How Should the Church Respond to Abusers?
There’s a strange phenomenon that occurs in church contexts. It’s the phenomenon that abusers often get more “grace” and “forgiveness” than the abused. I (Katherine) have a few theories as to why this happens. The abused’s world is frightening, unquantifiable, and difficult to isolate into neat categories, while the abuser’s behavior seems easy to manage. We’re good at behavior management. We’re also good at covering up and looking the other way. This article by Diane Langberg discusses why it’s unwise to place an abuser back within our congregations.
There has been much discussion about what a church should do when confronted with an abuser in its midst. Such a question cannot begin to be adequately or wisely answered unless we first grasp the truth of what it means to be an abuser of the vulnerable. To see abuse as simply a wrong action that needs to be stopped (though it certainly does) is to minimize and externalize what is a cancer of the soul and does great damage to the abused. We often seem to think that when we understand the outside of things we are fully aware. We are not. Our God looks on the inward condition that gave birth to the outward actions. God does not classify evil by a catalogue of deeds done. He always goes to the internal root of the matter (Genesis 6:5). To abuse a vulnerable child (or adult) is to alter the course of their life. The shape of their life and their sense of self has significantly changed. Those heinous actions are spillage from the heart of the abuser and exposure of the cancer deep within. When the church shows “grace” in response to a few approved words and some tears, we have done added damage to the victim, risked the safety of other sheep and left the abuser with a disease that will rot his/her soul.
(Reposted with permission).
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