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How should we respond to church abuses?

by James Barringer  
5/01/2010 / Christian Living

In political debate, there's a rule called Godwin's Law, which states that the longer an argument goes on, the more likely it is that someone will compare their opponents to Hitler or Nazis. A similar rule might apply to apologetics; I'll call it Saladin's Law, and it holds that, the longer you spend debating an agnostic or atheist, the greater the chance of them invoking the Crusades, priests abusing altar boys, or something along those lines as a reason for doubting Christianity. What do you say next?

I'll tell you what I said, for a long time, and why I no longer think it's a good response. Most of the major abuses in the history of our faith were committed by the Catholic Church, because its power-centric hierarchy lends itself quite well to abuses of that power. The easiest answer to the Crusades and to papal shenanigans and priest abuses is to say that those were done by the Catholics, of whom I'm not one, so I can't answer for them. It sounds like a perfectly reasonable response, but it's actually not.

There are two reasons why. The first is that abuses happen everywhere, in every denomination. It's true that, unless you're a Catholic, your denomination didn't instigate the Crusades, but what else might it have done? Did it oppose the Civil Rights movement? Did it oppose mixed-race marriage? Failing that, has a single pastor been caught in adultery or homosexuality or drug use? See, blaming other people only works as long as your people aren't committing any mistakes of their own, but since we're all people, we all make mistakes.

Besides, we can't just toss Catholics under the bus without ignoring one of the major Biblical teachings about the church, which is the unity of all believers. Jesus prayed for it in John 17, praying that the believers would be as united with each other as Jesus is to God the Father. In other words, we're supposed to be inseparable. Ephesians 4 observes that we have one faith in one God, which makes us one body. When one member hurts, we all hurt. When one member sins, it's everybody's problem. You can see traces of this as far back as Exodus, which teaches that if a man observes his neighbor sinning, he has an obligation under the Law to bring that sin to the attention of the community so it can be dealt with. This is brutal for us, raised in a culture that worships individualism and that emphasizes a "personal relationship" with Jesus, but as author Jim Wallis once said, "Faith is personal, but never private." We're one body. What you believe and what you do is my business. If I sin, we both have a problem, because we're intimately connected in Christ.

So we can't just bum the Crusades or child abuse off on somebody else. Even though we didn't do it, it's still the whole family's issue. What do we actually do about it?

Author Donald Miller, in his masterpiece "Blue Like Jazz," told of the time he and a group of his friends set up a confession booth on their college's campus during a weekend festival. Students were out getting drunk, messing with drugs, streaking, and making out, while these Christians set up a confession booth. But there was a catch. They didn't take confessions; instead, they made them, confessing the sins of Christianity throughout history, apologizing for falling so far short of Christ's example, and asking people to forgive all Christians. Miller said that by the end of the night there was a line outside the door. People couldn't get enough of it. See, I don't think the world is impressed if we come up with a meticulous explanation for why those abuses shouldn't count against us. What they want is truth: for us to admit that those abuses were grievous wounds against the beautiful name of Christ, done by people who took the most sacred relationship on the planet and used it for ends of violence or political crusades or personal perversion. What else can we do, other than be apologetic and explain to people that's not what Jesus is about?

Ultimately I think we should embrace church abuses, not because we're proud of them, but because they prove a central point of Christianity: sin. Christianity says that sin has a stranglehold on everybody, and that without God's forgiveness, we have no hope at all. What better proof could there be than the fact that even Christians can't stop doing it? Think about that for a minute. There are a lot of people that don't care too much about being a "moral" person, or who will be moral as long as it doesn't inconvenience them too much. Christians, on the other hand, try with all their might - at least, we're supposed to - to achieve perfection, yet there is still some incredible force inside us, stronger than our own wills, that wraps itself around our ankles and drags us into the abyss. What is this force, and where does it come from, that it's stronger even than my desire to be a good person? Why does it stay inside me when I don't want it there, and why am I powerless to get rid of it? Why do I keep having angry thoughts about people, getting upset over things that don't matter, saying words I don't mean, and failing to tell people how much I appreciate them? What is inside me, hijacking my mind and making me be someone other than who I want to be? If you set out to prove Christianity using empirical science (your five senses) like a good scientist would, you should start with the idea of sin. We say that everyone does it, and it's quite easy to verify that, indeed, everyone does.

As long as people have spiritual questions, they're going to be wondering how Christianity can possibly be true if Christians do such unspeakably evil things. I think the best answer to give them is to acknowledge, yes, Christians are people too, and quite often do things that Jesus said not to do. We're sorry and we make no excuse, but we do have an explanation: everyone sins, and this power of sin is so strong that even Christians can't fully escape it. We go from there into the gospel message: that sin separates us from God, and that if there is any kind of cosmic justice, the people who waged the Crusades and the priests who abused children deserve some kind of punishment. A good and just God could not ignore those things, could he? How is that fair to the people who were hurt by the abuses? Our sin deserves punishment, and unless our sin is forgiven by God, we will receive the punishment we deserve and miss out on an eternal reward. The only hope is to have the guilt for our sins taken off of us, and placed on Christ on the cross, to be paid for through his death, his punishment and suffering, rather than our own. The question about church abuses can lead to one of the most effective gospel presentations we could ever give.

We are one body, united in one God through one savior. One member's problem is everybody's problem. When someone misuses the name of Christ, attaches it to something it should never have been attached to, we all have an obligation to apologize and make it right, to show people what Jesus is really about: unconditional love. If anyone hears the name of Jesus and thinks anything other than "love," then we have our work cut out for us.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

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