It ain't right
No one is surprised that I have significant opinions on almost every topic. This is one I will never be able to understand, because it is not my experience, but I have a deeply held and emotional opinion about it.
Approximately 20 "faith" leaders stood on a stage in Birmingham Alabama yesterday and demeaned, minimized and questioned the accounts of nine women, that do not know one another, have corroborating evidence for each of their accounts, that have been sourced and investigated and proven to corroborate, that said a Senate candidate abused them. All were young. Most teenage girls in high school, one as young as 14.
People of faith, bastions of what should be a doctrine of love, acceptance, healing and community, stood up and defended and championed a man that has multiples of women, with tremendous similarity and corroborating evidence, claiming assault and abuse. If there was ever a display of what is sick and decrepit about the "church", it was yesterday. This was after the man in question told some story about hemorrhoids, because these women are literally a boil upon his ass in his estimation. People of faith, supposed pastors and flock leaders, lended their credibility, their faith profession, their reputation and their community standing to this.
Sexual abuse is rampant across the spectrum of humanity. It is not a Christian issue, an American issue, it is not a business issue, it is not any kind of issue but a human issue. Underage boys are trafficked and abused routinely in the Mid East, it is rampant, and everyone that has served there or lived there knows it. Underage girls are trafficked and abused routinely across the world. It is pandemic and everyone knows it.
It happens at the hands of men and women. It happens in systemic and unusual ways. It happens with and without conscious thought. It happens continuously.
Sadly, I am confident I do not know a woman in my life that has not been victimized. Hopefully, I am not the perpetrator of any of that victimization. If you have some idea about over sensitized and over reported abuse being the issue, I urge you to keep quiet, you will not like what I do to you metaphorically, logically and publicly if you try giving me some kind of comment about how this is made up and overblown.
I don't know of a single woman in my personal life that has not experienced some kind of sexual harassment or abuse. Some events are life changing and eternally traumatic. Some events are transient and just scary. Every single one of those events that I know about have left a mark that is permanent and profound. And, it colors me in their eyes, because I fall into that group that perpetrates this behavior.
Read that correctly, women that have known me their whole lives, who love me, that know in their soul I love them with my whole heart, still have to look at me through blinders that are colored and disposed against me. If you are a man and you do not think that is true in your life, you are completely oblivious and lost.
It does not matter if you did it to them or not, or if you condoned it or not, of if they have evidence of you doing it to someone else or not. Just as I will never look at Arabic people the same way again, due to my experiences in the GWOT, these women will never look at another male the same way again. It is also true of the abused men, of which there is tremendous under reporting, and their approach to the men or women that abused them.
I don't know exactly what to do about it personally. I do not expect that there is any action that I can take or thing I can do that is going to make a difference. I just have to understand it, accept it, and do all in my power to overcome it. Not because it sucks and men are persecuted, but because I love and genuinely care about these people in my life, and this is the place I find them, it is reality.
If you have some chip on your shoulder about it ain't you and you don't owe anyone about it, you are an idiot. It doesn't work that way. Whether you believe in evolution or creationism, the story is still the same that we are made social creatures that crave and require fellowship and companionship. It is wired into us by God our creator, or the evolutionary steps that culminated in humans being the apex predator on the planet, pick your viewpoint. We are because we congregate. Our selves are defined as compared to others, our worth is valued as compared to others and our needs are predicated on others in our lives.
Because of this, if someone that shares genetic makeup similar to yours, does something damaging to another human, that person is wired to file that interaction and then continual and ever present fight or flight evaluations are made every time they see anyone with those same genetic predispositions. Being very clear for some of you, when a woman or man is abused by a man, every time they see a man after that, fight or flight impulses are triggered that must be evaluated and dealt with internally AT EVERY INTERACTION.
Don't believe me...you don't like spiders/snakes/mice/clowns? Every time you see one you must deal with that initial hormonal outbreak that either God hardwired or evolution baked into us. We are wondrously and fearfully made, emphasis on fear, because that is the immediate reaction matrix we utilize in every interaction. If you have been in a high danger situation, you know that your body reacts differently, your senses are not heightened, your awareness is. Imagine living your life and approximately half the population triggers a hormonal push to run or kill. It sucks.
Dealing with this phenomenon is non-transferrable. It will forever and always be the burden of the person carrying it. It is immense and exhausting, especially if it is a life defining moment of great trauma. It never goes away, ever. It is not going to get better because you can wall yourself away from the kind of people that did it. It is a wound that never heals, that must be carried forever.
As a person that believes God created man in his image, that men failed and sinned before God and that caused us to fall and fail to act in the image of God, it is extremely important to me that faith define this particular aspect of life. I have a predisposition to believe the accuser, because there is just not significant evidence in my life that GENERALLY people are willing to suffer the additional abuse, shame, embarrassment, attack and emotional exhaustion that goes with reporting abuse. Once you make the claim, you are guaranteed to have to relive it in detail, speak it into reality again. I can't imagine how hard that decision is, how much it takes to motivate it, but I respect it more than I suspect it.
There is nothing, nothing easy about it. The few and far between cases that false claims are made is not compelling to me as a reason not to believe claims. When an eclipse happens, it gets dark as night in the middle of the day. But, if you were to ask me to describe days, they are bright and well lit. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of the time I am right.
That someone who has accepted the personal responsibility to be pastor, preacher, leader of a faith group, would come down on the side of an accused person is not wrong. Look, many things go into those determinations. I know people that have been accused that I believe were innocent because I know them. But, to tear down the accuser, to demean them and minimize them, to use them to preach hatred of others and conflate them with all other manner of moral disease these pitiful leaders see, is abhorrent. It is not what Jesus would do, it is not what Jesus commanded and it ain't right.
Backward, scared, ill educated and confined people that are laboring under their own abuse scars are to be expected. I don't excuse it, but I understand why people believe they should dance with snakes. It is stupid and completely beside the point of the Scripture, but they were taught that, live that. Whatever, it happens.
But, educated people, with access to modern conveniences of common English translation Bibles, TV, internet, libraries, OTHER DECENT HUMAN BEINGS, do not behave this way. To do it as the representative and leader of a CHURCH makes me nauseous. These are not good Christians, these are not evangelicals, nothing about that builds up the body of Christ. It is hurtful, damaging, evil and heretical. Try me, I can go Scripture for Scripture and dogma for dogma, but only if you really are able to stand being finally educated on what Christ's message and Great Commandment were for the world. (And it was not about sprinkling or immersion, drinking wine, abortion, or homosexuality. If that is what you have as your position of Christianity, walk away from me quickly and without making eye contact, because I am in a mood to be just as backward, wrong and unChristlike as you are, and I am better at it than I like to admit.)
Standing up for a man that "is beloved in his community, a moral pillar" by demeaning and marginalizing women with no motive, no gain and nothing but relived trauma as payment IS STUPID. That is right, according to current polls, 42% of Alabama IS STUPID. You don't believe the women? With all the issues and things in your life, nine unrelated women telling essentially the same story, about when they were little girls, does not sway you?
It is Alabama, everyone knows everyone, it is a damn lie if you think anyone that grew up in a small town believes you when you say no one ever heard anything like this about Roy Moore. The South, bless its heart, is really only good at gossip right now (and SEC football). Trust me, everyone in the damn state has heard something about it. HE WAS BANNED FROM THE MALL FOR BEING A PERV. They have heard about it.
Want to know why this frustrates me so much? Because somewhere, there is a person that has just had this traumatic event happen to them. Man, woman, boy, girl, doesn't matter, and it is happening to all of them, but they have just lived through that, and this is what we display to them as a nation, and even more importantly, this is the face of the church to them. Not love and healing and acceptance and care, but discredit, shaming, demeaning, marginalization, good Christians don't have this happen to them because they are good Christians. That means if it does happen to you, you must not be a good Christian right? That is what it translates to, you bunch of worthless Pharisses and Sadduces.
I have zero tolerance for it. Whether it is Roy Moore or Al Franken. I could care less what party they belong to. They are wrong. They are outside of the expected behaviors of decent people. Their actions are not Christian or Christ like. All these faith leaders forgot how the Bible says to deal with this. When your brother is accused or sins, take one or two with you so that all may be done in the open and confront him. If he fails to repent or change, then treat him as a Gentile (faithless one). Divorce him from the body of God, because he is not of the body of Christ.
That is what the Bible says. Nine people don't make up the same lie, with corroborating evidence. Humans are not that capable individually. There is not an Illuminati like group that is coordinating defeating some backward, nonChristian Biblethumping pedophile from Alabama. Otherwise they would have been all over Strom Thurman and Robert Byrd. Give it up, the poor optics are not accidental, it is because this is disgusting.
A sickness has developed in Christianity, and it has been there from the beginning. In the same way Gnosticism threatened the church in the formative years of organized Christianity, so does this false evangelical movement in America. The fact is that the Roy Moore thing is good for Christianity. It is never more apparent who is of the body of Christ and who is not, by how they manage their politics with their religion. Pastors that demean the already victimized are not good shepherds. If your pastor preaches this mess, they are not a good shepherd. If you read the Bible, besides during the sermon, and you don't get that I swear, I will help you. Just reach out.
Don't like being lectured, don't be on the wrong side of the Scripture. Find anywhere that defends this abomination in the teachings of Christ. I triple, double dog dare you. Spit it out, as Christ will spit your lukewarm faith and conviction out.
Otherwise, get your mind right about this issue. Understand that how you react to this is important, whether you ever go to Alabama or not. Everyone around you has been victimized in some way. How you react to this, how you apply your understanding of faith and the church, is impacting them. Do it right. Because what you are seeing on display, it ain't right. What you hear on Hannity, it ain't right.
What do you do about it? Pray, speak out in defense of the victimized. I don't care if you condemn the accused, wrath belongs to God. But, do not allow those that have already been victimized in their life to be further victimized by your profession of faith. Nothing could be further from Christ's command for our lives. And, nothing could be more hurtful to those you should be building up and protecting. Otherwise, it ain't right.
Approximately 20 "faith" leaders stood on a stage in Birmingham Alabama yesterday and demeaned, minimized and questioned the accounts of nine women, that do not know one another, have corroborating evidence for each of their accounts, that have been sourced and investigated and proven to corroborate, that said a Senate candidate abused them. All were young. Most teenage girls in high school, one as young as 14.
People of faith, bastions of what should be a doctrine of love, acceptance, healing and community, stood up and defended and championed a man that has multiples of women, with tremendous similarity and corroborating evidence, claiming assault and abuse. If there was ever a display of what is sick and decrepit about the "church", it was yesterday. This was after the man in question told some story about hemorrhoids, because these women are literally a boil upon his ass in his estimation. People of faith, supposed pastors and flock leaders, lended their credibility, their faith profession, their reputation and their community standing to this.
Sexual abuse is rampant across the spectrum of humanity. It is not a Christian issue, an American issue, it is not a business issue, it is not any kind of issue but a human issue. Underage boys are trafficked and abused routinely in the Mid East, it is rampant, and everyone that has served there or lived there knows it. Underage girls are trafficked and abused routinely across the world. It is pandemic and everyone knows it.
It happens at the hands of men and women. It happens in systemic and unusual ways. It happens with and without conscious thought. It happens continuously.
Sadly, I am confident I do not know a woman in my life that has not been victimized. Hopefully, I am not the perpetrator of any of that victimization. If you have some idea about over sensitized and over reported abuse being the issue, I urge you to keep quiet, you will not like what I do to you metaphorically, logically and publicly if you try giving me some kind of comment about how this is made up and overblown.
I don't know of a single woman in my personal life that has not experienced some kind of sexual harassment or abuse. Some events are life changing and eternally traumatic. Some events are transient and just scary. Every single one of those events that I know about have left a mark that is permanent and profound. And, it colors me in their eyes, because I fall into that group that perpetrates this behavior.
Read that correctly, women that have known me their whole lives, who love me, that know in their soul I love them with my whole heart, still have to look at me through blinders that are colored and disposed against me. If you are a man and you do not think that is true in your life, you are completely oblivious and lost.
It does not matter if you did it to them or not, or if you condoned it or not, of if they have evidence of you doing it to someone else or not. Just as I will never look at Arabic people the same way again, due to my experiences in the GWOT, these women will never look at another male the same way again. It is also true of the abused men, of which there is tremendous under reporting, and their approach to the men or women that abused them.
I don't know exactly what to do about it personally. I do not expect that there is any action that I can take or thing I can do that is going to make a difference. I just have to understand it, accept it, and do all in my power to overcome it. Not because it sucks and men are persecuted, but because I love and genuinely care about these people in my life, and this is the place I find them, it is reality.
If you have some chip on your shoulder about it ain't you and you don't owe anyone about it, you are an idiot. It doesn't work that way. Whether you believe in evolution or creationism, the story is still the same that we are made social creatures that crave and require fellowship and companionship. It is wired into us by God our creator, or the evolutionary steps that culminated in humans being the apex predator on the planet, pick your viewpoint. We are because we congregate. Our selves are defined as compared to others, our worth is valued as compared to others and our needs are predicated on others in our lives.
Because of this, if someone that shares genetic makeup similar to yours, does something damaging to another human, that person is wired to file that interaction and then continual and ever present fight or flight evaluations are made every time they see anyone with those same genetic predispositions. Being very clear for some of you, when a woman or man is abused by a man, every time they see a man after that, fight or flight impulses are triggered that must be evaluated and dealt with internally AT EVERY INTERACTION.
Don't believe me...you don't like spiders/snakes/mice/clowns? Every time you see one you must deal with that initial hormonal outbreak that either God hardwired or evolution baked into us. We are wondrously and fearfully made, emphasis on fear, because that is the immediate reaction matrix we utilize in every interaction. If you have been in a high danger situation, you know that your body reacts differently, your senses are not heightened, your awareness is. Imagine living your life and approximately half the population triggers a hormonal push to run or kill. It sucks.
Dealing with this phenomenon is non-transferrable. It will forever and always be the burden of the person carrying it. It is immense and exhausting, especially if it is a life defining moment of great trauma. It never goes away, ever. It is not going to get better because you can wall yourself away from the kind of people that did it. It is a wound that never heals, that must be carried forever.
As a person that believes God created man in his image, that men failed and sinned before God and that caused us to fall and fail to act in the image of God, it is extremely important to me that faith define this particular aspect of life. I have a predisposition to believe the accuser, because there is just not significant evidence in my life that GENERALLY people are willing to suffer the additional abuse, shame, embarrassment, attack and emotional exhaustion that goes with reporting abuse. Once you make the claim, you are guaranteed to have to relive it in detail, speak it into reality again. I can't imagine how hard that decision is, how much it takes to motivate it, but I respect it more than I suspect it.
There is nothing, nothing easy about it. The few and far between cases that false claims are made is not compelling to me as a reason not to believe claims. When an eclipse happens, it gets dark as night in the middle of the day. But, if you were to ask me to describe days, they are bright and well lit. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of the time I am right.
That someone who has accepted the personal responsibility to be pastor, preacher, leader of a faith group, would come down on the side of an accused person is not wrong. Look, many things go into those determinations. I know people that have been accused that I believe were innocent because I know them. But, to tear down the accuser, to demean them and minimize them, to use them to preach hatred of others and conflate them with all other manner of moral disease these pitiful leaders see, is abhorrent. It is not what Jesus would do, it is not what Jesus commanded and it ain't right.
Backward, scared, ill educated and confined people that are laboring under their own abuse scars are to be expected. I don't excuse it, but I understand why people believe they should dance with snakes. It is stupid and completely beside the point of the Scripture, but they were taught that, live that. Whatever, it happens.
But, educated people, with access to modern conveniences of common English translation Bibles, TV, internet, libraries, OTHER DECENT HUMAN BEINGS, do not behave this way. To do it as the representative and leader of a CHURCH makes me nauseous. These are not good Christians, these are not evangelicals, nothing about that builds up the body of Christ. It is hurtful, damaging, evil and heretical. Try me, I can go Scripture for Scripture and dogma for dogma, but only if you really are able to stand being finally educated on what Christ's message and Great Commandment were for the world. (And it was not about sprinkling or immersion, drinking wine, abortion, or homosexuality. If that is what you have as your position of Christianity, walk away from me quickly and without making eye contact, because I am in a mood to be just as backward, wrong and unChristlike as you are, and I am better at it than I like to admit.)
Standing up for a man that "is beloved in his community, a moral pillar" by demeaning and marginalizing women with no motive, no gain and nothing but relived trauma as payment IS STUPID. That is right, according to current polls, 42% of Alabama IS STUPID. You don't believe the women? With all the issues and things in your life, nine unrelated women telling essentially the same story, about when they were little girls, does not sway you?
It is Alabama, everyone knows everyone, it is a damn lie if you think anyone that grew up in a small town believes you when you say no one ever heard anything like this about Roy Moore. The South, bless its heart, is really only good at gossip right now (and SEC football). Trust me, everyone in the damn state has heard something about it. HE WAS BANNED FROM THE MALL FOR BEING A PERV. They have heard about it.
Want to know why this frustrates me so much? Because somewhere, there is a person that has just had this traumatic event happen to them. Man, woman, boy, girl, doesn't matter, and it is happening to all of them, but they have just lived through that, and this is what we display to them as a nation, and even more importantly, this is the face of the church to them. Not love and healing and acceptance and care, but discredit, shaming, demeaning, marginalization, good Christians don't have this happen to them because they are good Christians. That means if it does happen to you, you must not be a good Christian right? That is what it translates to, you bunch of worthless Pharisses and Sadduces.
I have zero tolerance for it. Whether it is Roy Moore or Al Franken. I could care less what party they belong to. They are wrong. They are outside of the expected behaviors of decent people. Their actions are not Christian or Christ like. All these faith leaders forgot how the Bible says to deal with this. When your brother is accused or sins, take one or two with you so that all may be done in the open and confront him. If he fails to repent or change, then treat him as a Gentile (faithless one). Divorce him from the body of God, because he is not of the body of Christ.
That is what the Bible says. Nine people don't make up the same lie, with corroborating evidence. Humans are not that capable individually. There is not an Illuminati like group that is coordinating defeating some backward, nonChristian Biblethumping pedophile from Alabama. Otherwise they would have been all over Strom Thurman and Robert Byrd. Give it up, the poor optics are not accidental, it is because this is disgusting.
A sickness has developed in Christianity, and it has been there from the beginning. In the same way Gnosticism threatened the church in the formative years of organized Christianity, so does this false evangelical movement in America. The fact is that the Roy Moore thing is good for Christianity. It is never more apparent who is of the body of Christ and who is not, by how they manage their politics with their religion. Pastors that demean the already victimized are not good shepherds. If your pastor preaches this mess, they are not a good shepherd. If you read the Bible, besides during the sermon, and you don't get that I swear, I will help you. Just reach out.
Don't like being lectured, don't be on the wrong side of the Scripture. Find anywhere that defends this abomination in the teachings of Christ. I triple, double dog dare you. Spit it out, as Christ will spit your lukewarm faith and conviction out.
Otherwise, get your mind right about this issue. Understand that how you react to this is important, whether you ever go to Alabama or not. Everyone around you has been victimized in some way. How you react to this, how you apply your understanding of faith and the church, is impacting them. Do it right. Because what you are seeing on display, it ain't right. What you hear on Hannity, it ain't right.
What do you do about it? Pray, speak out in defense of the victimized. I don't care if you condemn the accused, wrath belongs to God. But, do not allow those that have already been victimized in their life to be further victimized by your profession of faith. Nothing could be further from Christ's command for our lives. And, nothing could be more hurtful to those you should be building up and protecting. Otherwise, it ain't right.
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