I just finished reading the horrific accounts of what happened within the Southern Baptist Convention. What has happened, what has been done to the victims of rape and the predation of twisted men is just evil. It is the worst kind of evil when someone uses their power to destroy the innocent and vulnerable. And for what? Simply so they could hold on to their own power and continue their own perversion. The audacity to call the victims, who were courageously trying to tell the truth about what happened, part of a “satanic scheme” is so vile it makes me sick to my stomach. As Russell Moore put it, it is blasphemy. It mocks God. One of the victims was quoted as calling what happened to her as “Soul Murder.” I think this is as accurate a phrase as I can imagine. We all stand in horror when we see something so wrong. May these who co-operated with the SBC and perpetuated this evil stand before God’s awful judgment and try to justify what they did. May they try to argue that they did what they did to spread the Gospel, and may our good and just Lord say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” I hope for the sake of their souls that they repent.
It's easy to feel helpless in the face of such villainy. But aside from the disgust and righteous indignation we appropriately feel at what has happened, what should we do when faced with times such as these, when those who were supposed to be good do evil?
Here are some of my thoughts:
1. We tell the truth about what happened. We courageously and ruthlessly tell the truth. Jesus calls us to be people of the light. This means we are people who tell the truth and do not hide in darkness like the SBC did. Turning our heads and hiding from the truth will only serve to allow this to happen once again in our institutions. Then if, God forbid, we see this kind of abuse in our midst we will not fall to the temptation to hide it for our own selfish ends. We seek to tell the truth and walk in the light of that truth. 1 John 1:5-7.
2. We look for those who were doing good in the midst ofevil and try to help them. It is so easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless. But good always, shines through the darkness when evil thinks it has its victory. I believe it is a universal truth established by God, that when evil perpetrates it’svillainy, the capacity for good in that divine part of our humanity expands. It is a miracle. It is a gift from God. It happened when the Nazi’s unrivaled cruelty failed to crush the spirit of Viktor Frankl. It happened when the inhuman conditions of the Japanese prison camps could not stamp out the courage of a young John McCain. When the horrors of the Gulag in the Soviet Union were met with the courage to tell the truth from Alexander Solzhenitsyn and it toppled an empire. These victims simply by courageously telling their stories have similarly stopped evil in its place and cast it down. They are heroes like Solzhenitsyn. Look for those who are doing good in the midst of evil and try to help them.
3. We focus on Jesus and the necessity of the cross. Jesus’s death of the cross is the ultimate example of good shining through the moment of evil’s supposed victory. Satan thought he had won. He had killed God’s son. But Satan was wrong, it was evils undoing. Through the ultimate act of love and sacrifice Jesus saved the world. In looking at the cross we also can recognize our own need for forgiveness and repentance. He has made it possible through that act for the corruption in every human heart to be overcome and to be set right. When that individual heart is saved it is made part of the Kingdom. A Kingdom which He will fully establish one day completely. A Kingdom in which the men like those who violated the trust we put in them will have no part. They will have no power to abuse and destroy in God’s Kingdom which is made possible through Jesus defeating sin and death. And in looking at the cross we also look forward to the day when God’s Kingdom comes in full view. Until that day, we say Maranatha Come Lord Jesus.
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. No only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoptions to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” Romans 8:22-23
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