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.