When Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem,” on October 15, 2017, the hashtag MeToo movement started.
What emerged from this was a sustained transition toward a culture where abuse claims gained prominence for belief and investigation. A culture of “believe the victim” began to prevail. Society began to awaken to the prevalence of injustice when the true scale of sexual harassment and violence began to be seen historically.
I’m going to ask you, dear reader, to be patient with me as the point of this article comes a little further in. What I’m saying is, context is important.
What emerged out of this was the hashtag ChurchToo movement, as those who had been silent (and in many cases silenced) for decades began to share their traumatic narratives.
Many of us have seen this as a time of reformation of the church and of reckoning for the post-Christendom Christian world—the revealing of secret sins perpetrated many times where there was an egregious power differential and those who were vulnerable were exploited by those who had power and the supposed morality to protect, not to abuse. Then, of course, the compounding of abuse occurred when victims were dismissed.
We live in a strange and often confusing day, where sins are exposed and justice is wrought, yet there is collateral damage everywhere as a result. Put plainly, when a person or organisation ‘falls from grace’ (i.e., they’re exposed for what occurred), there is the aggrieved and those who support the aggrieved on one side, and there is the accused and those who support the accused on the other—a polarised and divided, he-said-she-said cacophony where people lose faith.
What we have here is a landscape of a world where if there’s a skeleton in a closet, there’s more opportunity for that to be revealed in this day than ever before. This is good. It’s God’s timely justice I believe—don’t fall into the temptation of thinking it’s evil when evils are revealed. Where secret and egregious sins are done—that harmed people, in ‘the name of God’—these ought to revealed as promptly as possible, no matter who did them.
To further contextualise this, there are stories and accounts of sexual and other abuses done in Christian settings in countries and cities everywhere. Locally, there’s a present case that has sent shockwaves through our community. It involves a rehabilitation centre.
What sparks this article is a comment by a prominent leader of another rehabilitation centre in our city who empathised for the rehabilitation centre accused of significant abuse.
In the context of supporting the good work of this rehabilitation centre, this is what was said:
“No matter how hard you try there will always be someone who wants to tear you down. If there are ninety nine things an organisation is doing right and one thing they are doing wrong, the one thing becomes the focus. You will be attacked with the focus on the one thing with the 99 right things being disregarded, it’s very sad.”
And here again:
“You will make mistakes and some people like vultures will sit and wait for you to do the one wrong thing to do what ever they can to take you out, why….. I don’t know….”
~
What could the Lord Jesus be saying in all this? I just wonder if the ancient parable of the lost sheep can say something to us in this contemporary setting.
Cue to Luke 15:1-7. Do you remember the parable of the lost sheep? I wonder if we can draw a parallel to the present conundrum—99 things done well, 1 thing done poorly.
The words of Jesus:
“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
Note above how protecting the safe sheep isn’t the focus; the shepherd’s focus is on saving the one at most risk of being harmed. Could it be that there is more rejoicing in heaven when the ONE isn’t traumatised than of ninety-nine who have recovered from their trauma.
Is this radical? Yes. The reversal of the ninety-nine and the one is a standard built for “the least of these,” which is a core Jesus concept.
Now, again, just imagine a person traumatised “in the name of the Lord”—ONE PERSON, let’s say, in one hundred. Is that acceptable? That’s the question.
The point of the parable is the ONE matters. In fact, accepting that parables work in the realm of hyperbole, the one matters to the exclusion of the ninety-nine.
Why?
Don’t the majority count?
Isn’t having ninety-nine away from harm’s way enough?
Surely ninety-nine percent is an incredible, almost unbelievable, success!
Of course, it is! If we’re working to a worldly standard...
The point Jesus makes in the radical nature of his Kingdom’s teaching is he’s tipping the tables—literally in the case of the Temple—of the world’s justice that religious people think is good enough, especially religious people who don’t want their conquests of power challenged.
Ninety-nine safe isn’t just not good enough, it’s the wrong focus.
While there remains ONE at risk the heart of God is grieved.
This completely upends our thinking. Isaiah 55:8-9 puts it thus: God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are God’s ways and thoughts higher than human ways and thoughts.
That the ninety-nine might have been saved by the work of the rehabilitation centre isn’t the point in God’s Kingdom economy. The ONE who was traumatised whilst in that program is where God’s eye moves to and rests.
People might think, “Well that’s an impossible standard; nobody can achieve that kind of 100/100 perfect record.” They miss the point. It’s not about perfection. It’s about protecting souls from harm. Souls I might add that entered such a program already harmed. More than ever was the need for a safe harbour for them to anchor to recover.
Christian organisations deserve to be held to account for harming and not protecting the vulnerable, because there are biblical reasons why it should never happen. There are principles of lament for sins done, and for confession of those sins, and for repentance of those who harm people. The object is to restore people, not to add harm upon harm.
Christian work in the world is done on a wing and a prayer. We do it with the full knowledge that we’ll be judged harshly (read that as ‘justly’) when we slip up. But imagine an institutional response to abuse that hides or covers up what was done. Exposures of cover ups reveal evil intent, not just a lapse. (I’m not saying the rehabilitation centre have done this, by the way. I’m not in the position to judge.)
It’s just not good enough for Christian organisations to be satisfied with a sloppy worldly approach to matters of justice and harms alleged or done. Good organisations would not tolerate malevolent performance when their customers complain. Good organisations have processes in place to deal justly and swiftly with grievances. Christian organisations should have justice and truth as core values—because they’re biblical—if they truly understand Christ in their midst.
Saving the ninety-nine isn’t enough.
It isn’t where the focus ought to be.
The focus ought to be on doing no harm in the first place. And close behind that, the focus ought to be on NEVER being in a situation where a person’s grievance is dismissed or relegated.
Quite plainly, Christian organisations must repent
when they exhibit cultures of harm.
Does Jesus ever sanction harm as acceptable? NEVER. Whenever harm is done, it needs to be accounted for immediately.
If love is to prevail, justice must prevail, because the standard of a Christian’s worship is truth—and not a ninety-nine percent standard.
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