JITW Home
Background
Connection
Beliefs
Q&A
Sexual Purity
Community
Publications
Archives
Links
Fellowship
Outreach
Children
Inspiration
Photographs
Hebrew Fonts
Get In Touch
Hell Disquised As Heaven
Stopping Sexual Scandal In The Messianic Movement - Part 10
(Part 9 is Available Here if you haven't read that already)
It was July of 2007. We had been married for just 16 months, and given birth to our first son 4 months earlier. We moved our little family 700 miles across the country to New England in an old 1987 Chevy square-body pickup truck, where we became involved in a fellowship that was supposed to have common goals, and we attended there for the largest part of the next 10 years. Never signed a membership roster, didn't regularly tithe, but for all practical purposes, it became our "home church". Some things didn't seem seem right but we wrote it off to our imaginations. Just like I wrong Edgar Stine off to my imagination when I was growing up. It would have been nice if I'd learned, but what were the chances of history repeating itself? We poured our hearts into that endeavor so that our children's lives would be filled with holy influences - or so we thought. What we instead found we walked into was a literal living hell obscured by an image of heaven on the surface.
Over the course of more than 15 years, one after another, we found sexual abuse either alleged (or in a majority of cases, eventually substantiated) in family units which those in that fellowship had been affiliated with. Let it not remain unsaid that in a faith-community especially, much less one which purports adherance to the moral restraints of the Torah, the ethics of the Prophets, and the Gospel of the Messiah, something like this should NEVER have occurred.
We saw a young man serve time and end up on the sex offender registry for sexually assaulting his sister. We heard the hushed rumors of another family's daughter being repeatedly raped by her father. Those rumors were later substantiated by the girl's siblings after CPS became involved, removing the girl from the home, yet due to Maine's lax laws on sexual abuse of minors, he remains walking free. We learned about a minister's "secret sister". We watched another man accepted into fellowship by that minister, when he should have never had unmonitored interaction with children without parents being warned. Then we watched admissions of inappropriate exposure be met with excommunication, yet not for the indecency, but for letting the cat out of the bag. Not for doing it, but for publicly admitting it. We watched abuse being alleged by multiple children with corroborating witnesses and then we watched inquiries of concern be met with retaliation and accusations of betrayed trust. We watched evidence be met with isolation. We watched children becoming pornography addicts, then children being subjected to sexual harassment, molestation, and children becoming sexual abusers of other children. Then we watched teens becoming sadistic serial sexual abusers of children. Finally, we found ourselves and others who had a problem with this as the castaways being spoken evil against. Most recently, we heard "warning about substantiated instances of sexual abuse in order to protect other children" compared to "feather pillow stuffing which allegedly never should have scattered", and we were told the abused should "sit down and play board games" with their abusers to help their families reconcile. I kid you not.
When we were first told to stop attending the congregation where these things (to our knowledge) started occurring, I was too blindly naive and the shunning we experienced ended up being a saving grace embedded in an intended curse. John 16:1-4 says "these things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall cast you out of their synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth Elohim a service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them."
Looking back, we do in fact remember. Had we not been cast out of that assembly, the damage to our children would have undoubtedly been much greater. In our attempts to help others' children, we came within a hairsbreadth of subjecting our own family to even worse. If you knew the darkness our own children were compelled to walk through in the name of religion...all while we were trying to surround them with rightness mentors and righteous peers, you might justifiably say the hell with all of it. I was there and I know. As a father I almost lost my faith along with my childrem, and a part of their innocence can never be recovered. But what's more important is that our faith was, through our own Exodus into the wilderness, able to be recovered. What's even more sobering though is that had I not drawn lines which involved getting shunned and excommunicated for lack of better terms, I believe it highly likely that I would eventually have been lost to the same vices which sought to feast on the blood of my sons and daughters. Why would I say such a thing? I say it because I acknowledge my human weakness, and that a man cannot remain in such an environment without becoming numbed to it. Just like hypothermia, numb people go with the flow as they are dying.
As it is, I went from being told overnight that I was a godly man to being told I was a sick man and a tool of the devil. That's totally OK. I'd rather have the devil curse me outright than be his partner in crime. Those labels were misappropriated anyway. The approval of those working unrighteousness is not to be sought, and the unrighteous judgment and slander which continues to this day eventually gave my kids the courage and confidence they also needed to take their own stand against wickedness in high religious places. It opened doors for us to meet families who were not wrapped up in those same generational curses which others couldn't seem to extricate themselves from.
I grew up next to a son of a preacher who did diabolical things to other boys and died from sexually transmitted diseases in a jail cell. I have an uncle who lived by the same vices and the judgement of YHWH has confined him to his bed now for nearly 15 years through a stroke from which he'll never recover. I personally know a young man today - another former-minister's son whom I happen to be related to, another serial abuser - hurtling his way to hell by the same vices perpetrated against little children - boys and girls. Is he still doing it in the same ways? That I cannot say, but from his last words to me and his social media posts I can clearly discipher that although his conscience may run after him, he is still running faster.
I know mothers, sisters, grandmothers believing a lie that women must remain in silence, in all subjection. I know men believing a lie that family loyalty comes before what is right; that blood is thicker than water. I know parents and grandparents believing that their offspring couldn't be the monster they enable. While they fashioned and fed the monster through exposure to the very vices of hell and lack of accountability that spiritual abuse and religious hierarchies have perpetuated, now they lament that they can't control it. What if we had never fed the monster and what if we never played with it?
Rather than cut off these types of sins, there is always the option to actively seek out and participate in the same types of environments and professed believers with which we have in the past been familiar, and subsequently feel safe with. The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 5:22-24, however, "Woe to those who...acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice. Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes the straw, and as dry grass shrivels in the flame, so their roots will decay and their blossoms will blow away like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of YHWH of Hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel.
Solomon says in Proverbs 17:15, "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to YHWH."
In Job 36:17 we are also reminded "Although now you are occupied with the case of the wicked; justice and judgment will be served."
We can break these multigenerational curses. We need to break them. Genesis 18:19 says of Abraham "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Yahweh, to do justice and judgment; that Yahweh may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." Proverbs 2:9 reminds us "Then shall you understand judgement, and justice, and equity; yea, every good path."
Continue to Part 11 >>
(Part 9 is Available Here if you haven't read that already)
It was July of 2007. We had been married for just 16 months, and given birth to our first son 4 months earlier. We moved our little family 700 miles across the country to New England in an old 1987 Chevy square-body pickup truck, where we became involved in a fellowship that was supposed to have common goals, and we attended there for the largest part of the next 10 years. Never signed a membership roster, didn't regularly tithe, but for all practical purposes, it became our "home church". Some things didn't seem seem right but we wrote it off to our imaginations. Just like I wrong Edgar Stine off to my imagination when I was growing up. It would have been nice if I'd learned, but what were the chances of history repeating itself? We poured our hearts into that endeavor so that our children's lives would be filled with holy influences - or so we thought. What we instead found we walked into was a literal living hell obscured by an image of heaven on the surface.
Over the course of more than 15 years, one after another, we found sexual abuse either alleged (or in a majority of cases, eventually substantiated) in family units which those in that fellowship had been affiliated with. Let it not remain unsaid that in a faith-community especially, much less one which purports adherance to the moral restraints of the Torah, the ethics of the Prophets, and the Gospel of the Messiah, something like this should NEVER have occurred.
We saw a young man serve time and end up on the sex offender registry for sexually assaulting his sister. We heard the hushed rumors of another family's daughter being repeatedly raped by her father. Those rumors were later substantiated by the girl's siblings after CPS became involved, removing the girl from the home, yet due to Maine's lax laws on sexual abuse of minors, he remains walking free. We learned about a minister's "secret sister". We watched another man accepted into fellowship by that minister, when he should have never had unmonitored interaction with children without parents being warned. Then we watched admissions of inappropriate exposure be met with excommunication, yet not for the indecency, but for letting the cat out of the bag. Not for doing it, but for publicly admitting it. We watched abuse being alleged by multiple children with corroborating witnesses and then we watched inquiries of concern be met with retaliation and accusations of betrayed trust. We watched evidence be met with isolation. We watched children becoming pornography addicts, then children being subjected to sexual harassment, molestation, and children becoming sexual abusers of other children. Then we watched teens becoming sadistic serial sexual abusers of children. Finally, we found ourselves and others who had a problem with this as the castaways being spoken evil against. Most recently, we heard "warning about substantiated instances of sexual abuse in order to protect other children" compared to "feather pillow stuffing which allegedly never should have scattered", and we were told the abused should "sit down and play board games" with their abusers to help their families reconcile. I kid you not.
When we were first told to stop attending the congregation where these things (to our knowledge) started occurring, I was too blindly naive and the shunning we experienced ended up being a saving grace embedded in an intended curse. John 16:1-4 says "these things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall cast you out of their synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth Elohim a service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them."
Looking back, we do in fact remember. Had we not been cast out of that assembly, the damage to our children would have undoubtedly been much greater. In our attempts to help others' children, we came within a hairsbreadth of subjecting our own family to even worse. If you knew the darkness our own children were compelled to walk through in the name of religion...all while we were trying to surround them with rightness mentors and righteous peers, you might justifiably say the hell with all of it. I was there and I know. As a father I almost lost my faith along with my childrem, and a part of their innocence can never be recovered. But what's more important is that our faith was, through our own Exodus into the wilderness, able to be recovered. What's even more sobering though is that had I not drawn lines which involved getting shunned and excommunicated for lack of better terms, I believe it highly likely that I would eventually have been lost to the same vices which sought to feast on the blood of my sons and daughters. Why would I say such a thing? I say it because I acknowledge my human weakness, and that a man cannot remain in such an environment without becoming numbed to it. Just like hypothermia, numb people go with the flow as they are dying.
As it is, I went from being told overnight that I was a godly man to being told I was a sick man and a tool of the devil. That's totally OK. I'd rather have the devil curse me outright than be his partner in crime. Those labels were misappropriated anyway. The approval of those working unrighteousness is not to be sought, and the unrighteous judgment and slander which continues to this day eventually gave my kids the courage and confidence they also needed to take their own stand against wickedness in high religious places. It opened doors for us to meet families who were not wrapped up in those same generational curses which others couldn't seem to extricate themselves from.
I grew up next to a son of a preacher who did diabolical things to other boys and died from sexually transmitted diseases in a jail cell. I have an uncle who lived by the same vices and the judgement of YHWH has confined him to his bed now for nearly 15 years through a stroke from which he'll never recover. I personally know a young man today - another former-minister's son whom I happen to be related to, another serial abuser - hurtling his way to hell by the same vices perpetrated against little children - boys and girls. Is he still doing it in the same ways? That I cannot say, but from his last words to me and his social media posts I can clearly discipher that although his conscience may run after him, he is still running faster.
I know mothers, sisters, grandmothers believing a lie that women must remain in silence, in all subjection. I know men believing a lie that family loyalty comes before what is right; that blood is thicker than water. I know parents and grandparents believing that their offspring couldn't be the monster they enable. While they fashioned and fed the monster through exposure to the very vices of hell and lack of accountability that spiritual abuse and religious hierarchies have perpetuated, now they lament that they can't control it. What if we had never fed the monster and what if we never played with it?
Rather than cut off these types of sins, there is always the option to actively seek out and participate in the same types of environments and professed believers with which we have in the past been familiar, and subsequently feel safe with. The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 5:22-24, however, "Woe to those who...acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice. Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes the straw, and as dry grass shrivels in the flame, so their roots will decay and their blossoms will blow away like dust; for they have rejected the instruction of YHWH of Hosts and despised the Word of the Holy One of Israel.
Solomon says in Proverbs 17:15, "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to YHWH."
In Job 36:17 we are also reminded "Although now you are occupied with the case of the wicked; justice and judgment will be served."
We can break these multigenerational curses. We need to break them. Genesis 18:19 says of Abraham "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Yahweh, to do justice and judgment; that Yahweh may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." Proverbs 2:9 reminds us "Then shall you understand judgement, and justice, and equity; yea, every good path."
Continue to Part 11 >>