Thesis 96 Posts

John’s Gospel and Tainted Legacies

Wise council for Christians and US politics from Sebastian Castellio

John Calvin: Pastor. Preacher. Reformer. Tyrant? Part 5

“When [Calvin] has a grudge against someone it is never done.”

When insiders become outsiders, and why

In which Calvin’s former secretary gets to speak

A consideration of 16th century perceptions of John Calvin

Peter’s reformation by the Song of Songs

And why they need a certain kind of apologetics

A Defense of Intuition

A review and reframing of Os Guinness’ Fools Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

An Untold Whistleblower’s Story

Spiritual Malpractice and Christian Soul Care

What God has separated, let no one join together

Why would a man believe a survivor and then later change his mind and disbelieve the survivor? The story of Sigmund Freud’s early career illustrates one answer: there is a common temptation for those who face a dilemma between believing victims and maintaining their power.

An informal survey of church hurt and spiritual abuse

How the Gospel of John inspired abundant life in 19th century Kansas

How the liberating Gospel of John has also been used for oppression

An Unusual Holy Week Meditation on John 12:29

Washing Away Empire

When Shepherds Act Like Kings

Last week I offered another reason I think John mentions Kidron in 18:1 before the “arrest” of Jesus [footnote: In John, Jesus isn’t so much arrested as he turns himself in; he remains sovereignly in control throughout John 18-19].

A Brief Followup

Reading with the Seditious Agenda of Scripture

How Jesus’ Scars Signal Healing for Spiritual Abuse

A Roundabout Assessment of Direct Communication Failure

In this week’s newsletter I share some of Columbo’s traits that transfer to discussions about abuse, traits that advocates for abuse survivors can use with wisdom, discernment and practice.

Just as God sent Jesus to reveal and enflesh the love of the triune God, so Jesus sends his followers enflesh the love of God in the world. We truly interpret the incarnation when we incarnate Christ’s love in truth.

In this season of Advent, the incarnation provides a hermeneutical key for opening the door to a fresh way of reading John. The Gospel of John cannot be read properly without tuning in to symbolic images and the sensations they activate through associative memory.

The Son is the Word from all eternity. There never was a time when God the Father was not speaking God the Son. In God, there is no such thing as silence. And yet, the children of God endure silence, just as they often endure forms of death and darkness.

The hope of dawn is real. Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. But if we want to offer the hope of Christmas, we have to be willing to sit in darkness. We have to be willing to see that crisis reveals character.

For those who have been or are being forced out, pushed out, excommunicated, #churchfired from church and denomination and Christian organization, hear these words from the Doktor Luther on John 15-16.

The teacher that spiritual abuse survivors most need is the Holy Spirit. He teaches only what he hears from the Son. No mixture of pride, seeking self and glory, no manipulation, no lies or deceit. Only God’s beauty, goodness, and truth.

Today, on October 31, 2023, the day when Protestants celebrate the Reformation, I believe the message we most need to hear is already being preached by women who are saying “I don’t see the body of the Lord.”

This post, not sent to your email, shares some biblical reflections excised from today’s published newsletter cut to keep down the word count.

A New Look at the Samaritan Woman

How Jesus the gentle rabbi treats female spiritual abuse survivors

This week I want to reflect on the emphasis of darkness in John’s Gospel. Consider this a mini biblical theology of darkness, illuminating how Jesus is presented by John as the light which rescues those who have been wounded by abusive leaders and oppressive religious systems.

Please join me on a slow journey through some familiar stories in Genesis to hear and see how God transforms unfaithful conformists to faithful followers of the God of justice.

Have you been neglected by your earthly shepherds? Did they flee when the wolf came? Or was your shepherd himself a wolf? You can take heart that the Triune God wants you to tell your story. He welcomes your words of spiritual trauma.

When darkness is all we know, we won’t hope for anything different. In such a condition, it’s not hope we need, at least not initially and only. We need to see the darkness for what it is. Which is to say, we need despair.

Each day the sun rises, and the Father reminds us of his rule. Water runs in rivers, pipes and faucets because the Father is the ruler yet. By sight or sound or taste or touch or smell, the evidence of the Father’s loving provision is ever present to our senses.

Did you know that the Gospel of John is all about the fulfillment of the OT expectation for the removal of false shepherds and the return of good shepherds?

Sometimes the creep of empire is more in action than in word. Not so much allegiance to Caesar but to the ways of Caesar. Which is to say, the ways displayed by all human systems when corrupted by desire for power and glory.

Christians inhabit the same biblically scripted story as the Good Shepherd. The world hated Jesus, and it will hate Jesus’ followers, too. Intimate friends of the faith betrayed Jesus, and intimate friends of the faith will betray Jesus’ followers, too. Only in our day they do it in the name of Jesus.

The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as unemotional reasoning. There is only emotionally unaware reasoning, and emotionally aware reasoning.

As long as there are male leaders whose knee-jerk response is to disbelieve, dismiss, deny, discount, deflect, and discard the stories of abuse survivors, churches and denominations filled with such men are not safe.

The Role of the Imprecatory Psalms in Christian Advocacy

I have always felt guilty and a bit morally unclean whenever I feel a sense of satisfaction while reading imprecatory psalms. But in the midst of human betrayal there is an undeniable resonance in my body when I hear the words of, say, Psalm 71:13. Why is that?

A Personal Essay

Despite his general patriarchal stance on women, perhaps Augustine might serve as a good example for men today, especially pastors and elders, who are staunchly unwilling to reconsider their views. Not that one has to actually change one’s mind. But something is wrong when we are unwilling to be wrong.

The pressure to deny evil, even and especially subconscious denial, is strong and cannot be withstood in isolation. Reform will not happen without a unified movement.

He wasn’t listening. He utterly failed to hear the complaint, the cry of injustice, the groaning of pain. All he heard was a female voice, and because of that, easily brushed off as full of inaccuracies. Lord have mercy.

In light of errant teaching on the supposed right of husbands to abuse their wives, we need to be Christians who rightly handle word of truth. Rightly handled, we see in God’s Word that submission and abuse do not go together. God never authorizes abuse.

Why should pastors have to answer for Driscoll’s crimes? It’s a Driscoll problem, not a church problem, right? A Tetzel problem, not a problem of systemic proportions. Or is it?

The best way of getting people to listen to stories of trauma is to simply keep telling stories. If people can be given ears to hear, it will happen through story.

God has designed us with powerfully social identities, and when that identity is stripped away by men who claim to speak for God, trauma results. A wounded soul, caught between life-threatening submission and socially-ostracizing defiance, concludes: “I’d rather die.”

Order is impersonal. That doesn’t make it bad or wrong. It’s just incomplete. Beauty must be given to order so that it comes alive, so that it is fitting for human persons created in the image of a beautiful God. That is why we also need decency.

Another 3,000 word response to Samuel James

If churches implement policies and programs to care well for the abused without repenting of old ways of exercising authority and power, it is new wine in old wine skins. The skins will burst, the sheep will continue to be eaten, and the old system will remain intact, unchanged and in control.

How do we combine the need for “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) with the need to “visit orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27)? Could it be that in our concern to exercise “biblical” justice we are avoiding justice altogether?

Levi, Simeon & Jacob’s Sons as Moral Exemplars in Genesis 34

A word to pastors, elders, deacons, and Christian leaders: What would it change if you were free to screw up 66% of the time and know your people would still follow and grow as disciples if all you had to do was own your wrongs?

Martin Luther was many things: reformer, theologian, pastor, Bible scholar and translator, hymn writer. He was also an apologist, in the two best senses of the word: a defender of the faith, and defender of the sheep.

Puffed up balloons are more susceptible to popping with rage at the slightest prick. A 10-minute read (according to Substack’s algorithm), because I like sharing lots of long quotes.

Where is the burden of proof? The sheep who are called to be persuaded, or the shepherds who must do the persuading?

Speaking against Calvin resulted in public discipline and expulsion from city ministry, but if you were on the right side—Calvin’s side—discipline was limited to a stern talking to, and ministry life went on as normal.

Leaders should be more worried about wolves among their own leadership ranks than among the rank and file sheep in their flock.

Because the notion that “ladies lie” is a presupposition, a deeply held, unquestioned (sinful) assumption, merely quoting up-to-date statistics about valid vs. false allegations will not be enough. We also need to repent of noetic sin.

Did you know that PCA church courts are more likely to block complaints from women than those from men?

By definition, abuse is never balanced. So a “balanced” conversation about abuse is, in my estimation, an oxymoron. And neither is it biblical.

For the sake of the honor of Christ, the mission of the gospel, and protecting the sheep, I hope we continue clarifying how to properly name healthy and sinful shepherding. That is the mark of a theologian: calling a thing what it is.

Wolves have always been in God’s sheepfold. But they ought not be. When God’s shepherds turn into wolves, he is “against” them (Ezekiel 34:10), but he is adamantly for the sheep.

Many good people are giving survivors space to tell their story.

The “how” of apologetics for the abused starts not with technique, but with costly courage and faithfulness. Here we pick up the thread from last week and consider what I mean by apologetics for the abused.

Apologetics for the Abused

In walking alongside survivors of religious trauma it is very tempting to focus the light on the darkness.

How can we help survivors of spiritual abuse?

The apostles warn about wolves in God’s church, not only from inspiration but because they had a close encounter with a wolf in Judas Iscariot. So I wonder, if there wasn’t a Judas, would the other 11 have been more vulnerable to becoming wolves themselves?

Hospital Acquired Infections and Christian Soul Care

Once a Week

Once a Week

Once a Week