Please forgive me for taking so long to send this email but I have been extremely busy since last week. I have attached a copy of the minutes from the church meeting last week so you can see exactly what was discussed. Per section 4 of our church Constitution, The church cannot accept your letter of resignation at this time because I have recommended you to the church as a candidate for church discipline. This recommendation was given because at this point you have refused to meet for counseling since November of last year and you are not willing to continue to work on saving your marriage. The church will be meeting again this evening to determine whether to proceed with church discipline or not. If they don’t proceed with church discipline, they will be free to accept your letter of resignation at this time. I would encourage you to please come to the meeting to voice your side of the story before the church votes on this matter. If you can’t make it, you can call in by phone or you can send me an email that I would read on your behalf. Please understand that we still love you as a sister and we are deeply concerned and we are praying for you and your husband.By His Grace and For His Glory,Pastor ________
Issue of the ______ family/recent communications and update (informational)
a. Review of constitution and discipline policies/procedures (handouts given)
b. Reading of Matt 16:13-19 “upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
c. Letter of Resignation has been received from Stephanie to families
of church that includes the details regarding the circumstances of her marital union
d. Records of all communication is available for church members who desire to know the context of the circumstances to review due to the public nature of the circumstances
e. “Love covers a multitude of sins…” issues were being worked on privately to counsel both Terrance and attempts to reach out to counsel Stephanie in pursuit of this biblical guidance
f. Details of Pastoral guidance were shared:
i. Meeting in October with [abuser] and Stephanie by Pastor and
[pastor’s wife]; plan of action was determined
ii. Met again with Terrance and Stephanie in November with Pastor and another biblical counselor (a couple) at her request
iii. Ladies of church have reached out to meet and counsel with Stephanie;
iv. Most recently, Stephanie has not shown a willingness to be counseled by both Pastor and/or the other counselor;
v. Terrance confessed his sin against God and his wife before the
congregation; confessed his sinful anger, emotion at the counseling
meeting and vengeance regarding the naming of another woman
to a cruise manifest. He summarized that he has not been leading his wife the way the Lord has commanded him to. He is requesting that the church continue to pray for him that his wife returns to him.
vi. We have identified that the home is the center of contention and bringing the condition of the property to a mutually “acceptable” state is the primary issue
vii. Stephanie, at this point, has given up on the marriage and is not willing to continue to work on the relationship
viii. Working through the issue biblically and communicating in a Godly manner to resolve conflict is at the heart of the matter; there must be mutual submission to one another and reverence for biblical process to arrive at peaceful resolution
ix. Brother ________ asked if there is any house work that need to be done to help the issue.
x. Church discussed response to letter of resignation;
1. Brother ________ asked if there has been any adultery or physical abuse; it was assumed based upon the communication that has been shared that Bro. Terrance has not been physically abusive or
not in an adulterous relationship.
2. Persistent theme is the refusal to meet with or counsel with Pastor;
it is assumed that, according to her refusal to resolve this
in a biblical manner, there is a disregard of biblical authority and
unwillingness to abide by the constitution process adopted by the
church.
3. There is an acknowledgment in the communications received from
Sis. Stephanie that she has no biblical grounds to seek a divorce;
she has been absent from church attendance/meetings and
moved from the marital residence.
4. Bro. ________ suggested she be given an opportunity to address
the church regarding her resignation and the circumstances of her
estrangement from her husband.
5. According to the situational assessment of Pastor, she is a
“proper candidate” for church discipline and recommendation for
church response will be determined at a follow up meeting.
6. We are to pray for our dear sister and brother that they be
reconciled to one another and that Sis. Stephanie would be
reconciled to this church body.
And there you have it. What a horror story! I have no words.
Stop Saying “God hates Divorce”
It hasn’t been that long ago that someone told me our church’s position on divorce was wrong. We acknowledge that God permits divorce for habitual, unrepentant, hard-hearted violation of the marriage vows. Sexual unfaithfulness, failure to love and provide for, desertion, and abuse (a kind of desertion) are, we maintain, biblical grounds for divorce. In fact, these violations are what destroy the marriage, not the victim who files the legal paperwork. My caller however, insisted upon her rendition of Malachi 2 – claiming that it says God hates divorce. What she meant by this, of course, was that God hates ALL divorce and thus divorce is never permissible. She is wrong. Very, very wrong. And her words do great hurt and harm to abuse victims. Christians need to stop saying “God hates divorce.”
The Widows and Orphans of Our Time
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
There are literal widows and orphans today who need our help. Widows who are widows indeed, without even family members to care for them. But this biblical category of people who are particularly near to the Lord’s heart – widows and orphans – is much, much broader than most Christians have realized. One lady commented:
Couldn’t all the passages that speak about caring for the fatherless apply to children who do indeed have a living father, but he doesn’t protect and teach like a father, but rather hurts them? They have a biological father, but who would debate that they don’t really have a protector and nurturer. Wouldn’t most everybody agree that we as a country do right to remove children from dangerous situations and place them in a safe home? So, when the Bible speaks of caring for the fatherless and widows, I’m wondering if the woman who has a husband who doesn’t love her, but abuses her, might she fit under the category of widow? She has a husband, but no one to love and care for her.
She is EXACTLY correct! Here we are, looking all around us for widows and orphans, and yet we miss them. They are right in front of us – many sitting in the pews of our own churches. We are fooled, just because there is a man with them. But he is no husband or father. He is their tormentor from whom they need rescue.
Marriage is Made for People, Not People for Marriage
The teaching of the church has compounded much of this hurt rather than alleviating it. Victims of continued abuse have been told they must stay married, and if they do get divorced, they have been told they cannot remarry until their former partner has died. And sometimes those who have divorced and remarried are told by their church that they must now divorce their new spouse because in God’s eyes they are still married to the person who abused or neglected them. Thus the church makes them a victim for a second time. (Instone-Brewer 2003, [Kindle] Location 1795)
One of our readers asked if we could post the following paragraphs from my book, A Cry for Justice*, pp202-4 as she found them so helpful. So, here they are! Thanks to her for typing them up for us:
Continue reading “Marriage is Made for People, Not People for Marriage”
Marriage and Divorce – Getting it Right: A Sermon by Jeff Crippen
We want to make you aware that Pastor Crippen’s sermon today at Christ Reformation Church is on marriage and divorce. Using the sermon text of Matthew 19:1-12 and scripture reading from Deuteronomy 24, Pastor reminds us of the importance of rightly handling the word of truth. And there are very few places in the Bible that have been more abused than the words of Jesus when He speaks to the issue of marriage and divorce.
We are providing a link to the PDF, video, and audio of Pastor’s sermon, Marriage and Divorce – Getting it Right, found at sermonaudio.com.
We have also added this sermon, Marriage and Divorce – Getting it Right, to our Twisted Scriptures page located on the top menu bar under Scriptures.
For those of you who would like to follow the Sunday Service at Christ Reformation Church (CRC) weekly you may go to lightfordarktimes.com where CRC’s weekly Sunday Order of Service is published and links to the video/audio of Pastor Crippen’s sermon are provided. All are welcome to join with the congregation of CRC online!
Fantasies and Fictions that Keep Victims in Abuse (Part 2) – Loving our Enemy
Luk 6:27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
We saw an example in last Friday’s post of how “christian” fiction and fantasy does great harm, especially to victims of abuse as it hides in the church. That example, published at Our Daily Bread (odb.org) referenced a fictional book that portrayed a suffering Christian man touching his persecutor and thereby healing the wicked man’s physical ailment. Wow! How incredible! Yes, it is IN-credible. UN-believable. Because it is fiction. Yet, how often are victims of evil given these kinds of fiction to make them stay in the abuse, supposedly so that they can heal the evil heart of their abuser?
What did Jesus mean? When He tells us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us?
Continue reading “Fantasies and Fictions that Keep Victims in Abuse (Part 2) – Loving our Enemy”
Fantasies and Fictions that Keep Victims in Abuse
Our Daily Bread, a daily devotional publication, posted the following at odb.org for August 20, 2019. It was entitled Touched by Grace and written by Sheridan Voysey. Here it is:
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27)
In Leif Enger’s novel Peace Like a River, Jeremiah Land is a single father of three working as a janitor at a local school. He’s also a man of deep, sometimes miraculous, faith. Throughout the book, his faith is often tested.
Jeremiah’s school is run by Chester Holden, a mean-spirited superintendent with a skin condition. Despite Jeremiah’s excellent work ethic—mopping up a sewage spill without complaint, picking up broken bottles the superintendent smashed—Holden wants him gone. One day, in front of all the students, he accuses Jeremiah of drunkenness and fires him. It’s a humiliating scene.
How does Jeremiah respond? He could threaten legal action for unfair dismissal or make accusations of his own. He could slink away, accepting the injustice. Think for a moment what you might do.
“Love your enemies,” Jesus says, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28). These challenging words aren’t meant to excuse evil or stop justice from being pursued. Instead, they call us to imitate God (v. 36) by asking a profound question: How can I help my enemy become all God wants him or her to be?
Jeremiah looks at Holden for a moment, then reaches up and touches his face. Holden steps back defensively, then feels his chin and cheeks in wonder. His scarred skin has been healed.
An enemy touched by grace.
Heart-warming. Touching. And total fiction. Let me clue you in – you cannot touch someone and heal them. You cannot touch someone and regenerate their evil heart. This is a false application of Jesus’ words about loving our enemies and doing good to those who persecute us. And yet this is just the kind of thing that professing Christians want to believe, so they choose to do so and then they lay these fictions on victims of abuse, insisting that the Lord requires them to endure and remain in it.
We do not interpret the Scriptures properly by writing fantasy stories about them. That stuff may sell like hotcakes and make publishers rich, but it is a rank misuse of God’s Word. And it does harm. Real, serious, harm.
Notice again this statement by Voysey:
These challenging words aren’t meant to excuse evil or stop justice from being pursued. Instead, they call us to imitate God (v. 36) by asking a profound question: How can I help my enemy become all God wants him or her to be?
Yes, let’s imitate God. Does God always deal with His enemies in such a way as to help them become all He wants them to be? Of course not. The implication here by Voysey is that WE can heal them. That WE can change that abuser’s evil heart by “touching them.” Well, we can’t. God can. But He doesn’t. God does not change the heart of an unrepentant, wolf in sheep’s clothing who is hiding in the pews disguised as the finest saint in the church, all the while behind the scenes wickedly abusing his wife or molesting children. In fact, the Lord tells us (see 1 Cor 5) to cast out such a person from His church.
In other cases, as we see in the imprecatory Psalms, the Lord authorizes us to pray for His wrath to come upon the wicked. Particularly upon the wicked who cruelly mistreat God’s people. What, we can ask ourselves, did God want Pharaoh to be? (See Romans 9 – “for this very purpose I raised him up”). What of the apostate who has tasted the good gift of God (Hebrews 6:4-6) but then returned to his own vomit? The Apostle John (see 1 John 5) tells us there is a sin (and I think he means apostasy) that we are not to pray for.
So, instead of writing some damaging story line that is only fit for a comic book, how do we handle Jesus’ words? –
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27)
We will turn to that answer in the next post this coming Monday.
Continue reading “Fantasies and Fictions that Keep Victims in Abuse”
