My review of Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church by Diane Langberg

I wrote this review of Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church by Diane Langberg for Goodreads.


Diane Langberg, a treasure to God's church, helps unpack what's happening when God's people are abused within the church.

She writes, "Any study of power misused is also always a study of deception, first of self and then of others." I have watched in horror as the pastors of my own church have bent their characters away from God as they engage in deception of themselves and others. Langberg quotes a character from Joe R. Lansdale's The Thicket, "When I was young and I had my first taste of it, I found it bitter and nasty, but later on I learned to like it by pouring a little milk in it, and then I learned to like it black. Sin is like that. You sweeten it a little with lies, and then you get so you can take it straight." Horrifyingly, deception is no small thing: "The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie, and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not" (quoted from Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. She writes how deception is contagious: "We are invested in believing things said by those who matter—a child, a spouse, a pastor. ...No one wants that to be true, so we jump to his defense, desperate to prove the accusers false. The deception becomes groupthink. We use our collective power to circle the wagons and to protect what we desire to be true."

Referencing Auschwitz as an example, Langberg writes, "For us to be pure, we must get rid of certain kinds of humans; we must silence them, eliminate them, because they are a threat to our purity and our prosperity. A staggering deception! Yet is that not what we do when we cast truth-telling victims of abuse from our midst and label them "disruptive"? She concludes, Any group of people that names the name of Christ and does such things creates a place of death."

"Every time we deceive ourselves into thinking that what God calls evil is in fact good, something dies. ...The act or cover-up of abuse kills. ...It kills hope, trust, safety, dignity, and love. G. Campbell Morgan says this: 'Sanctuary means having no complicity with anything that makes sanctuary a necessity.' The church and the individuals in it have been complicit with horrific things that call for sanctuary. We are called to be a sacred place for the vulnerable. We have often chosen to be a safe place for the powerful and have deceived ourselves into believing that God would call it good."

As I write that, I think of churches I have witnessed where the powerful are protected and the sheep are eaten, and yet the elders and congregation remain complicit, turning a blind eye and calling evil good. I write it as a warning—to those who might stumble into such congregations unawares and to those who continue to attend, blinded by the deception before them. Christians are warned to be discerning, and we should keep our eyes open and take such sin seriously if we ever encounter it. I think of Revelation 18 and the fall of Babylon, and the words God offers there: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues... Her sins are heaped high." I would counsel anyone to come out of her—leave unhealthy churches (even if you have a lot of friends there) and find a healthy church where the shepherds love their sheep, where the shepherds draw close to their Great Shepherd and so reflect and look like Him.

The best part of the book are the closing chapters where she reminds us what it means to be a sheep:

"Have you been called to shepherd the lambs of God in some fashion? You may shepherd as a pastor, a teacher, a counselor, or a parent. Do not forget that long before God called you to shepherd, he called you first and foremost to be his lamb. ...You are a lamb who must stay very close to the Great Shepherd. That is the best and wisest way to lead other lambs. They will follow you there. Your value as a shepherd depends on your life as a lamb, a weak, foolish lamb utterly dependent on the Shepherd. How will you know anything about shepherding if you do not stay close to the Great Shepherd? ...Our personal relationship with God is what renders us fit for ministry."

"Faith that pleases the heart of the Father reveals itself not in external measures such as growth and numbers but in character and Christlikeness. One who follows Christ bears the fruit of the Spirit in every nook and cranny of their lives. The faith of a true Christ follower emanates in kindness, gentleness, self-control, patience, and faithfulness. These describe the character of a follower of Jesus, one who is living out of grateful love to Jesus Christ. Anyone who does not manifest this fruit, no matter their accomplishments and great success, is not following Jesus. They are not growing in likeness to Christ. ...Leaders, followers, and systems can all easily deceive us, whether they are secular or part of Christendom. But people and systems are both known by their fruit. Many have been deceived by trees that appeared full of the promise of life and were not. Hold close the truth that good fruit is always produced by those who bear the likeness of Christ. That fruit is the character fruit of his Spirit in our lives."

Langberg's book is beautiful and timeless. It's a call to the church to stop covering sin and to love those who have been abused by the church. We do that by following our Lord Jesus—by conforming our lives to his, by following his will at all costs, by being sheep of the Great Shepherd. We do that by calling our leaders to repent—to examine the fruit of their lives and actions and measuring it by their conformity to our great God of love.

I have one more quotation from her book which fills me with hope and aspiration. She writes, "The power of a person is found in likeness to Jesus Christ. It is not found in brilliance, gifting, knowledge, position, verbal power, reputation, or fame. It is found when a mere person, such as yourself, flings open the corridors and closets of their life so that they are full of the light and love of God. That person, full of living water, will alter any landscape in which they walk. That person will help fill the earth with God's glory.

That is my prayer for both me and you. Let us be people full of living water who change the very landscape around us. Let's work together to help fill the earth with God's glory.

Spiritual Abuse as Soul-Murder

"For most people of faith, their faith is a source of solace. It gives them comfort and strength for all manner of life's travails. It's a powerful resource for healing. But for me, faith is neurologically networked with a nightmare. Sexual trauma and faith are inextricably seared together in my brain.

This is what it means to be subjected to the force of faith unleashed by a clergy predator. It is not only physically, psychologically, and emotionally devastating, but it is also spiritually annihilating. It is soul-murder. It is why many experts talk about the unique nature of clergy abuse trauma and the devastation of its impact.

When faith has been used as a weapon, it becomes almost impossible to use it as a resource for healing."

~ Christa Brown, This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang

I just finished reading Christa Brown's memoir of her experience of sexual abuse and cover-up in the Baptist church. She begins by recounting how she, as a sixteen-year-old, was groomed by her youth pastor, who sexually violated her while telling her it was "God's will." When she goes to another pastor for help, she's told never to speak of it again, and as word gets out, Brown is forced to apologize to the youth pastor's wife for "seducing" her husband.

It's a heartbreaking story, but where it gets worse is when Brown tries to actually do something about it—she wants to make sure other children do not have the same thing happen to them. She realizes that in the Baptist church, there was no system of accountability to prevent sexual abusers from simply changing churches and starting again. (Her own abuser remained a pastor in a large Baptist church even after her claims of abuse were credibly substantiated.) What becomes apparent is that NO ONE is willing to do anything about it. Not the men who know the truth. Not the president of the SBC. Not the Baptist pastors who speak platitudes about how much they care about truth and transparency and about God.

The moral of the story, I think, is an all-too-common theme of churches protecting the institution. Or as Dr. Diane Langberg writes, "Why do I say many church leaders have failed God on the issue of abuse? Because we protected our own institutions and status more than His name or His people. In doing so, we taught people that the institution is what God loves, not the sheep. Resharing:"

Brown's book was published in 2009, and it's basically a recounting of how 1)vulnerable people in the church are not protected, 2)victims of abuse are gaslit and further abused, and 3)how the perpetrators (specifically pastors in her book) get away with it with pretty much no consequences. It's now 2026. One hopes that things have changed—she wrote a follow-up in 2024, Baptistland, which I haven't read—but based on some recent podcasts she's been on, it seems she's still out there fighting the good fight).

I'm thankful for Christa and the light that she continues to shine. Our churches need to become better informed on the dynamics of clergy abuse. And we need to speak up for abuse victims—for the glory of Christ's name and for the sake of his sheep.

Binded as an Ornament

  "Therefore, I bind these lies and slanderous accusations to my person as an ornament; it belongs to my Christian profession to be villified, slandered, reproached and reviled, and since all this is nothing but that, as God and my conscience testify, I rejoice in being reproached for Christ's sake."

~John Bunyan

The Way You Receive the Kingdom of Heaven

 "Jesus is not saying that you can earn the kingdom of heaven by the thoroughness of your commitment. Your willingness to sell everything ...  is the way you receive the kingdom of heaven, but it's not the way to merit the kingdom of heaven. That's very important.

You turn the light switch on on the wall, and it seems to cause the coming on of the light, but it doesn't. As we know, what causes the coming on of the light is the power. The light switch simply is a channel to the power ... the light switch has no power of its own.

This is one of the most important distinctions not only in theology but in your own personal experiential understanding of Christianity. There is something God says that you must do to receive the kingdom of heaven, but there's nothing you can do to earn the kingdom of heaven. Total commitment is the way it is received but not earned. The Parable of the Prodigal Son tells us how it is earned because, you see, to get the robe, to get the ring, to get the fatted calf, though it's free to the prodigal us, the prodigal you and me, it's at the expense of the older brother; it's been paid for by someone else. And now, of course, it's received through repentance, through commitment, through the willingness of the prodigal son to come and say, "Father, do what you want with me. Father, no conditions. Father, I come back and I throw myself at your feet." What is going on? Repentance, commitment, letting go of everything, laying yourself out, utter commitment. But that is not what brings him back in. That's what receives the father's welcome, but what earns the father's welcome ... is the fact that all of the wealth the father puts now onto the prodigal—the robe, the ring, and the fatted cow—belongs to the elder brother, so it's at his expense."

Tim Keller, The Parable of the Pearl: On Priorities, sermon at Redeemer Presbyterian Church of NYC on August 28, 1994. A sermon on Jesus's parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl from Matthew 13:44–45.

"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself."

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Valley of Vision

 Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou has brought me to the valley of vision,
where I live in the depths but see thee in the heights;
hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox
that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;

Let me find Thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty
Thy glory in my valley.

Fear the Lord and Serve Him Faithfully

Be sure to fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.

1 Samuel 12:24

I saw this over on Pinterest and I like it because, let's face it, I'd be tempted to make content on how to style your hair. This is a helpful reminder that I'm called to model Christ, and modeling hard and holy things is far more important.
 

True Contentment

Contentment is possible only as we cultivate and maintain the attitude of accepting everything which enters our lives as coming from the hand of him who is too wise to err, and too loving to cause one of his children a needless tear.

～A.W. Pink

Eve’s Sin Looks Like Our Sin

Eve's response [to Satan] ... is to doubt God's word, to doubt that his threat of judgment would come true, to doubt God's goodness toward her, and to believe God is indeed trying to prevent her from achieving her full glory and potential.

As we look into our own hearts, we need to acknowledge that these are very powerful temptations, temptations with which every one of us constantly struggles. 

Through His Eyes: God's Perspective on Women in the Bible, Jerram Barrs, pgs. 28–29

To Write or Not To Write

Today is day one of my journey to break into copy writing. Of course, instead of actually doing the aforementioned thing (i.e., creating a Fiverr profile, researching how to write a blog post, getting out there and getting my first gig), I'm here writing a non-monetized blog post that no one will ever read. But it's ok. I hope to document my process and the results, and who knows, maybe one day, I, too, will publish an e-book on the subject.

So, where will I start?

I downloaded this e-book from amber-baker.com. I think it's helpful, but do wish for a bit a more. (I'm a complete child when it comes to these things and want someone to hold my hand throughout the whole process.) My first impression is that I'm thankful for Amber and her website and I'm 100% satisfied with my e-book purchase. She's just one person that God will use on this journey of getting me into writing ... and it was her Instagram account that gave me the kick in my pants that brought me here today. 

Next: I'm now downloading this e-book. Let's see if it gives me the hand-holding that I desire. I'm not a throw-myself-into-the-deep-end kind of girl. My tendency is that I'll endlessly research and never get started. Or I'll procrastinate, which is what I'm doing here with this blog post.

Here's to writing! (Hopefully.) I'll let you know how it goes...

Soulless Beauty

One glance ... revealed a woman who had once been beautiful, as the sons of God once found the daughters of men; nay, the wreck of her was still beautiful, but it was the soulless beauty whose appeal is to that which is least worthy in any man.

~A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde, pp. 6–7

I've been proofreading books for Distributed Proofreaders, an organization that digitizes books in the public domain through the work of volunteers. As you proofread the pages, they tend to skip around, but sometimes you get lucky (if you're the only person working on it at the time), and you can proofread a whole chapter straight through so that you get to catch a bit of the story. I just started proofreading this book so I have no clue of who the characters are. It's categorized as "English — General Fiction." I liked the quote — I think we all know this soulless beauty the author writes of. 

On Remaining Silent in the Face of Lies

Many Christians will see through... lies today but will choose not to speak up. Their silence will not save them and will instead corrode them, according to Czesław Miłosz.

    In his writing about communism's insidiousness, Miłosz referenced a 1932 novel, Insatiability. In it, Polish writer Stanisław Witkiewicz wrote of a near-future dystopia in which the people were culturally exhausted and had fallen into decadence. A Mongol army from the East threatened to overrun them.

    As part of the plan to tale over the nation, people began turning up in the streets selling "the pill of Murty-Bing," named after a Mongolian philosopher who found a way to embody his "don't worry, be happy" philosophy in a tablet. Those who toll the Pill of Murti-Bing quit worrying about life, even though things were falling apart around them. When the Eastern army arrived, it surrendered happily, its soldiers relieved to have found deliverance from their internal tension and struggles.

    Only the peace didn't last. "But since they could not rid themselves completely of their former personalities," writes Czesław Miłosz, "they became schizophrenic."

~ Live Not By Lives, Rod Dreher, pgs. 15–16.

    I'm currently reading Live Not By Lies. I've been eager to get my hands on it since it came out. I'm not a fan of reading things electronically, so I had to wait until I came to the US to get a hardback copy. One of the things I wonder about is whether I should keep reading the things that I read — the things that get me riled up — or whether I should just stick my head in the sand like so many others around me and imbibe on a diet of Netflix and cat videos. Those who do the latter somehow seem happier, but they also seem to be absolutely clueless to what's going on around them. I think I have no choice but to choose the former course of action.

    Dreher continues:

    What do you do when the Pill of Murti-Bing stops working and your find yourself living under a dictatorship of official lies in which anyone who contradicts the party line goes to jail?

    You become an actor, says Miłosz. You learn the practice of ketman. This is the Persian word for the practice of maintaining an outward appearance of Islamic orthodoxy while inwardly dissenting. Ketman was the strategy everyone who wasn't a true believer in communism had to adopt to stay out of trouble. It is a form of mental self-defense.

    What is the difference between ketman and plain old hypocrisy? As Miłosz explains, having to be "on" all the time inevitably changes a person. An actor who inhabits his role around the clock eventually becomes the character he plays. Ketman is worse than hypocrisy, because living by it all the time corrupts your character and ultimately everything in society. 

    Miłosz identified eight different types of ketman under communism. For example, "professional ketman" is when you convince yourself that it's okay to live a lie in the workplace, because that's what you have to do to have the freedom to do good work. "Metaphysical ketman" is the deepest form of the strategy, a defense against "total degradation." It consists of convincing yourself that it really is possible for you to be a loyal opponent of the new regime while working with it. Christians who collaborated with communist regimes were guilty of metaphysocal ketman. In fact, says Miłosz, it represents the ultimate victory of the Big Lie over the individual's soul.

    Under the emerging tyrany of workeness, conservatives, including conservative Christians, learn to practive one or more forms of ketman. The ones who are most deeply deceived are those who convince themselves that they can live honestly within woke systems by outwardly comforming and learning how to adapt their convictions to the new order. Miłosz had their number: "They swindle the devil who think he is swindling them. But the devil knows what they think and is satisfied."

 

 

Blessing of Abraham as Direct Answer to the Curses of Genesis 3

Might the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3 be a direct answer to the curses of Genesis 3:14–19? The curses of Genesis 3 introduce conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, conflict between the man and the woman, with difficulty in childbearing, and conflict between man and the ground, which is cursed for man's sin. God promises land, seed, and blessing to Abraham. The nations will be blessed through the seed of the woman, seed of Abraham, who crushes the serpent's head. The birth of this seed means that the conflict between the man and his wife is not final, nor will the difficulty in childbearing be fatal. And God promises and to Abraham and his seed, land that hints of a return to Eden.

"For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me." —Jesus of Nazareth (John 5:46)

The Seed of the Woman and the Blessing of Abraham, James Hamilton

On Henry James

James managed to seduce all but the most attentive readers into identifying initially with a point of view which seems sensible and ... sympathetic. It is only with the unfolding of the action that we ... come to understand that the original point of view was stupid, unimaginative, shabby, and evil.

~Joseph Summers, The Muse's Method

On Grief and Losing a Mother

Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will be forever cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power… that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that will constantly remember her more and more.

~(1907) Letter from Proust to Georges de Lauris, whose mother had just died. Translated from the French by Richard Howard.

Chapter One of the Great Story

"You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be."

Lucy said, "We're so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often."

"No fear of that," said Aslan. "Have you not guessed?"

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning."

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

~ The last page of The Last Battle, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I read these lines to a friend tonight with tears my eyes. In the last novel, Susan is missing—she's not in Narnia with the other children. Susan is named as "no longer a friend of Narnia." The novel explains that she had chosen lipstick and nylons instead. And so, the books end, and her brothers and sisters have died in a train accident and are now in Narnia—in Heaven—forever. The Susan part of the story breaks my heart. I told a friend tonight not to be a Susan. And I read her this last chapter as something for her to look forward to. With tears in my eyes.

We Are Made to Cry out for Permanence When...

God made us in such a way that if we try to turn that moment of touching into a spiritual, emotional, personal moment of union, our hearts are going to cry out for permanence, for promises of faithfulness. Our hearts say in that moment you may touch me because you have promised never to leave me or forsake me. You may have me because you are me. We are so made that we cry out for permanence when giving away our most precious gifts...Therefore, that kind of touching belongs in marriage.
~John Piper, from a talk I heard on YouTube about the dangers of premarital sex. He's right about this. And it's heartbreaking.

We Must Go to the Scriptures to Determine What Is Needful for Women to Do

"It is not sufficient for churches that hold to male headship simply to compile a list of things that are permissible for women to do. We must go to the Scriptures and determine what is needful for women to do. God pronounced gender-aloneness "not good" in the Garden, and the same is true in the church. He did not give His benediction of "It is very good" until man and woman stood side by side, equal but different.
      The church must boldly articulate a robustly positive perspective of womanhood and woman's role in the church, and the church must equip older women to disciple younger women to think and live according to this perspective. If a local church remains silent on this issue, women are unequipped to fulfill their covenantal calling."

~p. 42, Women's Ministry in the Local Church, J. Ligon Duncan & Susan Hunt

Manufacturing a God of Your Own

"Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and bad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.

Beware of making selections from your Bible to suit your taste. Dare not to say, ‘I believe this verse, for I like it. I refuse that, for I cannot reconcile it with my views’. Nay! But O man, who art thou that repliest against God? By what right do you talk in this way? Surely it were better to say over EVERY chapter in the word, “Speak Lord, for thy servant heareth”. Ah! If men would do this, they would never deny the unquenchable fire."

~J.C. Ryle

Augustine's Evolving Thought on Indwelling Sin

In 359 Augustine acknowledges that a Christian still experiences the lusts of the flesh, but does not sin. At this point in his theology, he defines sin as the consent of the will to obey, or to act according to sinful desire. Simply having sinful desire is not personal sin... However, by the opening decades of the fifth century, Augustine's harmartiology expands. He begins to see sinful desire itself as personal sin and in need of the absolution brought about through the Lord's Prayer... While he only sees it as a venial sin and not mortal, it is still sin that a Christian must bear until the resurrection of the body. Augustine comes to see sinful desire as sin because it falls short of the perfect love of God and neighbor, which is the ultimate end of the law."

~Christopher T. Bounds, "Augustine's Interpretation of Romans 7:14–25, His Ordo Salutis and His Consistent Belief in a Christian's Victory Over Sin," The Asbury Journal 64, no. 2 [2009]: 24).