Where We Stand
How fellow Christians should
respond.
A Christianity Today
editorial | posted 4/20/2012 08:58PM
He loved children.
The man and his wife had parented
75 foster kids in their suburban home encircled by a white picket fence. He
worked in marketing for three Chicago ministries, going on to establish a
support network for foster-care families.
"Long before we got married
... we agreed we wanted to have large families," the man told a Christian
publisher in 2009. "We thought it would be fun to have a lot of
children."
And then, the man was arrested and
held on charges of sexually assaulting two of his foster children, one 6, the
other 12 at the time. This winter, he confessed to police of many nights spent
drinking before coming home to commit literally unspeakable violations against
these and likely other children.
We at Christianity Today
recognized the mug shot. For nine years, he was our coworker in a non-editorial
role.
The story came to us right before
another: a Wheaton College Christian education professor arrested for hoarding
and trading thousands of child porn images.
And now today comes another tragedy, with the news that Voice of the Martyrs
executive director Tom White, a source, partner, and friend to several of us
here, apparently committed suicide to avoid an investigation into an accusation
that he had molested a young girl.
These events brought a sickening
dose of reality to our hallways. While the stories don't signal a trend, they
do mean that all faith-based institutions can no longer afford to assume that
predators are somewhere "out there," over the clean Christian
rain-bow. They are not just in college locker rooms and Catholic rectories
either. They are on our evangelical faculty and work in our
community nonprofits, and we must respond to them in a way that bears the
judgment—and mercy—of the gospel of Christ.
To this end, with the counsel of
experts in sexual health, we offer two principles for the Christian community
in responding to child sex offenders and preventing such offenses.
First, we must prioritize
protecting innocents. In recent
years, we've witnessed a movement among churches discerning how to include
ex-offenders into the community of faith. No doubt many lives have been
transformed in the process. Still, when the well-being of children and the
inclusion of offenders conflict, we believe a gospel-shaped community should
prioritize protecting the most innocent among us, whose violation invites
drowning by millstone (Luke 17:2).
"There is something about
exploiting children that even our sexually permissive culture gets: that you
don't touch children—even murderers in prison get it," observes William
Struthers, a neuroscientist at Wheaton College. Our culture's prevailing
response tells us something true about child abuse: Not only is it biologically
abnormal (prepubescent children aren't capable of relating sexually), it's
devastating for those who endure it.
Faith-based institutions can
no longer afford to assume that predators are somewhere 'out there.'
Practically speaking, all this will
require more proactive preventive measures than many ministries are used to.
Parents can help children develop clear physical boundaries, recognize
inappropriate behavior, and strengthen that feeble "no" into a shout.
Faith-based institutions are wise to develop a strategy of, "If an
employee reports observing danger signals from a coworker, here's how we will
respond." A clear policy for network and computer scans is wise.
Background checks for all who interact with minors are obvious. Most important,
it means teaching that working with children is not a "right" or an
unchecked "calling." If a former abuser insists on ministering to
children, their request should be denied. "The truly repentant person is
not likely going to apply to be restored, because he doesn't want to fail
again," notes Mark Laaser, who works with abusers at his Minnesota-based
recovery ministry. "If a person is humble, the restoration question
becomes moot."
But how we answer the restoration
question is paramount to our theology.
Second, we must extend the
gospel to child sex abusers. This is
a monumental task. A 2011 Slate report titled,
"Are molesters really the most hated people in prison?" answered,
simply, "Yes. Convicts who have committed crimes against children,
especially sexual abuse, are hated, harassed, and abused." Even Christians
instinctively feel that child abusers should "rot in jail" when they
imagine a fellow Christian fondling a child or masturbating to such images. So
when we begin preaching that such "monsters" are known and loved by
Christ, it will horrify the watching world. And even us.
Yet if we let the gospel seep into
our imaginations, we have no other choice. "Christ died for the murderer
and the thief—did he not also die for the child molester?" asks Struthers.
"Or am I going to create categories of people who are no longer able to be
saved by the blood of Christ?"
Hear us rightly: Restoring
molesters doesn't mean full or automatic inclusion in community life. It
certainly means jail time, psychological testing, and an intensive recovery
program. It should mean complete barring from children's ministry. But for the
gospel-shaped community, it will, by God's grace, also mean holding on to hope
that the lives destroyed by the molester—among them his own—will be made new on
the Final Day by the loving judgment of Jesus.
Copyright © 2012 Christianity
Today.
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