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Making A Movement Look Bad
Denying Sexual Abuse Exists in The Messianic Movement - Part 5b
(Read Part 5-A First if You Haven't)
I've heard "believers" berate each other for “making this movement look bad” when someone else is honest about their failures that people see in public. One time it was how I slipped at keeping kosher. Another time it was how someone screwed up on keeping Shabbat, and the way they publicly announced it. Then it was the man with the colorful past that the minister let come to church, hosted in his home, left his 12 year old daughter at home alone with, and hid his history from the rest of the congregation. That was AOK, but when "the man" made a semi-public confession, as people who actually have a conscience should, it quickly became more like "damn him, don't eat with him." Suddenly he had to move, couldn't leave your children alone with him anymore when you shouldn't ever have freaking done that in the first place. He made you look bad though, so now you throw him under the bus, and I was part of it. How shameful is that? I get it - some of our own shortcomings really do suck. I mean, they might scare people away from our church who would otherwise contribute an attractive 10% tithe. If the Epstein list was released it might make our entire goverment implode on itself. If all of our dirty little secrets were made public, they might make our own little organizations where we "play church" on Saturdays completely fall apart. That would be too great a loss, so there's a clever little solution that we enact. When we point out each other's wrongdoing or the fact that our treatment of a child molester renders us blatent hypocrites, we fire back with a convenient little “you started it”. It's called the passive agressive defense. Just keep the focus off of evil in a general sense, and instead on "lashon hara" (the evil tongue) - a term which ironicly, isn't even found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and which since its invention has been subsequently overlayed with centuries of Jewish superstition. That's the power of deflection, ladies and gentlemen!
It would be like a comedy show if it weren't 30, 40 and 50 year-olds bumbling through the same game they never mastered in kindergarten, yet they bumble through it sooooo smooth. The game will never be mastered though, because we're on the enemies side playing against ourselves. Others' honesty convicts us of our own secrecy, and our own conscience condemns us. How do we get away from that? The child molester is a sinner, but so are you and so am I. We weren't really worried about holiness; we were only worried about our costume and afraid of our makeup washing off midstage. That's why we didn't teach against sin as we ought. We didn't wipe our eyes or dare touch our face. Heck, we didn't even dare wipe our backside when leaving our little toilet throne with toilet paper confetti, for fear that someone might hear us and find out who was in there with us! We kept layering the mascara thicker and thicker and kept pulling the line tighter and tighter until it snapped. Game over. Humiliated losers. Then we had to find a new playing field. Now some other child's innocense is dying or at risk of dying. WTH? Who can imagine that? What to do with that doggone conscience but sear it?
Once we become comfortable with the skeletons of sin in our closet and searing that conscience, we engage those skeletons which we've already committed to hell's flames. Not because those people were bad, but because we had to destroy evidence and flip the narrative. That's the problem. We committed the skeletons to hell, not the vampires which consumed the flesh and created the skeletons in the first place. Then the vampires need new fodder, so we flesh the skeletons of the people we eviscorated back out, further and further until we're no longer just watching our movies; no longer just abusing ourselves with our sex dolls and using our latex condoms to keep from getting someone pregnant. We're no longer just having emotional affairs. Now we might as well be in a strip club or a brothel, and when we get there we find our wives and daughters working the hellish establishments. But............ how could we be indignant when that is what we taught them?
Doug Phillips reputation has been ruined, not by the rumors, but by his own conduct even though he claims it was "consensual".
Bill Gothard's reputation has been ruined, not by the rumors, but by his own conduct, even though he says it was just innocent games of playing "footsie" under the table.
Josh Duggar's reputation has been ruined, not by any rumors but by his sexual addictions - even though they were fascilitated behind what was supposed to be the closed doors of his parents home, the secure cheating hookup site Ashley Madison, and the dark Web he secretly download Child Porn from while simultaneously using Covenant Eyes so his wife would think he was living accountably.
Ravi Zacharias' reputation has been ruined, not by women who set him up, but by women he exploited, massage parlors he ran, the extensive network of lies he erected, and the deception he engaged in order to enable his illicit activities. It doesn't matter how spot on he was when he wrote I Isaac Take Thee Rebekah". What matters is that somewhere he stopped living it.
My reputation and your reputation will similarly be ruined, not by rumors, but when we emulate the same conduct that's already taken many one-time conservatives out of the public arena and discredited not only themselves, but all of us as just other blatant sources of hypocrisy. Maybe your conduct isn’t hidden by an online affair site that promises secrecy. Maybe its hidden behind confessions you live like you never made, or that you now downplay after years of relegating your conscience to a closet that you only open once a year on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. One year you open the closet to find there is no more conscience because it evaporated. Maybe it's hidden behind the closed doors of your own church or your own men's group or your own whatever-other-platform which has failed to hold you accountable. Maybe it’s hidden behind the closed doors of your own home and you think it will perpetually stay there. It won't, I promise.
Deuteronomy 23:2 says "a bastard will not enter into the congregation of Yahweh even until his 10th generation." That's because these types of sin, generally speaking, are multi-generational. Don't be that bastard. Don't live illigetimately. Ezekiel 33:11 warns "Turn from your evil ways, for why will you die O house of Israel? For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed". Yahshua says in Luke 8:17, "and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open." Go ahead and point your finger or flip off the person who finally got the guts to say something. You'd do better to notice the direction the other 4 fingers are pointing.
Paul admonishes in Romans 3:4, "Let Yahweh be true and every man a liar." Don’t fool yourself. We're humans, but we don't have to be hypocrites. Hypocrisy is our free perogative and there are dire repercussions which come along with it.
Continue to Part 6 >>
(Read Part 5-A First if You Haven't)
I've heard "believers" berate each other for “making this movement look bad” when someone else is honest about their failures that people see in public. One time it was how I slipped at keeping kosher. Another time it was how someone screwed up on keeping Shabbat, and the way they publicly announced it. Then it was the man with the colorful past that the minister let come to church, hosted in his home, left his 12 year old daughter at home alone with, and hid his history from the rest of the congregation. That was AOK, but when "the man" made a semi-public confession, as people who actually have a conscience should, it quickly became more like "damn him, don't eat with him." Suddenly he had to move, couldn't leave your children alone with him anymore when you shouldn't ever have freaking done that in the first place. He made you look bad though, so now you throw him under the bus, and I was part of it. How shameful is that? I get it - some of our own shortcomings really do suck. I mean, they might scare people away from our church who would otherwise contribute an attractive 10% tithe. If the Epstein list was released it might make our entire goverment implode on itself. If all of our dirty little secrets were made public, they might make our own little organizations where we "play church" on Saturdays completely fall apart. That would be too great a loss, so there's a clever little solution that we enact. When we point out each other's wrongdoing or the fact that our treatment of a child molester renders us blatent hypocrites, we fire back with a convenient little “you started it”. It's called the passive agressive defense. Just keep the focus off of evil in a general sense, and instead on "lashon hara" (the evil tongue) - a term which ironicly, isn't even found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and which since its invention has been subsequently overlayed with centuries of Jewish superstition. That's the power of deflection, ladies and gentlemen!
It would be like a comedy show if it weren't 30, 40 and 50 year-olds bumbling through the same game they never mastered in kindergarten, yet they bumble through it sooooo smooth. The game will never be mastered though, because we're on the enemies side playing against ourselves. Others' honesty convicts us of our own secrecy, and our own conscience condemns us. How do we get away from that? The child molester is a sinner, but so are you and so am I. We weren't really worried about holiness; we were only worried about our costume and afraid of our makeup washing off midstage. That's why we didn't teach against sin as we ought. We didn't wipe our eyes or dare touch our face. Heck, we didn't even dare wipe our backside when leaving our little toilet throne with toilet paper confetti, for fear that someone might hear us and find out who was in there with us! We kept layering the mascara thicker and thicker and kept pulling the line tighter and tighter until it snapped. Game over. Humiliated losers. Then we had to find a new playing field. Now some other child's innocense is dying or at risk of dying. WTH? Who can imagine that? What to do with that doggone conscience but sear it?
Once we become comfortable with the skeletons of sin in our closet and searing that conscience, we engage those skeletons which we've already committed to hell's flames. Not because those people were bad, but because we had to destroy evidence and flip the narrative. That's the problem. We committed the skeletons to hell, not the vampires which consumed the flesh and created the skeletons in the first place. Then the vampires need new fodder, so we flesh the skeletons of the people we eviscorated back out, further and further until we're no longer just watching our movies; no longer just abusing ourselves with our sex dolls and using our latex condoms to keep from getting someone pregnant. We're no longer just having emotional affairs. Now we might as well be in a strip club or a brothel, and when we get there we find our wives and daughters working the hellish establishments. But............ how could we be indignant when that is what we taught them?
Doug Phillips reputation has been ruined, not by the rumors, but by his own conduct even though he claims it was "consensual".
Bill Gothard's reputation has been ruined, not by the rumors, but by his own conduct, even though he says it was just innocent games of playing "footsie" under the table.
Josh Duggar's reputation has been ruined, not by any rumors but by his sexual addictions - even though they were fascilitated behind what was supposed to be the closed doors of his parents home, the secure cheating hookup site Ashley Madison, and the dark Web he secretly download Child Porn from while simultaneously using Covenant Eyes so his wife would think he was living accountably.
Ravi Zacharias' reputation has been ruined, not by women who set him up, but by women he exploited, massage parlors he ran, the extensive network of lies he erected, and the deception he engaged in order to enable his illicit activities. It doesn't matter how spot on he was when he wrote I Isaac Take Thee Rebekah". What matters is that somewhere he stopped living it.
My reputation and your reputation will similarly be ruined, not by rumors, but when we emulate the same conduct that's already taken many one-time conservatives out of the public arena and discredited not only themselves, but all of us as just other blatant sources of hypocrisy. Maybe your conduct isn’t hidden by an online affair site that promises secrecy. Maybe its hidden behind confessions you live like you never made, or that you now downplay after years of relegating your conscience to a closet that you only open once a year on Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. One year you open the closet to find there is no more conscience because it evaporated. Maybe it's hidden behind the closed doors of your own church or your own men's group or your own whatever-other-platform which has failed to hold you accountable. Maybe it’s hidden behind the closed doors of your own home and you think it will perpetually stay there. It won't, I promise.
Deuteronomy 23:2 says "a bastard will not enter into the congregation of Yahweh even until his 10th generation." That's because these types of sin, generally speaking, are multi-generational. Don't be that bastard. Don't live illigetimately. Ezekiel 33:11 warns "Turn from your evil ways, for why will you die O house of Israel? For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed". Yahshua says in Luke 8:17, "and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open." Go ahead and point your finger or flip off the person who finally got the guts to say something. You'd do better to notice the direction the other 4 fingers are pointing.
Paul admonishes in Romans 3:4, "Let Yahweh be true and every man a liar." Don’t fool yourself. We're humans, but we don't have to be hypocrites. Hypocrisy is our free perogative and there are dire repercussions which come along with it.
Continue to Part 6 >>