This. Every last word of this post.
It’s why my children are not able to experience church like it was when my mom grew up in it, or like I did.
It’s why I live by “trust but verify.” And when the verification is, “it’s church… it’s fine.” I can no longer trust.
We have to deal with the “addiction to ignorance,” as Dan Scott puts it. That cannot be done until the church admits it. And from what leadership in my branch of the American, Evangelical church is saying, they are not admitting it because it would cost them too much money… which clearly implies they are more comfortable paying in human suffering, individual pain, and ultimately the lives of those sacrificed on the altar of this addiction.
The narratives around why young people are leaving the denomination of my family’s history are varied. Most boil down to being stubborn, to being willful, to being disobedient, to having been lost to the current culture… none are true for me. I haven’t even left. But the church desperately wishes I would… and if I’m honest, I am on the way out largely because of their unwillingness to acknowledge this exact issue.
The dogged determination to place the blame for sexual deviance at the feet of absolutely anything but the refusal to even talk about human sexuality is creating increasing space for the harm to continue. They are willing to live in the false safety of that space, allowing the perception of accountability to hide the ongoing harm.
No more. I, for one, won’t sit quietly and watch this continue. The trauma has continued for too long. The shame-based control was never showing the love I know to be truth of the gospel message. And I’m done pretending like any of it is okay.
It’s past time for change, church.
If you’ve suffered at the hands of high-control, shame-based religion… if you’ve been abused by the church… if you are working out your own path now, because you know there has to be something better and the truth still beckons you…
I see you. I love you. I’m here for you.
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