How I Answered the Confirmation Bias Question at a Local School
This is helpful as a framework for answering the inevitable confirmation bias question in apologetics.
Tirades of abuse, constant criticism and physical assault: Meet the church leaders abused by their congregations
If you don’t think these things would or have happened in your church, go and speak directly with your pastor and ask him. I do not know of any pastor who hasn’t had some degree of this. It is absolutely right: spiritual abuse does happen by pastors, but pastors are almost certainly the ones on the receiving end of most spiritual abuse.
CCM, Magnolia, and the Temptations of Christian Subculture
‘The things that make spiritual formation in the church hard for two people with a hugely profitable media empire make it hard for popular CCM artists. Travel on Sunday—to close that deal, or perform that show—is nonnegotiable. Absence from small groups is practically a given. Having a summer lake home and a winter cottage means never getting your life and struggles exposed to the same group of people year in, year out. Instead, what you’re left with is private Bible reading (sometimes), podcast sermons (very occasional), but most of all, the inescapable sense that your Christianity is yours to have and to hold as best and as wisely as you can do it. Imagine how this might apply to someone like Michael Tait.’
How Forgiveness Displays the Gospel to Our Kids
‘My daughter spilled a big glass of water all over the kitchen table. Again. That girl is my ever-fidgeting, often-daydreaming, rather-clumsy gal. “Here we go again,” I moaned, “I’m toweling up another mess because you don’t listen to me and stay in your chair!” My tone seethed with frustration. She lowered her eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry.” Five minutes later, guess who spilled her cup of tea? This time it was me. Not watching what I was doing, I splattered hot tea onto the couch, the floor, and even our poor pup, Penny. In that moment, as I eyed the tea stain I dreaded to remove, I felt a shift happen in my heart. “Accidents happen,” I thought to myself. “I’ll be able to get that out,” I reassured myself. And then it hit me. Only minutes before, I’d shown such little grace to my own daughter, but here I was showing mercy to myself for the very same mistake.’
Spiritual warfare: The devil, demons and proxies
This one takes a look at how we should view Satan and his demons. How do they tend to operate and how should we think about them (if at all)?
Your Online Pastor Doesn’t Love You the Way Your Local Pastor Does
‘There was a specific danger before this young man, and I had to warn him. Knowing him well, I believed he would take my words of wisdom from the Word of God and let me help guide and lead him. As I confronted him with the dangerous waters in which he was neck-deep and warned him of what could happen if he continued swimming in them, he pulled out articles from various Christian websites that supported his chosen path. In short, he was making it clear that there are a myriad of opinions on certain topics, and he was not going to let my unpopular, lack-of-celebrity voice outweigh those of these renowned pastors.’
From the archive: Can I miss God’s best for me?
‘There is a thought that does the rounds with some frequency. I have heard it in the context of people affirming God’s ‘wonderful plan for your life’. I have heard it whenever somebody sins and it is cast as our having ‘made a mistake’. I have heard it said whenever things happen that (from our vantage point) are less than excellent. It is said that we have missed God’s best for us. Some frame it as having strayed from God’s path or plan for us.’
‘ For example, Humphreys points out that “just about everything we see from a leader to a congregation that we would define as spiritual abuse can also be [experienced] in reverse”. This includes misusing the Bible or Christian teaching to denigrate, coerce or control church leaders – threatening dire spiritual consequences if the pastor does not fall in line with their wishes.’
This is ridiculous. As is generally the article on spiritual abuse.
My four year old cousin can threaten to beat me up. It’s entirely different from if I threatened to beat him up. The pastor is the person recognised as the Bible teacher – and indeed you later on have the local pastor article affirming that spiritual power – it is entirely different when he tells a woman that God has said she ought to sleep with him than when a the laywoman tells the vicar that he should sleep with her.
It don’t doubt the case that vicars receive more annoying and unpleasant encounters than they initiate, but that isn’t spiritual abuse as that requires spiritual power (which a mentor or a bishop or a head pastor may have over a clergyman, but which the congregation member does not have.)
In congregational nonconformity, everything you say here doesn’t apply. Members can vote out their leaders, members frequently cite the Bible in defence of their particular views and preferences and use the power they have to make clear jobs, pay and other things are under threat if and when leaders do not act as they wish.
Even in the church of England where vicars are the system, PCCs operate in such a way as to create some of the same tensions. Further, some of the abuse experienced by vicars (which is common to nonconformist pastors too) is simply abuse.
It is regularly cited as one of the key reasons we are struggling to get people training for ministry and one of the primary reasons pastors leave the ministry altogether and burnout rates are extremely high.
It is really very dismissive of you to deny it. You evidently have no sense of the serious toll this regular kind of behaviour has on ministers.
Abuse can be abuse, but that doesn’t make it ‘spiritual abuse’ anymore than a person shouting at you was ‘sexual abuse’.
Members may have power over you – financial power, particularly with their providing your home – but you are still the person who has been recognised as the Bible teacher and the one who has to avoid exploiting your spiritual power.
If all abuse is spiritual abuse, then nothing is spiritual abuse. But some things are spiritual abuse. If you consider yourself as the shepherd among sheep then the exploitation of that role is different from the bleating of the sheep.
Not all abuse is spiritual abuse. But it is similarly true that congregations can and do spiritually abuse their leaders. It is simply untrue to suggest that as long as they are sheep, they cannot use spiritual-sounding things and apparently biblical grounds to abuse their leaders. That is like arguing children cannot violently abuse their parents just because they are children – it is factually untrue and a rather facile suggestion.