There is a headline over at the BG website that was written as more of an insult than a compliment. It reads- Dr. David Tee Continues to Support Preachers Who Rape, Molest, and Abuse Children
The headline is very misleading bringing people to the wrong idea and planting seeds of hatred in BG’s readers’ minds. In other words, everything he accuses us of doing to him in that article, he actually does to us.
But our response to this headline is- Someone has to do it. It all boils down to how you want to define the term ‘support’. Some unbelievers would interpret that term as meaning we support their sinful actions. But that is far from the truth and far from what we are doing.
When we look at these men who hopefully were called y God to the ministry or truly desired to be a minister, we define the word to mean ‘providing support to them so they get back to God and repent of their sins’.
It is a vastly different action than what is implied by the headline. While we cannot personally visit all of these men, we can teach what the Bible says to do so that other Christians do not follow the secular world and commit more sins.
The Bible does not teach anyone to judge, condemn, or pile on those who have troubles, make their lives worse, and so on. There is also no biblical teaching to follow the secular world’s thinking, use emotion to influence justice, and so on.
The Bible, for all crimes and other sinful acts, teaches us God’s way on how to handle those who do wrong. One verse is:
See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek what is good for one another and for all people. (1 Thess. 5:15)
This passage is written for everyone, observers, victims, and the offender. Another verse says:
Masters, grant your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven. (Col. 4:1)
Is it just to side with the unbelievers and their perverted ways when it comes to ministers who commit crimes? It certainly is not justice to us and it is neither just nor fair to pile on others who have fallen. Or to broadcast those errors for the world to see.
Then there is MM who has decided to stick his nose into this discussion and he wrote a little blurb on his website defending the black collar crime series. We will only address a few of his points. It should be easy to find, he published it twice.
Over at Bruce Gerencser’s site, Bruce writes an extensive series about men and women of the clergy who commit crimes. Many of these crimes are of a disturbing sexual nature, and some of them involve children. In my view, Bruce does us a service by highlighting the existence of these crimes.
First, it is not a service. It is returning evil for evil and his work is wrong. There are proper authorities who handle these situations but the extent of the crimes committed are not excluded from the verses we quoted so far.
He is not highlighting them because the news is found everywhere in traditional media outlets. Plus, both BG and MM as well as their readers will never meet these men thus the ‘highlighted’ stories only cement their decision to not accept Christ as their savior.
If BG were honest and taught the whole Bible, it may be different but he doesn’t. He writes in a way that distorts Christianity and those who follow Jesus giving a false impression of the faith. The only service being done by this series is helping people find destruction over salvation.
The organisations involved (usually, but not limited to, various denominations of Christianity) are not exactly quick to deal with offenders in their midst, and have historically shielded dangerous elements in their ranks, lest the scandal and horror rock peoples’ faith.
We are not defending those denominational leaders who have done this. It has been well publicized how the RCC bishops etc., have done this exact same thing. Many protestant church leaders have followed suit.
But the church is not an arm of law enforcement. There are other agencies that are and it is their responsibility to act on the reported offenses. We know of many incidents where law enforcement agencies have dropped the ball in these cases.
Do not blame the church when the flaws of the law enforcement agencies drive leaders to seek alternative solutions. If everyone followed the Bible correctly, these issues would be handled in a much better way for all involved.
People are people and they make their decisions, whether right or wrong, and the results are not always going to be as observers expected. But then the church does not please the unbelieving world. They are to please God and they are to do what God wants which in many cases requires turning in offenders.
Notice that pleasing the victim is not biblical teaching. This is something that unbelievers cannot understand. Often emotions distort what action should take place. and injustice takes place instead of true justice.
The headline we quoted earlier ignores the fact that we are supporting true justice not the secular world’s idea of justice. We do not use inflammatory or distorting adjectives or adverbs to describe the offenders or the crimes. Those unduly influence people’s perspective which in turn influence how justice is applied.
We have not called for these men to be released or that their sentences be commuted. But that is the idea one can get by the rhetoric used by those two people.
The thing is, if it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be.
This is an interesting statement made by MM. He and BG do not know the truth nor how it can be applied to these situations. They go by their own feelings and viewpoints of the crimes committed. They are not looking for the truth or justice. They are looking for actions that they want or will accept.
Just as the victims and their families want. This is not justice as truth and justice exclude using emotions, personal opinions, and other subjective attitudes. The truth is people do not like it as their lust for revenge or retribution.
Also, the truth is that the victims, their families, and observers must obey the following verse:
But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses. (MT 6:15)
We have written other articles on forgiveness and have dealt with this topic. The victims and their families are not excluded from this instruction no matter the severity of the crime. Plus, we have also written that forgiveness does not replace punishment.
But certain people ignore those words and continue to make false accusations of what we have taught on this website. We taught that forgiveness removes the beams from the eyes of the accusers and others so that they can see what true justice needs to be applied.
Then the Bible teaches us about mercy:
Who is a God like You, who pardons wrongdoing And passes over a rebellious act of the remnant of His possession? He does not retain His anger forever, Because He delights in mercy. (Micah 7:18)
and
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:9)
Those verses do not exclude sex offenders, pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and other offenders. While we love mercy, and the NASB says kindness, we do not pervert true justice at the same time.
If God were allowed to lead our justice system, we would see a difference in the lives of convicted felons. The truth destroys secular ideas because their ideas are false.
The presence of these deeply disturbed individuals, who often don’t receive background checks, and are often unsupervised, in places of worship is a serious problem within various branches of Christianity. There is little desire to tackle this, and some Evangelicals have even gone as far as to say the offenders should be forgiven, and that the victims of their terrible crimes should forgive them.
Here is the evidence for what we have said. distortion of our words as while we said everyone needs to forgive offenders, we never said punishment was excluded. We wrote about background checks when we were teaching in Korea and it was published in the Korea Times.
Background checks are useless and often pervert justice because people who have served their time are being denied employment. Thus they are still paying for their crimes and that is wrong. You will notice that neither God nor Jesus did not require background checks for their priests and disciples.
Background checks would not stop the sons of the high priest Eli from doing what they did:
Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord. (1 Sam. 2:12)
and
Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. (1 Sam. 2:22)
Only Jesus can stop these activities when the offenders make true repentance and get right with God. Forgiveness helps facilitate true repentance while the secular way hinders it.
Others decry the existence of Bruce’s Black Collar Series as being unfair, that it is a form of bullying, though all Bruce does is reproduce news articles, to spread the word about these stories. There is nothing wrong with that!
The series is unfair, it is bullying, it is piling on and it is not biblical. There is everything wrong with that series as it leads others to sin against men who need justice not more sin. The series also unfairly influences the readers who do not need to know about the crimes. That information, in all of its distorted glory, is wrong.
Highlighting what is a very serious problem, one that causes people harm, is not wrong. Acknowledging the distress and pain caused to the victims and their families is not wrong. Expecting organisations like the Church to take serious steps to stop this is not wrong, and criticising the failure of these organisations to take those steps is not wrong.
It is all wrong because the content leads people to sinful actions and perversion of justice. There is no instruction to correctly follow God’s commands and instructions thus there is no real solution to the problem.
I am prepared to say that most Christians would be horrified at the actions of abusers, be they Christian or otherwise, as I am prepared to say that most Christians are good people. There is however a loud minority that offer no empathy or compassion to the victims of these dreadful assaults, preferring instead to be all ‘woe are the abusers, we should sorry for them!’
The problem with that point is that it is one-sided. Only the victim matters, not justice, God’s instructions, and so forth. One cannot show true empathy when they are sinning against the offenders and God.
In today’s world, the offender often ends up being a victim due to his treatment by tose who ignore what God teaches. Christians should not be horrified because all people sin, including ministers. We should be prepared to read and hear about these crimes because they are done on a daily basis by UNBELIVERS.
Where is their outcry against those teachers who commit the same sexual crimes as these p[astors are accused of committing? They are omitted because BG is not fair or just and only wants to harm the church and God.
Let’s see a black teachers’ series where those same crimes are committed by unbelievers. We run into them almost every month. We know about New York’s rubber rooms where unfit teachers are sent because it is too dangerous to put them in the classroom.
Why are MM and BG NOT raising Cain about the failure of the school systems that do not report these teachers but shuffle them off to new assignments instead? They are sitting in these rubber rooms free while the crimes committed by ministers are broadcast everywhere?
There is no service being done when only one group of people is targeted.
In conclusion, we say that both MM and BG protest too much. Their hypocrisy undermines any claims they make. Their actions undermine their credibility and make them people who compound the problems not solve them.
Following both God’s and JEsus’ commands and instructions brings the true solution for all involved. If we did not write these articles, who else will? We have not seen anyone else, yet, doing the same thing.
These men, as well as all offenders, need true justice not the world’s idea of justice.
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