Read on Twitter
I'm not sure, anymore, how helpful it is to point out that statements like this are absurd:
"RZIM in a statement said the accusations 'do not in any way comport with the man we knew for decades' and they 'pertain to businesses that were closed nearly a decade ago.'"
(thread)
"RZIM in a statement said the accusations 'do not in any way comport with the man we knew for decades' and they 'pertain to businesses that were closed nearly a decade ago.'"
(thread)
The reason for my uncertainty is not that I've softened on my take that such statements are, in fact, absurd. It's that, nearly every day, I realize more and more how dug in most of us are — how much it takes for us to be persuaded away from that which we want to believe.
It takes complete, chosen ignorance at this point to believe that abusers are not very often beloved, well-respected individuals. We're so quick to demonize the stranger and glorify the beloved leader that we have no imagination for *literal facts,* much less nuance.
*Of course* characterizations of Zacharias as an abuser don't square with what the leaders of RZIM saw. Zacharias couldn't have committed the alleged abuses he did in the way that he did if he didn't have the reputation he did, which he depended upon RZIM to uphold.
Do you understand that this is exactly the type of thinking that enabled Larry Nassar to sexual assault girls? That when his friend's daughter told her father that Nassar was abusing her, he didn't believe her because it didn't square with what he knew of Nassar?
People are destroyed to the point of spiritual, and sometimes physical (this girl's father died by suicide when he finally realized how deeply he had erred, not to mention the number of abuse victims who die by suicide), death by our refusal to believe a different story,
What is it that we need to be true? Do we need industrialized Christianity to stand tall in order for our faith to remain? Do we need self-appointed leaders to perform character in order for us to believe that Jesus is the Good Shepherd?
I have been told to my face by multiple Christian leaders that I am a threat to ministry because I question Christian leaders. I'm a pastor's wife, a pastor's daughter, conservative by any sort of sensical definition, and not an abuse survivor.
And that's what they say to *me.*
And that's what they say to *me.*
The system makes it harder for the vulnerable to be believed. It's a fact. It would be easy to just mock the RZIM statement for the fact that it sounds like it comes from 1872 and has no sense of how abuse actually works. But that's not good enough. Jesus demands—empowers—more.
Survivors have been pouring out their stories of abuse within the evangelical machine for years. You could start reading now, read all night, and just scratch the surface. The information is there. It's real. You can understand it, and learn how to look for the patterns.
Perhaps one place we can start is: reject this detrimental construct that says Christian leaders cannot have real friends. I'm not going to deny that it's hard. It's hard to be the person who holds everyone's stories and know who can hold your story. But it can be—must be—done.
The alternative is — Christian leaders become fueled by a toxic blend of arrogance (no one understands me!), insecurity (no one understands me!), and loneliness (no one understands me!). They become locked into their own brains, where the sin nature will try to justify anything.
I'm going to stop because this has become a novel. I'll end by saying—praise God for these women who have refused to allow Satan's attempts to bury them in shame to stand in the way of the truth. They are women of valor, the peacemakers (not keepers) to be called children of God.
