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 my own church, First Pres Church of Augusta, Georgia. It is a church here 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 these words knowing in all likelihood, naming the evil will be used against me, again by people who are complicit in the abuse of their brothers and sisters in Christ. And yet I do write it as a warning—to those who might stumble into that congregation unawares and to those who continue to attend, blinded by the deception before them. 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—to 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