unrighteous to seek joy within the church - an equivocation, and unspeakably evil.

3) Our joy in the family. Our family is our closest bond and common purpose. The church should be encouraging parents to raise their children with joy - meaning that the children are valued, their purposes are valued and that they are an important part of the family mission. Instead, the church teaches a system of emotional and physical abuse where the children are taught that they are worthless and don't matter. Parenting books talk about breaking the will, they talk about the child being constantly at odds with God, they talk about the need to downplay their accomplishments and punish every infraction. Children are taught "I'm third" - God first, others second, me third - a message dripping with worthlessness.

So, why are we surprised that every RP generation is a lost generation. When we are, at every turn, beaten away from a sense of hope and purpose, and it is replaced with reminders of our own worthlessness and inability, it's not surprising that there will be many that will seek hope and purpose outside the RPCNA.

Comment on seminary training

I received this comment and thought it would be best to devote some attention to it. 

Others will know much more than I about the system of educating NAPARC pastors, but what I have seen is not very impressive. I know of a man who had no education beyond high school, who got an Associate degree in business from an online place that no longer exists, and somehow was accepted by a respected reformed seminary. He now has an MDiv, and gets to "pastor" a church. He, like many others, seems to believe that his sole purpose in life is to be studying. Then he "serves" his congregation by "preaching and teaching." This entitles him to a salary and to be the head of the "session," which makes all of the decisions for said tiny church, with no accountability to the members, although they give lip-service to the idea of accountability. The church has no outreach into the community, but is quite a comfortable little enclave for those who think that the church is a little mini-seminary/book club where the only hope for people is held tightly, inerrantly, and rather exclusively. Sermons frequently mention what the Catholics/Lutherans/Baptists/ people who don't study their Bibles like he does are getting wrong. I could say much more about how the church has accepted the idol of perceived scholarship in the place of elders as described in Scripture. But my original point is that these men are perceived as "educated", but truth is, many of them are seemingly not acquainted with the realities encountered by people who must hold to knowledge/skill sets in order to produce something of tangible value in the world to provide for their families and support the church. This ignorance would be fine if it were accompanied by a humility and kindness, but the church seems to love to put people who lack those qualities in leadership positions.

All of this affirms the scriptural assertion that "knowledge puffs up". I think stamping achievement onto men simply because they succeed at reading and regurgitating and communing with others that do the same is part of the problem.

I think there is a flawed system in place here. I've had many debates on this subject and am more convinced that this is a core problem in the church today. The Apostles were trained in a mentorship/apprenticeship model by Jesus. There is good evidence that the next generation of pastors were trained in the same sort of model - walking alongside the Apostles. At some point, however, the church "discovered" that the apprenticeship model wasn't working(!!) Pastors were not being properly trained in basic Christian truths, and thus an educational model was necessary. This led to the seminary model where pastors were given a base level of knowledge necessary to pastor a church. Our church history has been filled with examples of trying to find that right balance between the book smarts and apprenticeship model.

To add some insight into this, there is a book by Peter Colin Campbell, called The Theory of the Ruling Elder, or the Position of the Lay Eldership in the Reformed Churches. This book is public domain and available online. This book completely floored me. Campbell had access to the minutes of the Westminster Assembly. This is his understanding of what happened in the Westminster Assembly:

While the Grand Committee declare unanimously in favour of the institution of lay rulers in the Church, they carefully exclude from their conclusion not merely the term presbyter, in reference to lay rulers, but even that of elder, as liable to be confounded with "presbyter," and refuse to quote I Tim. v. 17, in regard to the office. The conclusions of the Committee are recorded thus by Gillespie and Lightfoot: — 

1. That Christ hath instituted a government and governors ecclesiastical in the Church. 

2. That Christ hath furnished some in His Church with gifts for government, and with commission to execute the same when called thereunto. 

3. That it is agreeable to and warranted by the Word of God that some others besides the ministers of the word be church governors, to join with the ministers in the government of the Church. Rom. xii. 7, 8 ; i Cor. xii. 28.

Some members had expressed a wish to rest the institution simply "on a prudential ground" — that is, on expediency — and some were opposed to the citation even of the two above-mentioned texts, although none except Dr Temple and Lightfoot voted for their being omitted. But the attempt of Whittaker and Gillespie, renewed the following day, to procure the citation of i Tim. v. 17 as applicable to the office of lay ruler, met with no success; and the conclusions of the Committee were sent in to the Assembly in the form in which we have given them above, with the following addition : "That in the Church of the Jews there were elders of the people joined to the priests and Levites in the government of the Church." 

The conclusions, or, as they were styled, "votes," of the Committee were brought up for the consideration and approval of the Assembly on the 14th November 1644, preparatory to their being transmitted to the Houses of Parliament; when, as Lightfoot tells us, "there fell a debate about naming church governors, whether to call them 'ruling elders' or no; which held a very sad and long discussion: at last it was determined by vote thus, — such as in the Reformed Churches are commonly called 'elders.'" Gillespie made a last attempt to obtain the recognition of the theory, and, with obvious purpose, moved that the Assembly itself should call them "ruling elders;" " but this," Lightfoot tells us, "prevailed not."* The battle of the presbyter theory had been fought and lost. 

* It would have been well had the caution happily exercised by the Westminster Divines in the citation of Scripture in reference to church government been shown on other occasions. The craving for express Scripture warrant, in matters where common sense is a sufficient guide, was natural in the position of the Reformed Churches, but it led sometimes to an unjustifiable and even ludicrous straining of the Word of God. 

* There is a blank in Gillespie's Notes, extending from the 25th October to the 15th November 1644. 

The following is the chapter on the subject in the 'Form of Church Government ' as finally authorised by the Assembly: — "Other Church Governors. — As there were in the Jewish Church elders of the people joined with the priests and Levites in the government of the Church, so Christ, who hath instituted government and governors ecclesiastical in the Church, hath furnished some in His Church, besides the ministers of the word, with gifts for government, and with commission to execute the same when called thereunto, who are to join with the ministers in the government of the Church, which officers Reformed Churches commonly call 'elders'. 

Nothing can be more significant than this sound and well-guarded language. Equally guarded and significant is that of the Confession of Faith in its allusion to lay rulers. It knows nothing of them as presbyters or elders in the proper sense. 

The conclusion of Campbell's book as that Gillespie et. al. returned to Scotland and misrepresented the position of the Westminster Assembly, thus establishing the Ruling Elder as an ordained office and through it, "Classical Presbyterianism", when Westminster came to the exact opposite conclusion.

There are definite conclusions regarding ruling elders, but consider what the implications are for the Teaching Elder.

1. There is no warrant for "young" teaching elders. The name elder itself suggests age and wisdom, not youth and knowledge.
2. There is an expectation that the church should see the fruit of their parenting, not have pastors with infants.
3. There is an expectation of a life lived within a church and demonstrated faithful witness, not seminary training and a 25yo pastor.
4. The Biblical model has always been people chosen from the congregation by the congregation and not candidates approved by the leadership and forced on congregations.
5. The seminary model and cost/"benefit" of seminary training paid by the church lead to a push to train younger and younger pastors for a lifetime of ministry rather than, let's say, a 50yo man who has had a successful career and raised his children well.
6. The church has fallen into [what the church claims!] is the failed messianic model of education where morality and character can be imputed through book knowledge.
7. What does a 'plurality' of elders [pastors] mean when RP churches are often separated by hundreds of miles from the next-nearest RP church.

There is much more to say about this, but the more you think about the implications of what transpired in the quote, the more staggeringly we've fallen away from even Westminster.

To reference an earlier comment, as much as we may be upset with "Pastor McPedigree" - that model is so much closer to the Biblical model, and, I believe, we see much more faithfulness and pastoral qualities in the 2nd and 3rd-generation pastors who were raised under their father pastors and had essentially an apprenticeship. What we see in the young hotshot pastors is exactly what you've related. They cannot wait to wave over a congregation. They cannot wait for the adoration and obedience they see pastors command, and once they are in that position, the thought of pastoring -shepherding and walking with people - is the furthest from their mind.

The book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse also points to wisdom and Spirit-guided life experience as the hallmarks of the office of elder/pastor. These are things that cannot be trained in seminary.

The Reformed church likes to claim that study of the Bible in the original languages of Greek and Hebrew is necessary to be a pastor, but this seems to be mainly an Islamic or even old Catholic claim. The history of the church shows that there was an early effort to translate scriptures into the common languages of the day, and we still see that today. The Holy Spirit works beyond language, and thus claiming that a pastor must know Greek and Hebrew to be effective is more a slap in God's face than anything else.

Recovering from Spiritual Abuse - Part 4: Depression, Reflection, Loneliness

Hi all, welcome back after the Christmas break :) Today's topic is a hard one for sure, and is probably why it was so long in coming. I think it will be hard to separate externally-forced stage 4 grief from internally-forced stage 4 grief, but I will try. I think in handling personal grief, such as the loss of a loved one, there is a sadness once the loss is truly recognized. When leaving an abusive church, I'm sure there is that, too, but also, there is the sense of active abandonment. There is a distance with people like Chris who would not share the same fellowship with me now compared to the past, especially knowing my journey.

So, the external grief is very hard - there are people I saw week after week, invited over for dinner and was invited over regularly. There was a shared sense of purpose, of friendship, and even though we perhaps had similar views of the failings of the church, when I left, there was a rift. When I look back at the fun at conferences and church picnics and all of the fellowship common to RPs, it's hard not to feel left out and abandoned. When I left it was a very clear choice - I could stuff myself into the RP mold for me so that my family and I could have the RP experience, which was mostly good for the others in my family, or I could follow God without compromise and accept the consequences. There have been a lot of consequences - mainly bad from RP-land and mainly good from non-RP-land.

Internally is somewhat different, and I can't really say which stage I'm in - it seems to change from day to day. Much of the depression comes from being between a rock and a hard place with family and church. For both, there was fellowship and fun times and a sense of belonging, but at a cost of knowing and accepting my place. The places where I was supposed to be accepted offered that acceptance at a price too high to pay - shame and silence.

There is also a related self-shame spiral. I was as legalistic and hate-filled as any RP towards those who compromised truth for comfort. I thought of the people who left the church as weak and inferior, because I believed the RP church was the most pure. Even if I could try to right that, what would the response be? How do you apologize for something you never said or did, but felt in your heart? It seems the best I can do is promise to do better with my new-found freedom. But, even with freedom, there is conflict - what if following that freedom puts me in direct opposition to the born-and-raised RP position on exclusive psalmody and a capella singing?

Isolation has become a struggle because I don't feel like I can invite anyone into my processing of grief. On one hand, it would be good to have some help with the load I carry, on the other hand, if I show anyone the load, I doubt they would want to help carry. I think that is why online spiritual abuse groups have become a lifeline for so many, even if they cannot share things in person, they can still hear and commiserate.

Righteous Anger part 2 - a "whole brain" approach

 

Background: Part of the growing understanding of how the brain works is summarized practically in the book The Whole-Brained Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne. I'm trying to simplify what they say and there will be some inaccuracies, so if you have concerns, please consider reading the book.

When babies are born, they are ruled by the need for safety. Their consciousness is ruled by the need for safety, which is entirely dependent on their needs being met. This safety is ruled by what the authors call the downstairs brain - where the brain interfaces with bodily functions. When the baby is hungry, when the baby is thirsty, when the baby is tired or uncomfortable, the downstairs brain creates powerful emotions that translate into crying, screaming or other signals to the parents that the child senses a lack of safety that needs to be met.

As the parents meet the needs of the child, the upstairs brain is developing understanding of the world around. The child develops a sense that his needs will be met without jeopardizing safety. He sees the caregiver disappear and come back. The child's brain starts to be aware of its connection with others in the world, strategies for dealing with those connections, and other emotions like happiness and comfort.

During the first few years, the role of the caregiver is vitally important in developing proper conscious responses to emotions as the right and left brains develop pathways about what is important to bring to conscious attention. We start to understand things that happen in our bodies - hunger, thirst, cold, warmth, pain in various places, touch, loneliness, love - and our consciousness interacts with the world around us to meet needs and now desires.

Behavioralism: In 1913 a psychologist named John Watson created a rationalistic approach to understanding and processing the world around us. Behavioralism ignored emotions and focused on objective, rational observation. The worldview that Behavioralism brought in was that any person could become anything their superiors wanted through a reward and punishment system based solely on observed behavior. Emotions were seen as unimportant towards the end of producing the desired behavior. The desires of the child were secondary or unimportant in the drive for exceptional behavior. The psychologists powerfully demonstrated their theories by training pigeons to plunk out songs on a piano.

Even though Behavioralism has been shown to be flat-out wrong, it still powerfully occupies our understanding of how society ought to be structured, and this is readily apparent in instruction and discipline. We didn't just forget the tools of dealing with emotional development, we piled them up in the back yard and set them on fire!!! 

I remember watching Dead Poet's Society and I simply didn't get the point of it. As I reflect back, it's a statement against Behavioralism. The students are trapped in a dull existence of behavioralist expectation. The parents have paid top dollar for the school to produce perfect specimens. The protagonist arrives and with him, the light of emotion and purpose, which comes in direct conflict with outside behavioral parents. The student who is the most enlightened and freed finds his world crashing down when his behavioral parents will now do everything in their power to put him back on the approved track. This is a common theme - a child whose desires and gifts put him in conflict with parents' and societal expectations. Isn't this the story of the obligatory consecration service, where the (male) youth get to hear God's demands and expectations of sacrificial service to the church.

Reasoning vs. Emotional errors: Consider what happens when a child expresses a reasoning error. My family has a grocery list, when something is low or out, it gets put on the grocery list and the next time we go shopping, the item appears. A child realized this, and the next week, CANDY was scribbled on the grocery list. We didn't spank our child, we didn't even make it a big deal, we just explained that there was a logical error - the list wasn't a guarantee that we would buy something, just a reminder, etc. What happens when a child expresses an emotional error? One child feels jealousy because another child is playing with a toy they feel entitled to. Anger bursts out. How is that emotional error dealt with? Do we redirect? NO!! We somehow must punish all emotional mistakes. What do you think when you're in the store and your kid or someone else's kid throws a temper tantrum? If that parent doesn't spank the kid or take the kid out to the parking lot, they're a parental disgrace! Yet, in a sense, these emotional errors are equivalent to the logical errors we so effectively handle. We think of reasoning errors as perhaps innocent mistakes and emotional errors as sin that must be eradicated.

We have toys that teach logical cause and effect, our educational system is designed to teach reasoning and logic, but societally, the only solution, if you can say that, for emotional intelligence is punishing any sort of emotional outburst.

Lack of Connection: The purpose of our right brain is to develop a sense of connection with those around us. We develop sympathy and empathy to connect ourselves with others in a healthy way. We develop higher order emotions and emotional regulation. We develop trust. Our sense of worth and purpose is developed in our right brain. We can sense emotions in others and we can sense when things are "off" - we call that intuition. It's been studied that people's right brains recognize dangerous people, but because we're trained to suppress our "gut feeling", we put ourselves in harms way. In fact, studies have shown that dogs don't sense dangerous people, instead, they sense our emotions. For most people, their own dogs know more about what their emotions are telling them than they do! When the right brain is underdeveloped (or suppressed), our consciousness gets only half of the input - the rational input, which is very black and white. So, for example, when you have a theological disagreement with someone, your right brain may have shown you ways to be empathetic and gracious to this person, but your left brain is saying, "this person is WRONG, therefore EVIL". Consider this, if your value is what the church decides it is, and that is adherence to a system of doctrine, then what happens when you disagree with someone over doctrine? Your value is at stake. Losing the argument means that you are less valuable. You can't acknowledge the difference and still both be valuable people. I see this clearly in the political process. Societally, we can no longer accept other peoples' passion for issues like social justice and care for the sick and poor, yet at the same time acknowledge our desire for a peaceful and prosperous society. Therefore, we disconnect and demonize others. We use social media to connect only to those who share our opinions, and our Google news feed shows us only what we want to see.

The behavioral emphasis on reason also destroys self-worth. The clear piece is that the standard by which we are judged is someone else's standard. That is, our objective behavior is rewarded or punished based on someone else's desires for us. The pigeon will eventually plunk out the right notes because, regardless of what the pigeon wants to happen, the concerns of the pigeon are secondary to the concerns of the experimenter. So, in the church, we are taught that our [Spirit-inspired] desires are secondary to the direction of the Session. The less clear piece has to do with the brain. Just as we test our reason against our caregiver, we test our connection. As we bring our own desires into the relationship we look for confirmation of the value of those desires. The "terrible twos" is a developmental stage where the child differentiates from the caregiver. In the Reformed church, the will of the 2yo must be squashed. So, what has happened? The right brain seeks connection with the conscious. That connection is rejected. So, the brain must navigate the rejection. The conclusion (with the help of the black and white left brain) is that I must be bad if I'm rejected. From a behavioral point of view, this is good because the will of the child must be broken for the child to obey the adult. But, we are just setting the child up for a lifetime of self-deprecation and abuse.

Emotional Trauma: Because the church minimizes and denies the work of the right brain, the church denies the existence of emotional trauma. Let's say there are two violent acts in the church. The first violent act is a woman who gets brutally attacked during a robbery. Her knee was shattered and through extensive surgeries and physical therapy, she's able to walk, but not without pain and a limp. The church surrounds her and recognizes that the limp is a natural consequence of the physical damage and pain they condemn the robber and vindicate her. Let's say there is another woman in the church. She is violently raped by her boyfriend. Her whole world is shattered. She attempted suicide and ended up spending time in a mental hospital, but even now that she is released, she is seeing a psychologist because she can't stop cutting herself. First of all, the church is reluctant to take sides without fully hearing both the perpetrator and victim? Did her sin contribute to the rape? Then, when they see the obvious scars from the cutting, they condemn it and start mentioning church discipline. They condemn her for seeking "unbiblical counseling". Do we see the difference?

Breaking the Peace - the Assault on Righteous Anger: Since behavioralism specifically ignores emotions and focuses only on observable behaviors, it's obvious that the results of strong emotions are going to be misunderstood and punished. Let's say I'm in middle school, and immaturely, I decide that I should poke the boy in front of me with my pencil during class. The teacher does not like interruptions when he is teaching, so the boy tries to suppress the anger while he waits for an appropriate time. It doesn't work. He explodes in anger. "STOP POKING ME WITH YOUR PENCIL!!!" What do you think happens? It's obvious. BOTH of us are going to the principal. Both the offender and the victim get punished for breaking the peace.

It makes sense, because right and wrong are somewhat superfluous in the quest for perfect behavior. The behavioralist does not care anything about the feelings of the pigeon so long as the expected behavior is met, and likewise, the tendency in the church is to not care what happens in private so long as the public peace is preserved.

That's why we expect sermons like Rut's on Righteous Anger. Imagine if Rut preached a sermon about logical discourse in Bible studies. He says that Bible studies are a great place to ask questions about doctrine. But... you can always keep quiet because "better to be quiet and have others think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!" [Mark Twain, not the Bible!]. But... lest you fall into the erroneous thinking of Satan, before you ask a question, you should make sure you've done all the proper research and read the right scholars' opinions on the matter, and... before you ask a question, you should make sure that you understand the definition of each word you're going to say, and... before you ask a question, you should search the Bible for every passage that speaks on the topic, because it's easy for our fallible logic to be led astray!

Every pastor I've heard has said that RP doctrine should withstand scrutiny, and that we should be ready and willing to answer questions gently and with wisdom. Why do we so much fear the other side of our humanity, then? If we are not afraid of reason, why are we afraid of emotion? Why are we so deathly afraid of "sinful anger" that it's better to hold our peace when some pastor tells us that God tells us to abuse our children in His name - the same God who sends rain on the just and the unjust commands us to withhold food from our own children?

Righteous Anger part 1 - stream and rocks analogy

 Since Chris brought up the concept of righteous anger, I thought it would be worth talking through some analogies about righteous and sinful anger. First of all, anger is an emotion. We may think that our emotions are fallible and we need our intellect to keep it in check, but in actuality, both our emotions and intellect are fallible. We need our emotions to keep our intellect in check as much as we need our intellect to keep our emotions in check.

For example, we talk about intuition or "gut feelings" - gut feelings are often right, and we somehow assume that it was luck or providence, but evidence shows there is more to it. My plan is to cover that in part 2.

My best description of anger is an energy we feel as a result of a sense of injustice. Our emotion is telling us that something is wrong, and not just that something is wrong, but something needs to be fixed. We feel a surge of adrenaline, our faces turn red, our pulse quickens. Often our emotional sense of the situation precedes our intellectual sense of what happened.

It is at this point that our intellect is racing to catch up. WHY? is the first question to ask. Why am I angry? What injustice has occurred? Because our emotions are fallible, we need the combined strength of intellect and emotion to understand. Is the injustice I'm experiencing true or false injustice. That is, am I angry because I or someone I care about being treated disrespectfully, or is it some perceived entitlement that has been threatened?

To understand psychology, anger can be resolved (processed) or it can be suppressed. If I understand that I'm at fault, I can use the energy of the anger to work towards change in my own heart - to seek forgiveness and restoration. It can be resolved through putting the energy towards constructive conflict - seeking justice personally or systemically. However, it can also be suppressed. Suppressing anger is flatly unhealthy, yet as we see, in religious circles it seems to be the most acceptable and compelling option.

This is an analogy of an abusive relationship that has blown up. The person on the left is experiencing mostly unrighteous (idolatrous or self-righteous) anger. The person on the right is a target of idolatrous abuse, and is angry as a result of being treated disrespectfully or unjustly. Because the anger grows past the "ability to tolerate", the public peace is broken. For the sake of the argument, this has happened in the church context.

What should happen? I would argue that the church needs to deal, first and foremost, justly in this situation. If you read Shepherding a Child's Heart, you would see that Tedd Tripp disagrees. In his mind, we notice that there is red (unrighteous anger) on both sides and we deal solely with the red without recognizing the sheer volume of red on one side. In his description, the child who holds the toy is sinfully greedy instead of sharing, while the child who steals the toy has resorted to violence. The solution, then, is to punish both for disturbing the peace of the house.

So, what happens is what is called all sorts of things - gaslighting, grooming, normalizing, burying one's head in the sand, whatever. This can happen as a result of one's own codependency or external factors. The point is that the anger is not "put away" - it's still there and it's still as big as ever. Yet, the anger is no longer visible in the community. The abuse is still as strong as ever.

This is what is taught in the RP church. Instead of teaching people to deal with anger in a healthy way by choosing to stand up for justice and give strength to victims of abuse, the church chooses a peaceful image. Under the holy and righteous image of the church is unresolved and abusive conflict. What is unfortunate is that it is the opposite of justice.

There's more complexity to it, but as long as the RPCNA chooses to whitewash over conflict in the church through sermons like this, not only will abuse and injustice persist, but anger itself will grow unchecked, hidden under what appears to be a a calm sea of suppression. This is what I mean about choosing image over truth. The anger is still there, the abuse is still there, but it can all be conveniently ignored because everything looks like a calm stream. The church does the opposite of its calling. Instead of shining a light in the darkest places, the church chooses to hide and obscure injustice because it looks good.

Not TRUTH at all costs, but IMAGE at all costs

In working through some struggles as a result of childhood, I was asked the question: "What if you just said to your family, 'well, that was your perspective, but I see things differently?'" This was about what seemed to be a significant disconnect in family stories. My response was, "In my family, truth was more important than any one of us."

That is also what the RPCNA teaches. Our responsibility to God and to truth is a responsibility that even death pales in comparison to. We were told of martyrs throughout history who refused to accommodate the half-truths of the Catholic church, or the half-truths of the state churches imposed on them. They met in private, risking arrest and even death. All because the truth was more important to them than any harm that could be done.

I'm not trying to invite compromise on core Christian principles, but what if the reality was not so rosy?

When I looked back on my family, I realized that there was a standard claimed for being treated as an equal, intellectual, musical and athletic giftedness. That was presented as the family truth. Yet, somehow, I was never able to claim that equality. No matter how much I succeeded intellectually, musically and athletically, there was always some new expectation. Material possessions were added, expertise was added, salaries were added, music was removed and the result was that somehow I always had no claim to sit at the same table. This became especially true as I started questioning our "superior RPCNA upbringing". This has shown itself in action, as well - small but clear reminders of my inferiority and standing.

After talking with my counselor, I started realizing. It wasn't the truth that defined our family, but image. The truth was that I was an equal in every way, but image dictated that others in the family had to be superior. The truth of our upbringing did not support the image that we wanted to present.

I believe this is part of the core problem in the RPCNA. The image of the RPCNA as a superior church, claiming both amazing love and joy among the brethren, amazing care and concern for Biblical truth, and competent, godly and thoroughly vetted leadership is more important than confronting the truth of what the RPCNA is.

When I think through many of those questionable moments, I see this principle clearly:

• Was the trial of Bruce Hemphill primarily driven by a desire to seek and act on truth, or was it primarily driven by a desire to appear unabashedly committed to Biblical truth to fellow NAPARC churches? Before you answer that, ask yourself why the RPCNA overruled breaches of many of the procedural and disciplinary protections that were in place at the time.
• Why is insubordination the primary cause of discipline (as told me by an elder)? Is it because the session seeks truth, or because the session seeks members to uphold the image it has claimed?
• Why would a presbytery commission claim to have rebuked an elder (quest for truth!) and then reject a request from a member that the rebuke of an elder be public as required in scripture instead of behind closed doors?
• Why does the RPCNA constitution give the right of appeal to all members, but only by submitting the appeal through the court whose decision is being appealed, and then, only if said court finds the appeal to be in order? Why are members of the session being appealed given speaking privileges of the floor and have their travel reimbursed, while the appellants, if they travel to presbytery must do so at their own expense, and expect only to be silent observers to the presbytery discussion of their case?
• Why is it the implication that every member who has left the RPCNA has done so because they chose sin or unrighteousness or compromise over truth? Why do we mourn the generations "lost" when many of these generational members left the RPCNA for a different church?
• Why do Reformed churches demand that formal seminary training is a requirement for all pastors, even though there is essentially zero scriptural support to make this a requirement? Is having 100% seminary-trained pastors a Biblical truth or does it convey an image of intellectual superiority?
• When the RPCNA takes great care to make public the causes for excommunication of members, but deals with sins of leadership privately (I know many occasions where this has happened), is this a stand for Biblical truth, or a desire to protect the image of a godly leadership?
• Oh, and the small, but clear reminders of inferiority (hint: how the RPCNA butchers Total Depravity) and standing (hint: how much leaders want the congregation to be removed from the important decisions of the church)

This is also why the OPC is at a crossroads. Their handling of Aimee Byrd is clearly designed to restore the image of their church leadership. Their report makes the actions of their leaders appear innocent and inconsequential, while portraying the actions of Ms. Byrd, the concerned pastors and the "whistleblower" as divisive, scheming and improper. I fear that the OPC will choose image over truth, as it has presumably done in the past. Why would this presbytery committee feel so emboldened to distort justice otherwise?

The four quadrants of shame management and church "personhood"

One of the big questions that keeps popping up in religious abuse discussions is whether an organizational culture can take on the characteristics of a personality. Psalm 115 1-8 says:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, But to Your name give glory
Because of Your lovingkindness, because of Your truth.
Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?”
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak; They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear; They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel; They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them, Everyone who trusts in them.

I am not surprised, then, when a theology of internal subjection of wills within the Trinity leads to a church culture of subjection. I'm not surprised that a shame-based, narcissistic and authoritarian view of God leads to a shame-based, narcissistic and authoritarian church. This is a very helpful diagram, proposed by Patricia Gianotti on how we build defense mechanisms against shame: https://www.treatingnarcissism.com/the-four-quadrant-model

This seems very helpful in mapping out personal, familial and even church responses to shame. For example, through stories about Daniel, I was taught that faithful living and natural giftedness would result in being raised to positions of power. So, in quadrant 1, I had a drive to perfection and high standards for my own conduct, which were justified because of quadrant 3, waiting to be acknowledged and rewarded. But, years passed and I often experienced the opposite. That led to a sense of despair and brokenness and some lack of care for myself - quadrant two. Emotional and spiritual abuse also led to the quadrant 4 fantasies of revenge, violence and even the typical RP persecution complex.

I see the same sorts of things when it comes to the church response. Ultimately, the RP "distinctives" fall into quadrants 1 and 2 - we hold high standards of self-imposed righteousness, with the belief that personally, and as a church, we will be lifted up and recognized, if not now, then at the judgment as being free from shame. But, when dealing with chronic shame and unworthiness (a tragic misunderstanding of God and the gospel among those in the RP church) - the church suffers from the right quadrant issues. For example, quadrant 2, I would suggest is the continual joyless existence common among RPs, who cannot let their real selves out for fear of shame. Quadrant 4 tends to be the RP story, though, in the interpersonal church relations, and especially within the church leadership.

Being raised on the conservative side of the RP church, I heard the conversations about certain liberals that threatened the church order. Talk of what sort of church discipline would be most appropriate - public rebuke, excommunication, humiliation, silence, whatever. I see the church testing God - putting preaching stations and missions, pastors and missionaries out in the world with nearly non-existent support, and then, when God does not send immediate growth, sabotaging the work. I continually see the leaders of the church refusing to accept blame. For example, I heard elders talk of all the "ministry opportunities" that were provided for the members to step into, but the members did not volunteer. I see self-sabotage also in the quest for numerical growth. Growth in the RP church provokes bitter animosity and jealousy. On the one hand, numerical growth is celebrated because the overall church feels rewarded and validated, but that growth occurs somewhere. So, when my church is dwindling and another church is growing, despite the fact that I'm faithful and loyally waiting, I want to put the blame elsewhere - that pastor is straying from some RP principle to win people over, or he is cow-towing to some radical fringe group like the Steelites.

Sometimes we are astounded at the level of revenge evident in the RP church. Bruce Hemphill comes to mind. Elders and Pastors from every corner fell over themselves to exact their revenge - and it falls very well within this narrative - a desire for the church to appear "pure", a desire to be recognized as "zealous for the truth", but then critical and consistent process failures and the overall hatred and revenge shown in the process.

I still struggle to read much of the Biblical narrative through my de-facto RP lens. The Old Testament God does seem narcissistic, and the RP obsession with the OT seems to foment the sort of narcissism and shame evident. However, the OT prophets and especially the NT shed a more gracious and productive light on those actions. For example, a juxtaposed narrative of the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah as against gross sexual sin, but also about hospitality and justice to the disadvantaged. The more I look through the lens of Jesus's life, though, I see the possibility of forgiveness and restoration of personal sin, and I see the rejection of those who refuse justice for the disadvantaged.

There is much more to explore in the RP church's embodiment of their narcissistic god, but I'll leave this model as a helpful way to see our experiences within the church as a refusal to accept and process thoughts of shame among the leaders and members.