How does one find words for the betrayal of trust that occurs at both an individual & collective level when Christ's church fails the most vulnerable? What descriptors will account for the compounded betrayal that comes from organizational structures that enable abuse? 🧵
What vocabulary can reveal the weight of shame & victim blaming when the rarity of public disclosure occurs? What dictionary catalogs the "in-house" responses from pastors & staff-members equipped with zero training or awareness? 2/
How do we parse the complicated whirlwind of community betrayal, good intentions, and not-so-good intentions? What thesaurus spells out the impact of absent safeguarding and protective measures? The culpability of negligent and nonfunctional response procedures? 3/
Statements of grief & prayer are a poor offering on the balance scale of justice.
And minimizing victim-blaming language just adds to the betrayal. 4/
B/c how do you find words to describe the nightmare of known perpetrators being relocated to other churches? Of performative rehabilitation that prioritizes a dangerous person's spiritual desires or ministerial ambitions over safeguarding the vulnerable? 5/
What is the study Bible prepared to cross-reference distorted theologies, teachings regarding obedience, submission & insta-compliance, or warped requirements for forgiveness and grace? Where are the commentaries by which we can account for the spiritual betrayal? 6/
Who will preach on the community complicity, the cultures & ignorance that contributed to gatherings ripe for abuse? What sermon will identify the gradual nature of understanding, the length of time it takes for a child victim to even begin to name the abuse? 7/
It is the worst kind of self-betrayal when the body of Christ turns away from the acute pain of our suffering members that happened on our watch, blaming the injured & defending the indefensible. B/c while perpetrators inflicted abuse, countless other factors enabled it. 8/
Every single one of the "leaders" who now, knowing everything, with endless opportunities to learn, triple-down & deny responsibility, making a mockery of this, should immediately find a new job.
All comments show is that they've disqualified themselves from pastoral ministry.9/
What will be the precise terminology over which Christians begin to own collective responsibility? What exact events make the crushing lifelong legacy of abuse done in God's Name worthy of such language? 10/
When will it be a crisis? How many children must come forward to tip that scale a little further? And how many more who will never disclose are hidden behind that statistic? And what are their names? 11/
There is One who sees & knows, the same who used the language of millstones for *one*, who sent prophets with pointed messages for the people of God who volleyed "How have we despised your Name?" when confronted w/their actions. 12/
We can use whatever words we want to describe this moment of apocalypse & reckoning, the laying bare of unbearable things that have been done in secret, the destruction of God's temple, which isn't the organization or denominations or the institutionalized church. 13/
When one part suffers, every part suffers. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. /end
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