A certain Presbyterian minister says it is spiritual abuse to tell people that if they don't accept God's free gift of love offered through Jesus Christ, they will die in their sins, and they will not live eternally in heaven. This minister says that it is essentially spiritual violence to warn people that the consequences of not turning their lives over to God is eternal death--a loss of the joy they could have forever with God.
What a strange definition of spiritual abuse!
Let's look at an analogy. Suppose there were a road that everyone needed to take. This road has a fork, and one direction leads to a sudden hidden precipice. Suppose further that someone wants to place a warning sign at the fork saying "Look out! If you continue along this direction, you will fall off a precipice and die." Would placing that sign there be mental abuse? Would it be mentally violent? Or would it actually be helpful and saving to the people taking that road?
That is the case with those who want to tell people about God's offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. They want to be helpful and offer what is lifesaving to those who don't have it.
Moreover, it is actually spiritually abusive to deny this offer to people. The minister who claims that God does not exist (he says, "No deity exists. Not Jesus Christ, not Yahweh, not Baal, not Marduk, not Allah, not Zeus, not the Flying Spaghetti Monster, not the Wizard of Oz. None of them exist. All figments of imagination. They are fun. But none are worth the spiritual violence they cause.") does not have a shred of proof to back up his assertion. It all rests on his own faith claim that this world is all there is, his own 21st-century weltanschauung.
He is like the stubborn medieval people who couldn't see that the world was round, so they insisted it was flat. This minister can't see or feel God, so he insists God is not there. And so he becomes spiritually abusive toward his parishioners, and the readers of his blog and newspaper articles, by denying them the saving knowledge of all that God has to offer them.
True spiritual violence is done to people when God's love is kept away from them.
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14 comments:
It is violent to lead people away from hope and toward destruction. John thinks rather highly of himself and little about people of faith. It is telling that the title of his blog site "shuck and jive" reveres to what is defined as conversation that is "not the whole truth; or manipulating something to get it your way."
Tom Gray
Yes, the things that he and his cronies say there about those with whom they disagree would be called hate speech if they were said by us about those that they care about. They are rather hypocritical over there if they claim to be loving, unless they don't claim to love everyone.
Interesting point about "shuck and jive."
Thanks Debbie,
It is violent to lead people away from Christ. John is joining a long list of people who are willing to be abusive to Christians. Well, he isn't just joining at the moment he is one of the leaders.
Exactly right, Viola. Keeping people away from a saving knowledge of Christ is spiritually violent. (I really dislike this term "spiritually violent," but if he's going to use it, I'm going to show him he's doing it in spades.) It's spiritual abuse of the worst kind--placing a barrier between people and the great kindness of God.
And yet, three churches have paid his salary, and three Presbyterys and their COMs have allowed him to minister within their bounds, including the one which ordained him. Is Rev. Shuck to blame for what he believes (or does not believe, as the case may be) or do we have a much larger issue on our hands? When I see good, solid churches struggle to pay an orthodox minister, and think that his salary does not seem to be in question, it seems some days that heresy, like crime, certainly pays. Thanking God that on my good days I am lifted up to a higher place than that.
Yes and with 10-A we will have increasing freedom to set ordination standards to whatever we (as presbyteries and congregations) seem to think is in accord with Biblical and Confessional standards... I think I know where John Shuck, MLP, and others will go with that...
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!
Rev. Barrett, you are exactly right. It is because the Church failed to exercise discipline (one of the three marks of the true church) over the last several decades to weed out unorthodoxy that we are in the mess we are in today.
Debbie,
I will probably never link to Shucks blog again, which I am sure is what the point is. I am sick to my stomach because of what Alan and Jodie have been writing on the comments where I linked. That is violence as far as I am concerned.
It is certainly abusive writing, but it can't touch you or me or any of us, Viola. They are hurting souls. They are hurting themselves when they write that way, not you or others who love Jesus.
It's so ironic that they accuse others of abuse when they are abusive themselves.
I'm glad you said that, and you are right. I was feeling somewhat icky.
I've been told for years that I am spiritually abusive for believing (and voting) that persons who are sexually active and not in a heterosexual marriage should not be ordained. I've wondered for all those years just what spiritual abuse is. I frankly don't like the term as I have had too many people walk into my office who have been physically, sexually or verbally abused. So I refuse to use the term.
Robert, I completely agree that the term takes away from the real abuse that is suffered by victims of physical and sexual abuse. It's why I also dislike the term.
Debbie & Viola...
Just to be clear it is the "progressive/non-believing/pain in the backside" Alan not me who is throwing barbs...
I, like Viola, have no reason to link to John. I done playing his games. I will simply use him as an illustration when I preach on the wheat and tares.
Oh, and John, yes that is judgmental. LOL
Peace,
Alan--the Evangelical one
Portland OR
(Thanks, Alan, for clearing up who you are!)
There is so much misunderstanding about what Jesus meant when he said not to judge. He certainly did not mean not to make any judgments at all. How could he mean that when he himself told particular people to stop sinning?
Jesus made pronouncements about what was sin all the time. He even upped the ante on what constituted sin. So he certainly wasn't saying "Don't judge. Whatever. Anything goes. Don't judge any particular behaviors; instead, leave it up to God and those who know the person best to decide whether or not that person was created or called to behave that way."
No, Jesus was pretty clear about what was sin, and if he disagreed with the prevailing culture, he had no hesitation to come right out and say so. (So if he didn't disagree, he was silent. So much for silence on a topic.)
When Jesus said not to judge, he was most likely talking about judgments about a person's salvation. He sure wasn't talking about judgments about behaviors.
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