Toxic churches that abuse. Dysfunctional churches. We have a new language for discussing our corporate weaknesses today.
Some of this is helpful. We need new tools for measuring our health and quantifying the actual results of our life together. Without question there are many unsafe Christian communities. The natural kingdoms of self-in-control may have never given way to the supernatural Kingdom of Christ-in-Control. Ego-driven ministries can be well camouflaged and initially attractive. The further out from the center you are, the better everything looks. The closer you get to the core and the dominant personalities, the worse it looks and feels. Egoism always demands one-way loyalty; you are expected to be loyal to the leaders. If your allegiance breaks down you are expendable. Severe disillusionment, like a kind of spiritual arthritis, settles into the connecting tissues that hold the members of such communities together.
Some of this spiritual abuse analysis is not helpful. If you haven’t noticed, abuse language is very easy to misuse. I have had people flare in alarm at their first brush with Kingdom authority teaching. What they hear and react to is the opposite of what we are teaching and practicing. It seems impossible to calm their fears.
“Pastor, you are setting us up with this emphasis on humility and submission so you can take advantage of us,” is the kind of statement I sometimes hear. Such authority-sensitive believers are almost always casualties of conflicted church communities. In their previous church experience they developed a hyper-sensitivity to anything that even suggests authoritarianism to them. When I explain that our focus is on surrender to Jesus and submission to His Holy Spirit, not church leaders, they remain extremely skeptical. Since I do not have permission to change the language of the New Testament and select only their preferred grace-based portions of the Christian message, some of these toxic church alarmists move on with mistaken assumptions.
Spiritual abuse is real. Leaders can and do abuse their positions of influence. But let’s be honest and fair. Everyone is a potential abuser. In my experience those who have been abused often become the worst abusers. We must be very careful that we look inside at ourselves first before we point the accusation of spiritual abuse at others.
Love floats on obedience to Christ. Love thrives in the soil of life-style repentance. Love cannot be separated from surrender to the leadership of Jesus. If Jesus is not Lord and Master we are not capable of genuine love.