I believe I had this idea to some extent growing up. It was definitely reinforced in the unhealthy churches I was in. We even sang a song about it. I was furious when I learned my former pastor’s son was molesting boys in the church. We’d been told often that if we had any concerns about the pastor and his family or anything they were doing we should “hold our peace and let the Lord fight our battles” (just shut up and pray) and God would take care of anything that was REALLY wrong (ie not just our evil imaginations, because if we thought anything negative about the pastor or his family it was surely us who were wrong).
Well, where was God? If he was to fight our battles, if we were right to just obey the pastor and pray, then how could he have not fought for those boys? Everything I’d been taught about trusting God, it seemed, was wrong.
I think back to my teens and young adult years when so many songs were about being God’s hands and feet in missions and ministry. The concept was that God is a spirit and Jesus is no longer on earth. It’s his people who now do his work. How in the world is staying quiet and just praying EVER considered OK when kids are being abused or other things are wrong?
Mom used to say that she might have faith, but she wouldn’t stand in the middle of the road and pray not to be hit by a car. But that’s what we did every day, staying quiet and expecting God to do for us what we should have had the decent common sense to do for ourselves.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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