“What do you do if you see a person walking down the street with a knife plunged into their back?” My high school Bible teacher asked the rhetorical question to a room full of freshmen. I attended a Christian school where daily Bible Classes were part of the core curriculum. We looked at him, wide-eyed, and almost hypnotized like a deer looking into the headlights of oncoming traffic. No one had an answer, and no one dared to speak, including me as I was thinking, “We haven’t covered first aid in health class yet!?”
My Bible teacher was not interested in physical knives thrust into the back of helpless victims. He was making a point about the way students of this Christian school weaponized their words against each other, particularly behind each other’s backs. In retrospect, it may have been my first exposure to the darker side of church or parachurch organizations that leads to church hurt.
No, I take that back. The first church hurt moment I remember involved a pastor who felt persecuted. He believed that he and his church were being attacked by outside forces, including the government. Truth be known, people were raising suspicions about abuse in his church. The pastor decided to run and take his church with him. He ordered construction on a compound in Guyana, named it after himself, and made his escape. Within three years the abuse accusations continue to surface, and word was it that people wanted out. With the government coming down on the cult, November 18, 1978 Jim Jones of the People’s Temple orchestrated a mass murder-suicide.
I was in the seventh grade and the coverage was all over the news. One of my teachers suspended teaching and spent three class periods debriefing the incident. We talked about our feelings and our fears and tried to get our heads wrapped around the Christian faith taking such a dark turn.
Church is supposed to be a safe place, a harbor, in the midst of the storm, or a gathering “where everybody knows your name.” Scars are supposed to heal through church, not become the source of the scars. If Acts 2 is the ideal church community, then coming together includes teaching or instruction, sharing both a meal and communion, prayer, being together, fellowshipping, and finding commonality rooted in praising God, all the while lost people are sought out and found (Act. 2:42-47). I love the lines, “they had everything in common” and “gave to anyone who had need” (Act. 2:44,45). I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to pursue that kind of church.
But somewhere along the way, things went wrong. Very wrong. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for the church hurt to begin.
Paul had established the church in Corinth, but the very church he planted began rejecting him. He describes his relationship to the church as an affectionate father never withholding love from his children (2 Cor. 6:11-12), but they were withholding love from him. Truth be known, they became mesmerized by the flashy preachers with their charismatic, bigger-than-life personalities, oratory skills, and letters of recommendations listing all of their accomplishments. Suddenly, Paul looked weak, vulnerable, and less impressive. But something dark and sinister was metastasizing in Corinth, and its source was these antagonistic leaders stealing Paul’s flock. Paul saw it first: their charisma was outpacing their character. Left unchecked, it was not going to end well.
By 2 Corinthians 11:19-20, just before Paul dares to go toe-to-toe with these antagonists he calls, “super-apostles” (12:11), and his words are dripping with sarcasm. He exposed the fraudulent Oz behind the curtain to the church. He shows them/us just what is behind their charisma, and it’s not their high quality character. And while he asks them to put up with some of his nonsense, they have been putting up with a lot worse. A lot worse. First, he says that the antagonists have “enslaved them,” possibly by domineering or lording their authority over the church to which Corinth easily surrendered their will. When you give up free thinking to be shackled by the personality of someone else you lose your freedom in Christ. Secondly, he says they “exploit” the church by preying on them with predator-like aggression. Star struck by the persona of these leaders they were easily fed upon. Members likely opened their homes to them as they overstayed their welcome, milking their resources dry. Thirdly, they are “taking advantage of” the church as if these leaders were fishing and dangling the bait before the Corinthians. Like hungry fish, they were easily caught because the fish are biting. Fourthly, they “push themselves forward” by self-promotion or making sure they were first. They have an overinflated ego which when fed, is like trying to fill the stomach of a teenage boy; their egos were never satisfied. Finally, Paul accuses them of “slapping them in the face,” which is physically abusive language. The phrase “slap in the face” is a tame translation to which Paul is trying to underscore the violent behavior of these leaders and the Corinthians’ willingness to submit to such men. They smiled and oozed with love until pushed and their façade crumbled to the ground.
Paul doesn’t tell us what the fallout would be by following such leadership, he probably doesn’t need to. Instead, he takes a parting satirical shot at his church when he says, “To my shame I admit that (I) was too weak for that” (v. 21a). I don’t know about you, but I can see an apostolic eye-roll as Paul wrote those words.
I wish the evidence of church hurt was limited to Corinth as an anomaly. But predatory behavior can be found throughout the New Testament where church leaders feed off of the people they are called to protect. No, unfortunately, Corinth only exposed the real possibility that church hurt can exist. Church hurt does exist.
The trail of hurt caused by churches is long and well documented. Books have been written, podcasts recorded, and films that have been produced. They are dark, deadly, and dangerous which does not take too much time to give a person the heebie-jeebies. If the abuse is not bad enough, the cover up is always worse. Always, especially when the church chooses to protect the guilty and not the innocent. When such criminal activity is exposed, and they need exposing, it sheds a much needed light on man’s sinful nature to control, manipulate, exploit, and milk the people for the self-gratuitous nature of the church leader(s).
Church hurt can be seen on a spectrum or a continuum. Certainly, Paul’s depiction in Corinth is bad, and potentially extreme. What some have experienced in their lifetime may be worse. Far more worse. On the other side of the spectrum, church hurt occurs because people coming together is like porcupines hugging. We don’t mean to, but by close proximity, we end up hurting each other. A careless word, or silence when a word should have been spoken, hurts. Someone getting their way, again or being left out, hurts. And when the Bible is weaponized instead of properly exposed, the fallout is great, and the pain rarely goes away.
The truth is we’ve all been hurt by church, me included. I could tell you stories and describe the scars I carry. They are visible. They are real. But as I reflect on this moment, I confess. I’ve hurt people too. I know three men whom I engaged with as middle-school kids years ago when I confronted and spoke harsh words to them. One of them preaches for a church and is doing a wonderful ministry. I’d love to take credit for the direction of his life. I can’t. He is not a minister because of me and my words to him, but in spite of me. The two other men are no longer in church. I don’t believe I had anything to do with their dropout, but I was not the reason they stayed in church either. I can point the finger at those who cause church hurt, but three are pointing right back at me. And those fingers sting.
So I live with guilt and shame, as I pray for God’s grace and mercy. I believe God extends it to me, which is why I have to remind myself to extend that same grace and mercy to the church. Since I need it, I know the church God established needs it as well.
As for the church, until confession and repentance for its destructive behavior, its cover-up, and its decision to protect the villain instead of the victim – which is so well documented – materializes, I’m afraid the church will continue to struggle for relevance, relationship, and restoration. People are hurting. They are angry. The abuse they experienced was allowed, and those in power used their position to hurt, not to heal. The church has been anything but Acts 2. The church has been anything but Jesus to the world.
Remember the story about the knife in the back? I guess what should have happened is that someone – like the church – needs to gently remove the knife, wash the wound, apply an oil-healing balm, and needed pressure so that the wound will heal and life may be restored. It may take time, but it will heal. Finally, let’s hold the one(s) who wielded the knife accountable for the damage caused to the victim(s).
Soli Deo Gloria!
(i.e., only God is glorified!)