45 Sermon Illustrations on Abuse

I want to share with you a perspective that I have come to understand that I think is very, very important. There is afoot today, basically fostered by the psychological movement within the Church, an effort to cause people to believe that the path to sanctification is backwards and not forward; that the process to spirituality and Christian growth and Christian development isn’t putting on the Lord Jesus Christ now, putting off sin, and living in the light of the future return of Christ: but the real key to sanctification is going backwards.

I was involved in a pastor’s conference — I’ve been involved in, I think, three or four of them in the last three or four weeks. In one of them, some pastors posed the issue to me that sanctification couldn’t begin unless people could get under the care of some counselor who could dig up the traumatic hidden things of the past; and only when a person was freed from these matters in the past could they get on with the present and the future.

My response to that was, “What verse does it say that in? Show me where. I will be more than happy to ascribe to that if you can show me in the Scripture.” And of course there is nothing in the Scripture, other than the statement by Paul, that says, “forgetting those things that are behind, I press forward.” There is nothing on the pages of Scripture anywhere that tells anyone that their spiritual future is dependent upon their past. It is dependent upon their present action with a view to the future, not their present action with a view to the past. Psychology may deal with the “old man” but it can’t deal with the “new man.” There is nothing to be benefited by going backwards and trying to uncover something in the past as somehow the key to unlocking the future. The key to unlocking the future for you is to act in the present, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make no provision for the flesh.

I hear people say, “But I come from a dysfunctional family.” Join the human race! I come from a dysfunctional family, I conduct a dysfunctional family, I am a dysfunctional human being, and so are you. I cannot function the way God made me to function. I cannot do what I am supposed to do. I do what I don’t want to do, and I don’t do what I want to do – I am dysfunctional! I was raised with dysfunctional people. I still live with dysfunctional people, and they live with a dysfunctional person. That’s the way it is if you are fallen.

You say, “But you don’t understand, I have hidden repressed trauma.” Let me talk about that for a moment. This is a major wave in Evangelical Christianity, to tell people that the present and the future is dependent upon uncovering repressed trauma from the past. This has come to me like a flood. Yesterday morning I was in Denver, Colorado, at a pastor’s conference, and I was having breakfast with a graduate of the Master’s Seminary. He said to me, “John, I have to ask you a question. I have been acquainted with a girl and she needs some help and I’m wondering how I can help her. She has just been going through counseling, and she just found out that her father molested her when she was a child. She doesn’t remember it, but it all came out in counseling.” This was yesterday.

Before I left for Denver, Pastor Arnold Ruby came into my office to say that we just got a phone call from someone in our church who is very concerned and wants to come in and talk to a pastor immediately, his wife’s been in counseling and she’s just found out she was molested by her father when she was a child. She doesn’t remember it but he needs to come in and learn how to deal with it Biblically.

That was a few days after I was, last Sunday, dedicating a church in Long Beach, in the afternoon, after I preached here. After that, a man came up to me, whom I have known for many years. I have known his family. I have known them to be godly people. He’s a man of about 70 years of age. His wife is a godly woman, highly esteemed and respected for years in the Christian community. [They are] wonderful, precious people, and he told me with a broken and shattered heart, his wife now in glory for 12 years, he said to me, “My daughter has just come and accused me of committing incest with her when she was young and they have destroyed our family.” I said, “Whatever brought that up? Why did they do that?” And he said, “She went to counseling and it all supposedly came out in counseling. It has destroyed our family. It is nothing but lies.” So that’s about three times in one week.

To add to that I picked up a newspaper which fascinates me no end. It was an article out of the Dallas newspaper in their “D Magazine”, which is sent out to a million people and they do some “cutting edge” journalism. And I only want you to focus on this to see the epidemic level of this kind of thinking. It’s a story of a girl who, in her early twenties, in the area of Dallas, tried to bring an indictment against her parents. She wanted to indict her parents. She said that her parents had abused her and she wanted something brought against them by the courts. Her father is a Baptist pastor, has been faithfully serving the Lord with his wife and she and her brother: two children. And they were raised in a very normal happy, positive, joyful family, and he served the Lord in pastoring Baptist churches for many, many years.

Now she had come into court and she was accusing him of some quite shocking things. Accusing the mother of abuse; accusing the brother of incest and molestation, accusing the father of molestation from the age of ten on. Said that her father got her pregnant at the age of fourteen. She bore a baby which the father offered on an altar to Satan. They had a Satanic altar in the home and they worshiped Satan. And she went on beyond that, to talk about cannibalism and other kinds of things that were going on supposedly in the home in the life of this Baptist pastor and this family which had so traumatized her life. The parents were absolutely devastated, absolutely shattered. Of course, he was thrust out of the ministry. Chaos reigned supreme in their lives from every possible direction.

According to “D Magazine” they brought the case into court, into a hearing. And in the process of trying to develop this thing and find out whether some charges should be brought against the family, they put the girl through all kinds of tests, all kinds of witnesses were brought. The upshot of it was, the court decided that at the end, that not one single word she said had any relationship to reality. Nothing she said was true. Medical tests on her indicated that she had never had a relationship with a man. Furthermore, people knew the family, lived in the home, intersected in that home because he was a small church pastor, and there was no such thing as a Satanic altar in the memory of anybody who had ever known them in all the years of their ministry. All the accusations turned out to be untrue.

Well, obviously, when this hit the public, down in Texas, it became a curiosity as to where in the world this girl got all this information if it really didn’t happen. Where did it all come from? Those are some pretty frightening things and it became apparent in the process that she seemed to believe they were really true. She wouldn’t speak to her parents. They are totally alienated to this very day. She is still dependent on a particular counselor. She will not look at her parents, cannot see her parents. That relationship has permanently been destroyed.

The people at “D Magazine” decided to look a little more deeply into this, and this is what they uncovered, according to the newspaper (I read the article and I may have a few of the details wrong from memory, but its going to be pretty close). This girl had a little bit of a weight problem, which is not uncommon in our day, in our society, and was feeling a little bit like she wouldn’t be able to find the right young man for marriage if she didn’t deal with it, and so someone suggested (apparently) that if she was feeling badly about this problem [she should] go to the Christian Counseling Clinic in Dallas and get some help. She went there and was assigned to a particular counselor. And this particular counselor began to counsel her and within about a few months, maybe six months, all of this came out, in this process of counseling. She didn’t remember any of it, but he brought it all out and the theory is (and this is Freudian Theory) that somehow if you have severe trauma in your past, you push it below the level of memory, and it becomes repressed. You don’t remember it consciously, you don’t think about it consciously, but somehow it’s down there in your “id” (as Freud liked to call it) and it’s messing up your whole life, even though you don’t consciously remember it. And if you are going to get on with life, it has to be regurgitated and you have to deal with it and so forth. And of course this is a wonderful ploy for people who don’t want any responsibility for being the way they are.

I remember flying on an airplane, and a stewardess sitting next to me “deadheading” somewhere, and she saw me reading the Bible, she said, “Are you a pastor?” And I said, “Yes.” She said, “Do you counsel?” And I said, “Sometimes.” She said, “I am in counseling now (she was not a Christian).” She said, “I just got the best news.” I said, “What?” She said, “I just found out my father molested me and abused me.” I said, “That’s good news?” She said, “Yes, because now I know why I am the way I am.”

If you want to dispossess yourself of any responsibility for being the way you are, which of course, is contrary to Biblical truth, then you can find somebody in your past that you can blame for the things that are in your life that you don’t like. And so this is a convenient kind of thing. Well, anyway, the girl went in and she got the counseling and within six months she brought this entire barrage of accusations involving Satan worship, cannibalism, molestation, pregnancy, just a horrendous list, and I haven’t even given you all of the list.

How did this happen? It turned out in court to be absolutely unsubstantiated and not true. But where did it come from? That was the curiosity. Well, they started in the investigation, went back and looked at the records of this particular counselor and found that this was the pattern in the majority of all the people he counseled, that they had Satanic involvement, occult involvement, molestation, and these kinds of things. In other words, if you go to that counselor, he’s going to find that in your background. Eventually the clinic became embarrassed by this and he was terminated. They went back further into his record with the Texas State Health Commission (he worked for the Mental Health Department of Texas), they found the very same pattern in the people he counseled there. And what you saw in this situation was a man creating false memories. And this is what is happening. You get vulnerable people, and I don’t say this in any way to slight women, but I have never heard of a man having this situation happen. It is vulnerable women, Paul even says, “In the latter times there will be women with weak will who will be led astray,” and one of the characteristics of last time days is going to be the loss of normal family love, and so we kind of expect to see this.

But anyway, they take this kind of a person, who is susceptible to suggestion from an authority figure and they begin, through a process, to create memories which displace responsibility for iniquity and sin and struggles in life, put it off on somebody else, [which] develops a hate pattern for other people, and alienates, and destroys, and devastates, and wipes out whole families. It’s a frightening, frightening thing. Absolutely frightening, and it is at an epidemic level today. It’s a frightening thing because of the power of suggestion.

“D Magazine” went a little further in the investigation and they decided to find out whether it is true that people can repress that kind of trauma. And so they contacted people with the psychological tests, those who can assess what people remember and what they don’t. And all the statistics they got indicated that every one of those kinds of experiences is precisely the kind of experience you could never forget no matter how you tried. You couldn’t repress it. You could never repress those things. If your father molested you and if incest went on from the age of ten to twenty one–you’re telling me you could forget that and think you were happy? And if you were involved in cannibalism with your own child–you could forget that?

Listen, you and I well know that we have all kinds of things in our minds that we would give anything if we could forget, but we can’t! And God has given us a memory for the purpose of reminding us how painful that was so we don’t do it anymore. What kind of restraint would we have if we could only remember good things? So it doesn’t even flesh out in terms of psychological testing. This is a very, very, serious matter.

I saw a book in the Christian bookstore, where I was recently, that said, “How to Heal Yourself From Your Birthmarks,” your psychological birthmarks. You’re born into the world and you’re all warped and wiped out because of what happened to you in your birth, and in your early childhood, and in your family, and this tears families to shreds. It is a frightening, frightening thing. It is not Biblical but it is rampant, absolutely rampant in Christian counseling today. What grieves me about this is the fact that I keep running into this all the time–all the time. I was asked that question this week in Denver, “Don’t you think that psychology is important in going back and digging up the past and getting those things healed, those hidden hurts and traumas, so that somebody can move on to be sanctified?” I said, “Are you saying basically that the Holy Spirit can sanctify you if you can find a good psychologist to get you ‘Jump Started’? Are you saying that somehow the Holy Spirit can’t deal with the present and the future until somebody else deals with the past?”

This is foreign to Scripture. It is destructive, because the only way you’ll ever be honestly dealing with your own sin is not to go in the past and have somebody create false memories, not to go into the past and find somebody to blame for your problem, but take responsibility for where you are and begin to act on the principles of what this text [Romans 13:11-14] says. It’s amazing how we can create memories. In that kind of a situation with people reinforcing, you can literally create something into a reality that isn’t real at all. This is devastating, because it doesn’t deal with a person’s life where they are, and it tears up families. It’s another false path to sanctification that ends up in pain and confusion and hurt, and accomplishes absolutely nothing.

If you want to get your Christian life together, don’t go back, leave that alone. You can’t fix it. Right? And don’t let somebody create phony memories of what you can’t remember. You start where you are.

Once there was a little old man. His eyes blinked and his hands trembled; when he ate he clattered the silverware distressingly, missed his mouth with the spoon as often as not, and dribbled a bit of his food on the tablecloth. Now he lived with his married son, having nowhere else to live, and his son's wife didn't like the arrangement.

"I can't have this," she said. "It interferes with my right to happiness." So she and her husband took the old man gently but firmly by the arm and led him to the corner of the kitchen. There they set him on a stool and gave him his food in an earthenware bowl. From then on he always ate in the corner, blinking at the table with wistful eyes.

One day his hands trembled rather more than usual, and the earthenware bowl fell and broke.

"If you are a pig," said the daughter-in-law, "you must eat out of a trough." So they made him a little wooden trough, and he got his meals in that.

These people had a four-year-old son of whom they were very fond. One evening the young man noticed his boy playing intently with some bits of wood and asked what he was doing.

"I'm making a trough," he said, smiling up for approval, "to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big."

The man and his wife looked at each other for a while and didn't say anything. Then they cried a little. Then they went to the corner and took the old man by the arm and led him back to the table. They sat him in a comfortable chair and gave him his food on a plate, and from then on nobody ever scolded when he clattered or spilled or broke things.

One of Grimm's fairy tales, this anecdote has the crudity of the old, simple days. But perhaps crudity is what we need to illustrate the naked and crude point of the fifth commandment: honor your parents, lest your children dishonor you. Or, in other words, a society that destroys the family destroys itself.

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Illustrations For Preaching & Teaching

Editor Craig Brian Larson, Baker Books, pp. 170-171.

#1873

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Family violence: how should churches be responding?

Family violence in Christian families is defined as a real and constantly occurring problem in "Comfort My People: The Church Responding to Family Violence," by John Sisson of the Missouri Baptist Convention missions education and ministry team.

Sisson asked: "So where is the church amidst the turmoil and pain of family violence?" The historical church, he noted, may have made more of a contribution to the victimization of women and children in the family than to their relief.

"For centuries the church was an integral part of a society which held that women and children were little more than property," Sisson said. "The church at first legitimized spouse battering as a means of correction. Later the practice was outlawed, but it remained largely ignored because it was seen as a personal family matter." Church history related to the abuse of children is equally grim, he stated, and the church has been far too silent about such practices.

The modern church, Sisson wrote, has responded to family violence with mixed reactions, including total naivete, denial, disbelief, indifference, failed logic, faulty theology and support. He classifies churches in three categories: the 'ostrich' church, the 'stumbling block' church and the 'lighthouse' church.

The ostrich is best known for sticking its head into the sand. It remains blissfully unaware of any potential danger, but it is in no position either to run or to sound danger to others. "Ostrich" churches remain silent about family violence, either because they are naive or they deny the problem exists.

Testimonies are plentiful from victims of family violence about churches that met their cries for assistance with total disbelief, Sisson noted. "This seems to be particularly true when the accused is a leader in either the church or community. Thus, the 'ostrich' church needs awakening. ... For those who suffer from family violence, the silence of our pulpits and the inactivity of our ministries is quite deafening, for there are many who long for a fresh word of hope from the church, for words of either condemnation or of counsel, for ministries which might offer help and relief."

"Stumbling block" is an analogy the church uses to refer to anything or anyone that might serve as a barrier to keep someone away from the hope, love and salvation of Jesus Christ. Sisson said while few would admit it, the modern church has kept people away from the hope, love and salvation of Jesus Christ in relation to family violence.

The error of the "stumbling block" church is that of indifference, failed logic or faulty theology. This church offers little constructive assistance to the cries for help, sometimes even turning the victims back to their homes with instructions to "suffer quietly for the sake of righteousness" or "be more submissive."

"The 'stumbling block' church is awake, but perhaps needs to walk more carefully," Sisson said. "The 'stumbling block' church also must awaken to the fact many states now have laws in place, such that the minister may be held legally accountable if he knows of family violence but chooses not to report the case to an appropriate civil authority."

The lighthouse is a symbol of hope. Sisson pictures a lighthouse standing high above a rocky shoreline, serving as a beacon to those who are lost on stormy seas, steering ships away from that which might otherwise shatter and destroy them. The "lighthouse" church, then, stands as a beacon of hope, extending Christ's love to families who are adrift amidst their own violent storms.

Sisson believes the church is capable of helping in all aspects of the process of healing. In his paper, he offers lesson plan adaptations to train leadership in dealing with family violence. The lesson plans are designed for programming; to prepare the church to be an advocate for abused children that come into the church; and as an outreach tool for community ministry.

[Copies of his paper, "Comfort My People" are available by request. For more information, contact Sisson at (314) 635-7931, ext. 442.]

Paul Turner, design editor for the youth section of discipleship and family development at the Baptist Sunday School Board, said the agency is aware of the need for resources addressing family violence.

"There has been a stigma among churches to deal with this issue," Turner said. "The perception is that violence is a real problem, but churches don't know how to deal with it because it can be a messy issue when you start reaching out.

"It would be good if churches could start doing some preventive issues rather than having to pick up the pieces. Some churches are criticized for doing this ministry, but I applaud them because there is a need they are meeting."

Turner listed among BSSB resources, "Violence: A Desensitized Generation," designed for youth leadership, and a study "No Place Like Home," which includes a parent-focus section.

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Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press

Scott Rogers says that as he was driving down a Georgia back road in March 1994, he tuned to a Christian radio station and heard a representative of the Minirth-Meier/New Life Clinics (MMNLC), America's largest Christian psychiatric company, discussing child abuse and inviting listeners to call the company's toll-free phone number if they needed help.

The program, Rogers says, had a deep impact on him. "They were talking about my unresolved issues, and I impulsively pulled over and called," says the 27- year-old, citing his physical abuse as a child.

But instead of receiving comfort and encouragement, Rogers alleges he was pressured to seek costly inpatient treatment and then drawn into "62 days of hell" at the hands of social-service agencies investigating a report that he had confessed to abusing his own children. Although Rogers was eventually cleared of abuse charges, he has filed a malpractice suit against MMNLC.

The Rogers case is becoming a potent symbol within the Christian counseling field because of how it highlights one of the industry's most sensitive challenges: the balancing act between ministering to the needy and making a profit. It has taken on a larger life because two religious gadflies have made Rogers into a poster boy of sorts in their campaign against Christian psychiatry and counseling.

Milwaukee-based Christian radio show host Vic Eliason and Dallas-based chaplain Ray Hoekstra of International Prison Ministry have waged a long- running crusade against the growing Christian mental-health industry, especially against MMNLC, whose prestige and size-more than 600 employees in 25 inpatient units and 55 outpatient units-make it a sizable target.

"This whole industry is a multimillion-dollar racket," says Hoekstra, who has pressured broadcasters to drop the MMNLC program. Broadcaster Eliason, who had a 1993 run-in with MMNLC over his alleged unauthorized sale of MMNLC radio program tapes, declined an interview with Christianity Today, but is not new to controversy, having launched critical campaigns against other Christian leaders (ct, May 16, 1994, p. 38).

MMNLC President Stephen Arterburn inherited the Rogers conflict when his eight-year-old New Life clinic bought Minirth-Meier in 1994. But he defends the way the firm reacted to the Rogers case in that counselors are legally required to notify state officials in instances of suspected child abuse.

"We handled this matter in a textbook fashion," he says. "Our company isn't perfect," says Arterburn. "I was prepared for us to say we had made a mistake in this situation and make amends, but we did nothing wrong."

The case likely will go to trial next year. Arterburn says there was no profit motivation to have Rogers seek counseling, because its Atlanta facility, unlike other MMNLC clinics, is not-for-profit.

Arterburn says Rogers's pain actually has been prolonged by Eliason's crusade. He says, "This family is merely an instrument with someone who has an agenda and is not really concerned about their welfare or their recovery."

IMAGE OF GREED?

Industrywide, MMNLC is not the lone focus of criticism. Others have raised questions about the marketing methods of Christian mental health professionals.

"Our field is in a period of crisis," says Gary Collins, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC). "Some of the inpatient programs give an image of greed and make people feel that companies get people in a hospital and keep them there until their insurance runs out, and then they let them go."

There are other difficulties as well. The revolution in managed health care is having a profound effect on the ways counselors do business, forcing many to find quick-fix solutions to complicated psychological problems. Industry statistics show that the average length of stay for inpatients dipped to eight days in 1996, down from 30 days in 1990.

In addition, a few Christian psychiatrists and counselors open themselves for added criticism because of their involvement in the controversial areas of repressed memory treatment, healing touch, and hypnosis therapy for ritualistic abuse and multiple-personality disorders.

Yet, in spite of criticism and controversy, the Christian counseling business has experienced explosive growth. Arterburn reports that June 1996 has been the firm's biggest month ever, including 500 inpatient admissions, 7,600 outpatient clinic visits, and 8,200 conference attendees.

Ten-year-old Rapha, another major player in Christian mental health with 63 programs nationally, has doubled in size in the last 18 months. "While much of the Christian mental-health care has declined and been embroiled in controversy, Rapha has stuck to its basic message and seen tremendous growth," says Timothy Gilmour, Rapha spokesperson.

AACC's Collins says, "There's no more exciting time to be in this field." His organization's membership has swelled to 17,500, although not all are licensed counselors.

The rapid growth and the volatile mix of money and ministry, however, have caused disagreement in some quarters over goals. In January, Frank Minirth reached a separation agreement with MMNLC cofounder Paul Meier and Arterburn to leave the company and become sole proprietor of the Minirth Clinic, an outpatient clinic based in the same Richardson, Texas, building where Minirth and Meier opened their first clinic in 1976.

For now, the three men will continue to collaborate on writing and speaking projects. Minirth's departure has altered the company's radio programs. Minirth now hosts his own program on Dallas station KCBI, while Meier and Arterburn have added doctors Henry Cloud and John Townsend to their national program.

In announcing the separation, Minirth said, "Our focus will be on Jesus Christ. Our emphasis will also be on ministry. The ministry should always take priority over business."

THEOLOGY AND THERAPY

As the American appetite for self-improvement, self-esteem, and family values has grown, Christian counselors have been more than willing to serve up an enticing array of religiously themed books, music, seminars, and other products for a Christian audience.

Popularizers such as authors James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, and Larry Crabb convinced a whole generation of evangelicals that God cared about their psyches as well as their souls, opening the door for a marriage between theology and therapeutic thought. Today, Christian counseling is an expanding segment of America's $200 billion mental-health industry. It has provided urgently needed help to many believers for whom the traditions, rituals, and comforts of the church have been found inadequate in counteracting the stresses, anxieties, and isolation of modern life.

Christian therapists and counselors, in spite of their following among rank and file believers, have been subject to stern disapproval from some leading biblical scholars, church pastors, and theologians.

These analysts allege that Christian therapists are unbiblical in their counseling methods, that they undermine the local pastor's authority, and that they have unwittingly altered the Christian message away from confession of sin and the need for salvation toward the pursuit of self-actualization.

AACC President Collins sees three categories of those who disapprove:

CONCERNED. Reasoned critiques have come from evangelical thinkers such as Os Guinness and Paul C. Vitz, who acknowledge that Christian psychotherapy does some good but argue that it encourages idolatry and narcissism while shifting the emphasis from God's sovereignty to our own personal comfort and self-esteem.

"An ego-centered, 'let-me-feel-good' self-esteem can ignore our failures and need for God," writes Vitz, New York University psychology professor and author of Psychology as Religion (Eerdmans, 1994). "At its best, psychology is a stepping stone-we should use it to move on."

Collins says that while much of secular psychology rejects the Christian faith as meaningless or potentially harmful, Christian counselors show a respect for the reality of God's work in the lives of people.

CRITICS. John MacArthur, Jr.'s Our Sufficiency in Christ (Word, 1991) and Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon's The Seduction of Christianity (Harvest House, 1985) charged that much of Christian psychology was really a false and heretical faith that runs counter to essential Christian beliefs. Likewise, Martin and Deidre Bobgan, the self- published authors of Prophets of Psychoheresy, a critique of James Dobson, and Twelve Steps to Destruction, say Christian counselors present a "man-centered gospel rather than a Christ-centered gospel."

Collins counters that therapy is a neutral technique that can be based either on Christian beliefs or on anti-Christian principles. Collins says biblically based counseling is an extension of traditional pastoral ministries of healing, sustaining, reconciling, and guiding.

CRUSADERS. MMNLC critics Eliason and Hoekstra focus generally on two areas, arguing that Christian counseling is opportunistic and motivated by money. Second, they allege that psychology and psychiatry are inherently unchristian in origin and intent. Collins says that Christian counseling professionals generally practice high standards and are meeting an important need for believers. He says most Christian mental-health professionals believe the practice of psychology or psychiatry can be firmly rooted in biblical truth.

Yet Collins admits the field has long-standing problems, many of them resulting from poor training. "There are a number of people who have graduate school training in psychology, but Sunday-school training in theology," he says. Training and continuing education are a primary focus of AACC efforts to improve the quality and professionalism of its members.

Another perennial criticism has revolved around Christians' efforts to integrate biblical principles with mainstream psychology's often antagonistic stance toward religious belief and practice. Critics complain that pragmatic approaches toward integration resemble a haphazard "take the best but leave the rest" approach that results in an odd patchwork of therapies and methods.

Recently, mainstream social observers have joined the chorus of critics. William J. Doherty's Soul Searching: Why Psychotherapy Must Promote Moral Responsibility (Basic Books, 1995) has hit a hot button with a nation of people tired of psychotherapy's perceived role in creating a subculture of victimology. "The crisis is over psychotherapy's ability to speak to the profound social and moral problems of the day," writes Doherty. "Are therapists making these problems worse by justifying the contemporary flight from personal responsibility, moral accountability, and participatory community?"

MARKET CHANGES

In the past few years, some of the biggest challenges to face the Christian counseling industry have resulted from revolutionary developments in the health-care industry.

Health maintenance organizations (HMO), which serve as the go-between for increasing numbers of American workers and health-care providers, emphasize "managed care" to keep costs under control. HMOs then pressure mental-health practitioners to shorten treatment plans and to discount their rates.

Responding to this challenge, for example, Rapha has modified its program for inpatient care from complete recovery to "stabilization," followed by extensive outpatient services, some linked to church support groups. But not everyone is jumping on the managed-care bandwagon. One counseling practice that decided not to deal with health maintenance organizations was Associated Psychological Services of Pasadena, California. The business, founded in 1971 by Neil Clark Warren, grew to 15 partners and clinicians by the early 1990s. It ceased operations in 1995 rather than deal with the constraints and paperwork of the HMO system.

"For a variety of reasons, we decided we didn't want to work with HMOs," says Clifford Penner, who was a partner in the firm. "Some HMOs offered to pay only half of our traditional fees. Some limited patients to five or ten visits unless a patient was suicidal or psychotic. Others required one hour to process paperwork for every four to five visits."

HMOs do not take into account the needs of the patients, according to Penner. "Problem-centered psychotherapy attacks specific problems like anorexia, drinking problems, or marriage problems, but it doesn't help people get to know themselves better or get in touch with their feelings like a more insight-centered therapy would," he says. "This problem-centered therapy parallels what's happening in a lot of the giant churches, where a need- oriented approach is about people wanting to get through the next week, not about looking at the deeper issues."

MMNLC's Arterburn says managed care is not the beginning of the end for Christian counseling. In fact, Arterburn says a growing number of companies, including the giant U.S. Behavioral Health Care, are allowing their Christian policy holders to get Christian psychotherapeutic care.

There is a growing awareness of the validity of what we do," says Arterburn. "We're seeing more and more managed care companies agree that Christians are entitled to Christian counseling."

But Christian counselors need not get on the managed-care bandwagon to stay in business. "Some of the more successful outpatient clinics we're affiliated with are being barraged by managed-care offers," he says. "But rather than signing up for managed care, they're focusing on increasing the hours their clinics are open, making their services more accessible, increasing their marketing, and adding specialty counselors."

WORKING WITHIN THE CHURCH

The AACC's Collins is enthusiastic about the increasing partnership between counselors and the church. "Counselors are working in congregations, where they're not only performing counseling but also training lay counselors and people helpers to be better able to bear one another's burdens," Collins says.

Rapha has a network of 3,500 churches in its RaphaCare program, which offers reduced fees to qualified church members. Also, Rapha's MinsterCare, a two- week residential program, helps pastors cope with stress and burnout.

One of the shining examples of these partnerships is the Midwest Christian Counseling Center in Kansas City, Missouri, which was founded in 1957 by Southern Baptist pastor Jay Lofton Hudson. Today, clinical director John Larson says the center maintains close ties with pastors and churches in the region.

One way the center's ten licensed psychologists help others is by donating counseling to people who need it but cannot afford it. Larson says the counselors donated 4,765 sessions in 1995, equaling $336,000 worth of billable hours or around 34 percent of their total counseling load.

But it does not stop there. The center also offers support groups and training for pastors, seminars on clergy sexual misconduct for church and ministry officials, seminars focusing on family and marital health, and counseling to the elderly and victims of sexual and physical abuse. It also runs a program, Street Psych, which trains urban pastors to identify and intervene in situations where there may be substance abuse, crime, violence, and family dysfunction.

Larson says counselors who can demonstrate a long-term commitment to serving their communities are in an excellent place to respond to society's growing hunger for psychotherapy with a spiritual dimension.

"There's a growing interest in spirituality, not necessarily Christian spirituality, but it is a more open approach and shows more respect for the particular faith perspectives people have." Larson says. "The profession is finally waking up to what some of us have seen for years and years. Ours is a distinctive specialty, and one that really speaks to a need that many people have."

_____________

COPYRIGHT 1996, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, INC./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine Vol. 40, No. 10, Page 76

ctsep96sc6TA76695j

#4173

*

KEANSBURG - They came looking for him at McDonald's, just before he was to get off work. They invited him to come to a party, where he could meet a pretty girl.

Clutching the stuffed whale he carried with him everywhere, the 23-year-old retarded man eagerly followed, happy to be included in a circle of people he wanted to call his friends.

It was all a cruel trick, authorities say. At least 14 people were waiting for him. As he walked in the door, they grabbed him in a choke hold, cut off his McDonald's tie and tore his stuffed toy to shreds. They taped him to a lawn chair and tossed lit cigarettes into his mouth. They beat him with a plastic necklace and dressed him in women's clothing. They shaved his head and eyebrows and used hair spray to light a fire on his head.

A week after police charged nine men and women in the three-hour torture of Eric Krochmaluk, people in this blue-collar Jersey Shore town speak of the aimlessness of its young people, the underage drinkers who raise havoc in a wooded area called "The Pit," the lack of recreational opportunities for young adults.

But no one can quite fathom the rage and cruelty that led to this.

"I just don't think that they know what to do with themselves, and they don't care what they do," said Ellen Park, 69, buying lottery tickets at a nearby convenience store. "I'm sure you can find better things to do than go around torturing people."

RETARDED MAN SUES OVER ATTACK [related article on page A6]

-----------------------------

FREEHOLD (AP) - A retarded man who endured three hours of beatings and torture has sued the nine suspects accused of attacking him and up to 10 unidentified witnesses he said stood by and did nothing to help.

Eric Krochmaluk, 23, of Middletown, also sued the owner of the Keansburg apartment complex where he was attacked for negligence.

A group of friends lured Krochmaluk to a party on Jan. 30, then tied him to a chair and beat him with plastic beads, dressed up in women's clothing, shaved his head and eyebrows and set his head on fire, Monmouth County prosecutors say. The group then took him to a wooded area and kicked and beat him for another hour before leaving him there, prosecutors say.

Nine people have been charged with offenses ranging from theft to kidnapping and aggravated assault.

The suspects' "savage, ruthless and hostile behavior affected the life, safety, health and well being of the plaintiff herein and permanently damaged him," according to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Monmouth County Superior Court.

Prosecutors have interviewed at least five others who they say either participated in the attack or watched and did nothing. They have not yet been charged, and New Jersey has no "Good Samaritan" law to punish people who don't report crimes to authorities.

Krochmaluk's lawyer, Charles Adubato, said courts should rule that witnesses have a moral duty to report a crime or try to help.

"I'm not looking for people to become heroes or put themselves in harm's way," Adubato said yesterday. "All you need to do is pick up the phone and call 911."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

*

John Wesley one day remarked to Dr. Adam Clarke: "As I was

walking through St. Paul's Churchyard, I observed two women

standing opposite to one another. One was speaking and

gesticulating violently, while the other stood perfectly still

and in silence. Just as I came up and was about to pass them,

the virago, clenching her fist and stamping her foot at her

imperturbable neighbor, exclaimed, "Speak, wretch, that I may

have something to say." "Adam," said Wesley, "that was a lesson

to me."

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

Compassion towards those suffering from AIDS has served the homosexualist lobby well. Even those most committed to Scripture's teaching concerning sodomy cringe at the suggestion that AIDS is God's judgement against our culture's sexual immorality--why kick a man when he's down? Sensing the political advantage possessed by victims in our feminized culture, the sodomy lobby's rhetoric has taken America. Christians, desiring to be seen as compassionate, are silent and the battle against sodomy is largely over.

Similarly, the compassion felt towards victims of abuse has been a potent weapon in the hands of those who oppose God's universal law of patriarchy. Having been taught the lie that only men abuse, and that it is patriarchy which causes that abuse, Christians, desiring to be seen as compassionate, are silent and the battle against egalitarian utopianism is largely over.

Now of course, this is not to speak against compassion; rather it is to speak against misguided compassion built upon hidden and false assumptions. Mr. Mouser is absolutely correct, then, when he writes that the accusation that patriarchy is positively linked to abuse is an egalitarian "slander." Yet the slander is not against man, but God, because it is God Who decreed patriarchy.

Emerson said, "The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." Today it might be, "The louder he talked of compassion..."

So what are the facts concerning abuse?

Abuse is wickedness and the church's leaders must discipline it vigorously because God's reputation is at stake in the marriage relationships of those who claim the name of Christ. To that end many of Prudi's comments are welcome. Still, implicit in some of what Prudi wrote is that abuse is male and this is not true.

Some husbands abuse their wives; some wives abuse their husbands. Some fathers abuse their children; some mothers abuse their children. In fact, a child is most likely to suffer physical abuse first in his life, and to be killed, by a woman. Further, the relationships which have the highest rate of serious physical abuse are those of lesbians.

Here are some of the more interesting conclusions of studies published in scholarly journals on this matter of male/female abuse:

1.Women are three times more likely than men to use weapons in spousal violence. 2.Women initiate most incidents of spousal violence. 3.Women commit most child abuse and most elder abuse. 4.Women hit their male children more frequently and more severely than they hit their female children. 5.Women commit most child murders and 64% of their victims are male children. 6.When women murder adults the majority of their victims are men. 7.Women commit 52% of spousal killings and are convicted of 41% of spousal murders. 8.Eighty two percent of the general population had their first experience of violence at the hands of women.

Then consider this:

Recent Trends in Spousal Violence - Dept of Justice The U.S. Department of Justice released a study on domestic violence and spousal homicides on July 11, 1994. In this study it is reported that women kill men at approximately the same rate as men kill women in "spousal" homicides. (A "spousal" homicide is a husband or wife killing the other or a homicide perpetrated by a common-law marriage partner on the other partner.) In addition this study also reported that children were killed by mothers in 55% of all parental homicides. The 13th World Congress of Sociology, on July 19, 1994 revealed the average of spousal violence reports by males and females: Husband on wife severe assault occurred at a rate of 2.0%, whereas wife on husband severe assault occurred at a rate of 4.6%, and Husband on wife minor assault occurred at a rate of 9.9%, whereas wife on husband assault occurred at a rate of 9.5%. A rate of 2.0% means that during 1992 there were 20 instances of severe husband on wife assault for every 1000 couples.

Also reported at the conference was the fact that although male on female violence has been slowly decreasing over the last decade, female on male violence is now increasing sharply.

Various Spousal Violence Stats In 1975 and again in 1985, Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles and others conducted one of the largest and most respected studies in family violence ever done. What they found confounded conventional wisdom on the subject: Not only are men just as likely to be the victims of domestic violence as women, the study showed that between 1975 and 1985, the overall rate of domestic violence by men against women decreased, while women's violence against men increased. Responding to accusations of gender bias, Straus re-computed the assault rates based solely on the responses of the women in the 1985 study and confirmed that even according to women, men are the ones more likely to be assaulted by their partner. There is no question that while men on average are bigger and stronger than women, they can do more damage in a fistfight. However according to Professors R.L. McNeely and Cormae Richey Mann, "the average man's size and strength are neutralized by guns and knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball bats."

A 1984 study of 6,200 cases found that 86% of female-on-male violence involved weapons, contrasted with 25% in cases of male-on-female violence. McLeod, Justice Quarterly (2) 1984 pp. 171-193. Of every 100 families, 3.8% experience severe husband-to-wife violence, but 4.5% experience severe wife-to-husband violence. (Straus,Gelles, Steinmetz , Behind Closed Doors: Violence in American Families (1980).

Also this:

1. Lesbian battering is more frequent than heterosexual battering. In a survey of 70 homosexual male and female college students, lesbian relationships were significantly more violent than gay relationships, 56% to 25%. In a study of 1099 lesbians, 52% report that they had been the victim of violence by their female partner, 52% said they had used violence against their female partner, and 30% said they had used violence against a nonviolent female partner. In a survey of 350 lesbians, the reported rates of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were all significantly higher in their prior lesbian relationships than in their prior heterosexual relationships

This is why I would caution Prudi against the assumption, implicit in her post, that domestic violence is male. If we are serious about addressing domestic violence, we must think first about how to teach mothers and wives that killing their children and husbands is no way to solve their emotional problems and that it dishonors God.

But to return to my original point, think about the implications of the above statement for this debate over patriarchy in which we are engaged. What would happen if every time the stalking horse of abuse were raised in this debate complementarians responded condemning it, but pointing out that mothers kill more children than fathers, that wives are as violent as husbands, that there is no causative link between patriarchy and abuse, and that while the abuse of husbands against their wives is decreasing in our culture, that of wives against their husbands is rapidly increasing.

(A second post will contain a few citations for those wanting to pursue this matter further. If you're interested in more information, please send me a private email.)

Having said this, though, let me also add that I hope the discussion concerning how to shepherd those suffering from, or committing, domestic violence will continue. The church needs it.

It is my own practice to handle abuse in the board of elders, and when it's physical abuse I believe that the elders ought to require the victim to file charges and have the civil authority act since God gave the king the sword precisely for this purpose. Where the abuse is emotional or psychological, deep involvement in the marriage and home on the part of pastors, elders, deacons, and older church women is necessary, but church discipline ought not to be overlooked if significant progress is not made.

Care needs to be taken not to look to the victim for permission to proceed with the discipline, whether it's ecclesiastical or judicial. This burden ought, I believe, to be carried by the elders.

For instance, in one case in which I was pastorally involved, the elders required the victim (a women in this particular case) to file charges against her husband. Then when the case went to court the elders and pastor stood there in court with the victim, demonstrating their support for both the woman, her husband, and their children. What a relief to all concerned this was, to see men standing with the wife against the husband, and asking the court to discipline the husband.

The entire court was shocked and, I might add, delighted. But more importantly, the husband was brought to repentance.

Faced with this monolithic and deeply compassionate authority opposing his wickedness, without mincing his words the husband confessed his sin to the judge. Further, standing there at the bench the husband acknowledged that he would submit to whatever sentence the judge gave, and that he deserved whatever sentence the judge chose.

It's worth adding that both the husband and wife were active in the church and they both are, I believe, disciples of Christ.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

| Tim Bayly

| Church of the Good Shepherd

| Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood

------------------------------------------------------------------------________________

Subject: [CCC-Forum] Domestic Violence--An "Egalitarian" Phenomenon

Dear List,

From another list where I lurk, I received the following, which I pass along to you. It's nasty stuff, though it does serve one purpose complementarians will welcome--it provides some documented evidence that domestic abuse is not the sole province of men (especially patriarchal men, as many feminists and egalitarians would claim). For those of you who need the data, here `tis:

***************

Domestic Abuse of men and children, the silent majority!

"Women must share responsibility for their behavior and contributions to domestic violence." - Judith Shervin (Psychologist)

Domestic violence and abuse are not committed only by men as is popularly believed. In fact, men and women abuse each other with almost equal frequency.[1] You've probably heard the statistic that claims a woman is abused by her spouse every 15 seconds. What you may not know is that the same study also found that a man is abused by his spouse every 14 seconds.[2]

Surprising Facts on Domestic Violence and Child Abuse

Until society recognizes and accepts the fact that women can and do commit domestic violence, the problem of domestic violence will never be addressed and a "solution" will never be found. Domestic violence is a societal phenomenon that is not gender-specific. To deny this fact is unrealistic, biased, and shortsighted.

Facts You Probably Haven't Heard:

More than half of all 'severe' domestic violence is committed by women against their husbands or boyfriends. [1]

Extrapolating from a 1985 survey of more than six thousand couples, the authors estimate that 1.8 million females are the victims of severe domestic violence each year (with injuries suffered by one in ten), but so were about 2.1 million men. [2]

A random survey of 2,143 American homes uncovered the fact that severe abuse was committed equally by men and women. [3]

One study of inner city child abuse found that 49% of all child abuse is committed by single parent mothers. [4]

Natural mothers are the perpetrators of:

* 93% of physical neglect of children * 86% of educational neglect * 78% of emotional neglect * 60% of physical abuse, and * 55% of emotional abuse [5]

A Bureau of Justice report found that Mothers (55%) are more likely than fathers (45%) to murder their children. [6]

According to the government's own figures, females kill 31 times as many children as natural fathers. [7]

Females comprise 78% of the perpetrators of fatal child abuse (child murder). [8]

As disturbing as these statistics are, even more disturbing is the fact that they are virtually unknown. Only recently has any attention at all been focused on the issue of female batterers.

As psychologist Judith Shervin writes, "Women must share responsibility for their behavior and contributions to domestic violence." These contributions are far bigger than feminists and the media are willing to admit.

Dr. Martin Fiebert, (1997) professor of Psychology at the California State University of Long Beach, listed 94 empirical studies that support the position that men and women are assaulting their intimate partners at nearly the same rate. When all the evidence is weighed, the only reasonable conclusion is that men and women commit spousal abuse against each other at nearly equal rates. [9]

REFERENCES

1. Research by M. Strauss & R. Gelles as reported in "Women Are Responsible Too", Judith Shervin, Ph.D. & Jim Sniechowski, Ph.D., LA Times. 6/21/94.

2. From the National Family Violence Survey (1975, 1985, 1992) developed by M. Strauss & R. Gelles, and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

3. 1980 study by Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne Steinmetz.

4. A study of child abuse in Lansing, Michigan. Joan Ditson and Sharon Shay in Child Abuse and Neglect, Volume 8. 1984.

5. Data from the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3) from DHHS, and also from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report entitled "Child Victimizers and Their Victims".

6. Bureau of Justice, "Murder in Families", NCJ-143498.

7. (From item 5, the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3)

8. Ibid.

9. Martin S. Fiebert, Cal State Univ., http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Copyright 2000 by FRTC, Inc. http://www.deltabravo.net/custody

According to the Census Bureau, the 1990s saw a marked increase in every kind of household, except one: the traditional two-parent family. Demographers tell us that we're in the midst of a redefinition of the American family. But what are the consequences of this "redefinition?"

The data from last year's census showed that married couples, with or without children, comprise a lower percentage of American households than ever before. In fact, people living alone outnumber traditional "married-with-children" families.

At the same time, the number of households with "unmarried partners" rose seventy-two percent. And, at least one-third of these have a minor child living in the home. There was also a rise in single-parent households.

Demographers cite several possible reasons for the changes. The first is divorce. Although the divorce rate has leveled off, it remains at historically high levels. People are also postponing and even foregoing marriage.

Whatever the reasons, as Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins puts it, "the central place of marriage in our family system is eroding." And that erosion has consequences that affect all of us -- especially our kids.

In her book, Love and Economics, Jennifer Roback Morse tells us there's an "impressive body of evidence" pointing to the difficulties faced by kids raised in single-parent homes and step-families. On average, they complete fewer years of schooling and are more likely to drop out of school; they're more likely to "commit delinquent acts" and abuse alcohol and drugs than kids growing up in intact families.

These are only a few of what researchers call "adverse outcomes" associated with the erosion of the two-parent family. You name the problem and chances are that it's more likely to occur in single-parent homes and step-families than in two-parent families.

By any measure, the rise in the number of children being raised in "unmarried partner" households is a disaster waiting to happen. For example: A cohabiting boyfriend is thirty times more likely to abuse a child than a father married to the child's mother.

But even when abuse isn't an issue, the uncommitted nature of such a relationship affects the child. Brown University's Frances Goldscheider, as reported recently in the Washington Post, says the higher rate of break-ups among unmarried couples "causes instability in children's lives." Obviously!

Which makes me ask: If these changes are so bad for our kids and our society, why are Americans embracing them? Because, in this culture, personal autonomy is considered life's greatest good. It's the one value that trumps everything else.

While we say we love our kids and want what's best for them, too many parents won't let that "love" get in the way of their personal lifestyle choices, or their self-gratification. We're expected to support everything from reformulated gas to tax cuts "for the good of the children." Yet, staying together for the sake of those same kids is, by today's standards, too much to ask.

Well, figures can lie, but they lie a lot less than we do. And these figures ought to tell us where our hearts really are. Which is why Christians need to help their neighbors understand what these numbers are saying about our choices -- and the consequences for those we love.

_____________________

For further reference:

Cohn, D'Vera. "Married-With-Children Still Fading: Census Finds Americans Living Alone in 25% of Households." Washington Post, 15 May 2001; p. A1.

Morse, Jennifer Roback. Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 2001.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Sermon on violence. James 4:1-3

THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

=====================

I. The Passion of the People.

A. Endless cycle of violence in Palestine. Cultures of revenge.

II. The roots of violence.

A. Genetic programming?

B. Spiritual deficit. Genesis 4:6-10

C. It doesn't have to reach murder.

D. Violence starts within.

III. Breaking the cycle of violence.

A. Experience inner peace.

B. Learn to live peaceably. Psalm 4:4

C. Make peace in your own relationships.

1) Listen, rather than attack, defend or escape. James 1:19-20

2) De-escalate anger. Proverbs 15:1, Proverbs 25:15

3) Seek creative outlets for aggression.

IV. God hates violence. Do you?

We first meet her in Genesis 16, she is an Egyptian servant in Abraham’s well-off world. We will see her used and abused by Sarai, her mistress. She will always end up either running away or being driven off into the wilderness. Her name is Hagar and she carries deep inside her heart a hunger we all secretly share.

When her baby, Ishmael, is finally known to be on the way, the reward for her submission to Sarai’s manipulative and faithless behavior is abuse (16:6b). And so Hagar does what we see her constantly doing in Genesis, what you and I also constantly are doing, she runs away. She carries within her all that she really owns, her unborn baby, Ishmael. She wanders out into the desert on the road to Shur.

But she is not really alone, even as we can never really be. The angel of the Lord meets her near an as yet nameless spring and asks, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” It is a basic question we should still be constantly asking ourselves. She honestly opens her heart to the angel, “I’m running away.” she defiantly whispers through her tears.

The angel tells the frightened girl to do the last thing in the world she wants to do, return to the abuse from which she has fled. In the language of poetry, he promises her that there is more going on than she can see, more than she can possibly know. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful picture, the angel singing a song of hope in the desert to a hopeless pregnant girl.

As the angel finishes his song (vvs. 11-12), Hagar abruptly responds to the angel who knew her name. She speaks to God a new name, “Lahai Roi,” “The One who sees me.” In her fear, hopelessness and despair, God met her in the wilderness with His perfect provision. It was all she really needed or wanted. She wanted simply to be seen, and the God who sees, saw her and sang to her a song of hope.

After a six-year pursuit, my wife Susan finally responded to my courtship by telling me that she felt I was the first person to really see her. It was only then that I realized inside myself how much I needed her to really see me too. Twice, the gospels tell us, Peter is “intensely gazed at” by Jesus. (John 1:42, Luke 22:61) That is, Simon Peter becomes aware that Jesus can see to the heart of who he really is, a man so fatally flawed, and yet still love and even die for him. It must have been the first time for Simon to sense that he was so completely known. Later in Acts, Peter really sees the need of a crippled beggar. It is not healing he needs so much as Jesus. And so the “seen” disciple, who has learned to really see the heart, gives to the beggar both healing and Jesus.

“Where have you come from and where are you going?” the angel asks us all. Have you come from a world that has shown you only abuse and blindness to who you are? And are you now in headlong flight from intimacy and genuine relationship, having tried to give up on the hope of ever being truly known? Then what hope could you possibly have had? And where are you going? Back into that same sightless, heartless world? What hope could you possibly look forward to in such a world? We constantly ask for provision when what we need is the clear-sighted Presence of Jesus. We sense His gaze on our lives, and we reflexively turn away from being so lovingly seen, our souls so leprous and untouchable. But His gaze is relentless.

The things we ask for in prayer are almost certainly not what we really need. We need most to be seen, to be understood for better or for worse for who we are. This deep desire is one of the evidences for our being created for relationship with God. Would He give us this profound longing and not perfectly fulfill it by loving us so unconditionally in Christ?

Ask for the grace to look into your deepest longing. You may be in the desert. You may have given up on ever being seen at all. But let me tell you, as one who has been found again and again in the wilderness, there is an Angel of the Lord who is prepared to sing you a song. He asks where you have been and where you are going, already knowing the answers to both questions. It is almost as if He wants to give you the sacred space to respond to the question He already knows. It is as if you need to hear yourself say how bad it was where you’ve been and how hopeless it is where you are going. Only then will you be ready to hear His song of hope sung to you. Only then will you be ready to drink from the Living Spring of the One who sees you. For, after all, there is a Savior who sees all that is unlovable and yet still loves perfectly, completely, sacrificially. And there is a God who knows you and me more than we know ourselves.

As volunteers in the local Young Life club, Mike and Karla Yaconelli befriended a student whose father, an alcoholic, had emotionally and physically abused his entire family. They worked with the young man for six months.

The Yaconellis were remodeling their house and needed new kitchen tile laid. The only professional available was the young man’s father. Reluctantly Mike agreed to employ him -- but only after obtaining a legal bid.

The boy’s father performed the work. On his last day, Mike asked him to drop by his office later for his check. He replied that he would because he needed to talk to Mike about the money. “I knew he’d try to cheat us,” Mike muttered to Karla. He braced himself for a confrontation.

At the end of the day, the boy’s father entered Mike’s office and began to talk as he wrote out his bill. He acknowledged that he’d abused his family. He told how he’d observed Mike’s involvement with his son change the boy’s life. After seeing his son’s change, he said, he’d gone to AA and remained sober ever since. He handed Mike the bill, saying, “I’ve never been able to thank you, but I’m thanking you now.” It showed the agreed-upon bid price, and was marked “paid in full.”

My Response: Given the same situation, would I even have hired the father?

________

Adapted from WHO CAN YOU TRUST?, by Howard Butt Jr., copyright 2004.

Sermon in Book of James series, #11. James 4:1-4

WHAT RAGES WITHIN?

==================

I. The problem that hasn't been solved.

A. Is anyone immune to it?

B. Violence is an issue around the world.

II. Violence among *us*?

A. James is talking to Christians.

B. Probably exaggeration for effect.

III. Where does violence come from?

A. An inside problem.

B. Self-seeking pleasure and lust.

IV. A self-seeking attitude will warp your spirituality.

A. People stop praying. 4:2

B. People pray wrong.

C. James calls it "spiritual adultery." 4:4

V. God loves you and can heal your rage.

A. Three basic truths in this passage.

B. Our church should be a reconciling family.

C. God understands, because Jesus was beaten and abused.

Sermon in Family Concerns series, #9. Hosea 2:2-7,13-20

WHEN THE BOTTOM DROPS OUT

=========================

I. Not every family is blissful and blessed.

A. Many are torn by disasters.

B. Disasters can change us.

II. Human hearts can be hard.

A. Jesus had a fairly low view of human nature.

B. Jesus and the hardness of the human heart.

III. Things that always harden your heart.

A. Addictions.

B. Abuse.

C. Unfaithfulness.

D. Divorce.

IV. Jesus makes it worse.

A. Christians feel especially guilty about personal failure.

B. The Bible sets a high standard.

V. No one is perfect.

A. We often say this nonchalantly.

B. The harsh reality of our imperfection can sharpen our faith.

VI. Jesus can heal.

A. No family is so broken it cannot be healed.

B. If your family can't be put back together, God can heal you.

Lindy West is a writer who says that she is trolled constantly. “Trolling” is the practice of posting online in a deliberately offensive or provocative way to elicit an angry response. For West, nasty tweets and emails are a daily part of her job, with comments ranging from making fun of her for her weight to wishing for her death.

Her worst trolling experience was so bad that the story ended up making news. In 2013, one-and-a-half years after her dad had passed away, West got a message on Twitter from someone who had created a fake account with her deceased father’s name and picture, purely to be as mean as possible. He was using the account to post derogatory things about West. The account’s bio read, “Embarrassed father of an idiot.”

West made a risky move: she reached out to the troll who did this. The radio show “This American Life” told their story and played a recording of their conversation [1]. West attempted to understand this person who did this horrible thing. Because she extended grace and forgiveness, they connected with each other. West learned more about how easily our internal insecurities can cause us to do harm, and the unnamed man who trolled her was able to repent, and committed to “go and sin no more” — at least with respect to trolling.

In one sense, West’s story is a special case. She was the victim of psychological abuse, and most such victims are not in a position to try to connect with their offender, nor should they be expected to. To be clear, when abuse is taking place, victim protection comes first. But still, her story is one of the more powerful examples of how things can work differently. Our culture is very focused on punitive approaches to wrongdoing, but there is a different path that, when it’s possible, is much more transformative.

People can do horrible things. News outlets like to highlight them. More often than not, there’s a story from somewhere about this person who got caught lying or that person who got caught cheating. Every time stories like this hit the news, though, it’s not just shock and sadness that we feel. If it were, we wouldn’t be able to tolerate its permeation in the airwaves. But we can, because with each affair or corruption scandal we also usually leave with a subconscious satisfaction that it’s not us. We get a low but consistent dose of vindication mixed with schadenfreude [pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. This word is taken from German and literally means "harm-joy"].

Then, all of a sudden, sin hits close to home, and we are thrown for a loop. Someone we know or love does something wrong, and we’re left confused, perhaps devastated. As a Jason Walker song says, “It’s easy to deceive, but it’s hard when the trust that’s broken is mine.”

“There is no one righteous, not even one ... for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10, 23). Some of us know these verses from Romans quite well. We have recited them many times. No one is righteous. All sin. We know this. Why, then, are we always so shocked whenever it proves true for someone we know?

It happens a lot. People fail us and break our trust. People say, do, or post things in anger that we never thought they would. It can leave us jaded.

For ministers like me, this dynamic is further complicated in at least two ways. For one, we clergy feel especially high pressure to keep up appearances and live in fear of what will happen the next time it is discovered that we are human. Second, we are often the ones that “know too much” about people. We, too, struggle to come to terms with the Romans 3 reality, although perhaps in an amplified way, because, as one writer put it, “Pastors know things that are hard to know.”

Here’s what’s ironic: at any given time, I will have persons A, B and C all struggling with the same temptation or hardship, and if I were able to get them together to be open and vulnerable with each other, they would realize they’re not alone in their remorse or struggle and would be able to receive grace from each other. But all of them have sworn me to secrecy for fear of shame and retribution (or they don’t even know that I know). We all have secrets, and we guard them with fear and trembling, sometimes actually believing that the person next to us has none of their own.

What would it take for us to stop playing this game, understand that Romans 3 is real, and be able to face the worst in ourselves and in others?

We perpetuate this lie that there is such a thing as a clean life, a closet without skeletons. Because we do that, we continue to be shocked every time we find out otherwise. We live our days in the midst of this fake drama of being self-assured and put together, and start to believe it’s our true narrative. We live with lists of “unforgivable sins,” but it just so happens that none of our own sins are on the list. When someone else gets exposed, we retreat to our positions of judgment and superiority — not to punish them but to protect ourselves.

Church, instead of being a place of freedom from this game, is too often a place for upping the ante, a place for advanced-level players of this game. Church can end up being a place where we are expected to hide from our brokenness rather than admitting it, working through it, and receiving the grace of God. Somehow, the church must become the place of refuge for the repentant tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) rather than where the adulterous woman, covering her head, waits for the first stone (John 7:53 - 8:11).

Most harmful behavior boils down to a hidden fear or unmet need. We really never know how we would respond in certain situations. It’s the circumstances we rarely take the time to understand, but it’s the circumstances that are key.

When the Ashley Madison accounts were hacked and leaked online last year, people found names of friends, co-workers, spouses and pastors among those who had accounts on this website that touts the sinister purpose of facilitating extramarital affairs. Some (like me) didn’t even know that such a website existed, but regardless, many of us went no further than our knee-jerk shock and sadness.

Grace, and an attempt to understand, did not come from Christians but from technology geeks and independent journalists [2]. They were the ones to explain important details like the fact that Ashley Madison does not require email confirmation, and so anyone can be initially signed up by a third party without their knowledge. Even more poignantly, it was these fairly unknown writers to whom people went for repentance or to share their deeply personal stories. Sure, there are people on the website with the worst of intentions, but some were people who, in their younger years, acted in a brief, undiscerning moment of morbid curiosity and had long forgotten about it until they were publicly shamed and quickly lost their families, jobs or reputations, with some even committing suicide. I don’t know what to call it when one moment or one mistake ruins a life [3], but it’s not grace.

In today’s world, anyone with a smartphone can instantly share pictures or live video with the entire world. I sometimes wonder if we will be able to withstand this advance in technology if we don’t learn grace. I equally wonder how we will fare in this election cycle, especially with the increased levels of demagoguery we’re seeing.

Attempts to offer a reason or explanation for a certain behavior are seen as tantamount to an excusal of the behavior. But the reasons — the personal stories and pain that lie behind sinful behavior — are often precisely the key factor in our ability to extend grace and achieve reconciliation.

May we not so quickly condemn one another without an attempt to understand. May we think twice before gawking at another’s moral failure from the fragile safety of our imaginary high ground. After all, “no one is righteous.” Not one.

________

1. “545: If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS,” by Lindy West, 23 Jan 2015; .

2. “The Puritanical Glee Over the Ashley Madison Hack,” by Glenn Greenwald, 20 Aug 2015; .

3. “It will take years to count the true human cost of the Ashley Madison hack,” by Rob Price, 25 Aug 2015; .

Recent revelations about the abuse of disabled workers has me thinking: Do we fear God? I’ll explain.

Last May, an Iowa jury awarded $240 million — later reduced to $6 million — to 32 mentally-disabled men who, over the course of three decades, were systematically cheated, exploited and abused by their employer.

It’s a sad reminder of how vulnerable those with disabilities are and why any church worthy of the name should be at the forefront in protecting them.

The story is, as the New York Times put it, “Dickensian” in its details. Over three decades, hundreds of intellectually-disabled men were shipped from Texas to Atalissa, Iowa, to work for Henry’s Turkey Service, which then sold their labor to turkey processing plants.

The men “were housed in a 100-year-old Atalissa school building the company converted to a bunkhouse.” As the Times told readers, “their supervisors never received specialized training [in working with the intellectually-disabled]; never tapped into Iowa’s social service system; [and] never gave the men the choices in life granted by decades of advancement in disability civil rights.”

And that was before the issue of pay comes up.

Under federal law, these workers did not have to be paid the same as the non-disabled co-workers.

Instead, they were paid a percentage based on their productivity.

Even that reduced amount seldom reached their pockets. The company “deducted hundreds of dollars from the men’s earnings and Social Security benefits for room and board — and ‘in-kind’ services, like bowling, dining out and annual visits to an amusement park.”

No matter how many hours they worked, they never got more than $65 a month.

Then there was the physical abuse including handcuffing and being forced to walk in circles while carrying weights.

“Dickensian,” indeed. All that was missing was a foreman named Wackford Squeers.

This exploitation and abuse continued unimpeded for three decades until Henry’s Turkey Service and the processing plant decided that the men had slowed to the point where, even at $65 a month, it was no longer profitable to employ them.

After a social worker discovered and documented the abuses in 2009, a suit was filed against Henry’s Turkey Service by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which resulted in the record award I mentioned earlier. Nearly a year after the verdict, only about $30-to-40 thousand of the award has been collected.

The day my colleague, whose son is intellectually-disabled, read the Times article, the Old Testament reading was from Leviticus 19.

In it, God tells the people of Israel, “You shall not curse the deaf, or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the LORD.” Thus, how we treat the disabled is a measure of whether we fear God — the Hebrew word for fear meaning revere, honor, and stand in awe of.

Reading the piece brought to mind Christian alternatives like L’Arche where “people with and without disabilities share their lives in communities of faith and friendship.” As L’Arche’s founder, Jean Vanier, said “we are brothers and sisters, and Jesus is calling us from the pyramid to become a body.”

While desperately needed, even the best laws and most-dedicated enforcers cannot make people see the intellectually-disabled as their brothers and sisters. As the Bible tells us, Christians have no choice in the matter. The question, as Vanier put it, is “Does the church really believe in the holiness of people with disabilities?”

Only if we truly believe in the holiness of God, in whose image they are made.

________

Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

My Testimony, by Laura Sokolowski

I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior in December 1988. I’m not sure of the exact date because it wasn’t a life-altering experience for me. The changes in my life were very subtle as I began my relationship with Christ. In the first few years, I barely grew at all. I guess by 1994, God had had enough with my stagnant behavior and he led us to a new church which is where my real growth began. During those next few years, I spent more time in Scripture and more time in prayer. I was thirty years old and had three children – Jessica, age 6, Danielle, age 4, and Buddy, age 2, plus we had my husband Glen’s daughters – Shannon, age 17 and Nicole, age 15 - from his first marriage living with us. To top it all off, I had a husband who was never home.

For most of our thirteen-year marriage, Glen worked on a commission-only basis selling life insurance and mutual funds. It wasn’t an easy business and it certainly wasn’t an easy way to live. My marriage to Glen had its ups and downs, as do a lot of marriages, but ours was not just difficult due to kids and money, it was due to Glen’s abusive behavior. When our family was in public, we were the perfect Christian family, but when we were home, it was not quite as pretty. Glen and I would fight frequently. Glen was all about control. If he felt he was losing control of a situation, which happened often due to our financial situation, he would control me. Emotional abuse takes a toll on a person and not only weakens your spirit, but your self-esteem. There were days that I would pray for God to just let him beat me physically because I figured the pain wouldn’t last as long. There were two episodes of physical abuse. The first one occurred in 1994. The second one occurred on September 19, 2000.

In January of 2000, I finally broke down with someone at church and told her how bad things were financially. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore, even though I truly believe that Glen would be upset with me for telling someone. Soon after this, I started counseling with our pastor and he insisted that I get a full-time job. With our pastor’s support for my getting a job, I knew Glen wouldn’t be able to say no. By February I had obtained a full-time job, which helped us financially, but it created a lot of anger in Glen. By the time school let out that year, the anger was escalating. Glen was having a difficult time working from home and having the kids home all day. It was so bad that when I came home from work each day, everyone would be screaming at one another. One day in particular that seems to sum it up was I came home from work and the kids were sitting at the dinner table while Glen and I were putting the food on the table. The kids were horsing around and Jessica’s hand slammed hard on the table and Buddy started to cry. Without questioning anything, Glen yanked Jessica out of her seat, causing the chair to fall on the floor. She fell to the floor in the family room and he proceeded to beat her buttocks and thighs as hard as he could. The scariest part of this whole scene for me was that I could not help her. I was paralyzed for the minute or two that he beat her. Then he told her to (quote) “suck it up and go wash your face.” I followed her upstairs and comforted her as best I could because I knew that we would have to immediately return to the dinner table and be the perfect family. It just seemed to get worse each day and no matter how hard I prayed, nothing seemed to change.

His anger came to a head on September 19th. The day before that I started a new job, same company, but it was part time for virtually the same money. It afforded me the opportunity to be home with my kids when they came home from school. That particular day, I came home from work around noon and soon as I walked in the door, Glen confronted me. An altercation occurred that caused me to get a temporary restraining order against him. This was the beginning of our separation.

The most significant weekend to my testimony was when Glen picked the kids up for his visitation on Friday, March 9, 2001. He arrived around 9 PM and I kissed each of the kids as they left and I told them that I loved them. Buddy had a baseball clinic the following day and Jessica had softball tryouts, so it would be a busy weekend and I would see them at church on Sunday.

On March 11, My phone rang around 7am and the person on the phone asked if my kids were at Mom’s house. I was a little disoriented, although I had just been thinking of them. I realized the caller was my brother-in-law and he wanted to know if my kids were with Glen. I said yes and he proceeded to inform me that my mother-in-law’s house was on fire. I told him I would be there as fast as I could. I grabbed some things that I thought the kids would need and rushed out of the house. I raced from Rockaway to Flanders and was stopped at the top of her street. The entire street was full of emergency vehicles. I was stopped by a police office who asked for my children’s names and then was escorted down the street to a neighbor’s house. Halfway down the street is when I was told that no one was out of the house. This was my first realization that something terrible could happen.

About two hours after I arrived at the scene, I was informed that my three children, husband and mother-in-law all perished in the fire. I just couldn’t believe it. This was just a bad dream, but I couldn’t seem to wake up. It was as if I was watching what was going on without actually feeling anything. I was hysterical and numb at the same time. When I finally got home that day, I remember burying my face in each of their beds just so I could smell them. I somehow managed to function and was able to make the arrangements that needed to be made. The wake was scheduled for Thursday and the funeral on Friday, but the family was given Wednesday for a private viewing time.

That Wednesday morning I wrote letters to Glen and each of my children and collected something to give to each of them in their caskets. Just before leaving for the funeral home, I got on my knees and for the first time in my life truly cried out to God. I knew that I just couldn’t go on without God’s help. I knelt broken and hopeless and begged God to help me. I surrendered every ounce of my being to God that day. I was about to see my husband and children for the first time since the fire. I had no idea what to expect.

Upon arriving at the funeral home that day, I was greeted by our Pastor and Glen’s entire family. No one wanted me to go in the room with Glen and the kids alone, but I needed to. They were my babies and I needed to see them and be alone with them. I walked into the room and immediately saw one large brown casket and three smaller white ones. Before I could step any further, I physically felt Jesus lift me up. At that moment, I was not leaving any footprints because my God had answered my prayers and my Savior was carrying me through the most difficult thing I would ever do. I cannot describe in words the overwhelming feeling of peace that came over me. For the first time in days, I could feel. I not only felt Jesus carrying me, I felt the presence of Glen and the kids.

I went to each casket and lifted the sheathing that had been placed over them. I spoke to each of them, kissed and touched each of them and placed my gifts and letters into their caskets. I didn’t see the deformities that people had told me I would see. What I saw were my beautiful babies whom I loved more than life itself. I never cried in that room that day because I could feel their presence and I just knew that they were at peace with their Father in Heaven.

I managed to get through those first days and weeks because I was in shock. I functioned as if in auto-pilot, almost robotic, doing the things that I needed to do. I was through the grace of God and His strength that I survived. I had always heard the cliché that God only gives you what you can handle. This is very true, but not in the way that I always thought. God only give you what you can handle at that moment in time. I believe that God did not allow me to process it all at one time and therefore, I could not feel all of the pain. God, in His infinite wisdom only allows you to feel so much at one time. I’m not saying that I didn’t feel anything, but most of those days in the beginning, I was living in a fog.

Slowly the shock and numbness of that first week wore off and reality set it. I no longer had anyone to take care of. I no longer had anyone to make meals for, to do laundry for, to put on the school bus each morning. Life was very difficult, to say the least. But God was working in the background. I didn’t see it all at the time, but He not only blessed me, he blessed many others. So many started to question things. So many started to read their Bibles and go to church. So many started to hug their children a little bit more. I started to see the blessings in my own life. A very good friend stood by through all of it and protected me. God put an angel in my life. Through my darkest storm, He gave me my rainbow. That rainbow is my current husband, Ed. Ed helped me to see that I still had a life to live for. I married this wonderful man and God has blessed us with two wonderful children, Brianna and Michael. They could never replace Jessica, Danielle and Buddy, but they certainly bring joy to my life. I think of my children in heaven every day. There is a part of me that died along with them, but by the grace of God, He has not only helped me through my darkest hour, he has helped me grow to be a better person. I try to make the most out of my life because I know that it can change with the blink of an eye.

I have shared with you glimpses of my life, as well as the tragedy that I have lived through, but the most important part of a testimony is what has been learned and where my growth has been. I have learned that although time does not heal all wounds, God will carry me through the days that are just too difficult and He will strengthen me to get through the other days. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” and Philippians 4:13 says that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I have learned not to sweat the small stuff or the big stuff. When I surrendered everything to God on March 14, 2001, He showed me how to trust Him in everything. It is a conscious choice everyday to let God continue to handle everything. I try hard not to worry about anything of this world anymore. Philippians 4:6 tells us to “be anxious about nothing...” and James 1:2 says to “ ... count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” The only thing that causes turmoil in my life now is my struggle to be sure I am always doing what God wants me to do.

I have learned not to take anyone or anything for granted. I never fail to let the important people in my life know how much I love them. I never stay angry with anyone. I really listen to what my children have to say. I truly stop to smell the roses. I watch the blooms slowly come onto the trees. I watch the beautiful sunsets and take notice of things that we all seem to take for granted. I let people know I appreciate the things that they do. I’ve learned to never be embarrassed of my relationship with Jesus because all the glory of my life goes to Him. I’ve learned not be afraid to step out of my comfort zone and do things that I never would have done before.

Finally, but most importantly, my greatest lesson has been to truly see the many blessings in my life and being thankful for them. I am truly blessed in knowing that Glen, Jessica, Danielle and Buddy are in heaven with our Savior and one day I will be with them again. I am truly blessed with God’s gift of my husband, Ed and children Brianna and Michael. I am blessed with the many spiritual gifts God has given me. I am blessed with the trials of my life that have helped me to grow closer to my Lord and Savior. But most of all, I am blessed by a loving Heavenly Father who will never leave me nor forsake me.

________

See also “House Fire In New Jersey Kills Five” by Robert D. McFadden and Dexter Filkins, published: March 12, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/12/nyregion/house-fire-in-new-jersey-kills-five.html

According to the Census Bureau, the 1990s saw a marked increase in every kind of household, except one: the traditional two-parent family. Demographers tell us that we're in the midst of a redefinition of the American family. But what are the consequences of this "redefinition?"

The data from last year's census showed that married couples, with or without children, comprise a lower percentage of American households than ever before. In fact, people living alone outnumber traditional "married-with-children" families.

At the same time, the number of households with "unmarried partners" rose seventy-two percent. And, at least one-third of these have a minor child living in the home. There was also a rise in single-parent households.

Demographers cite several possible reasons for the changes. The first is divorce. Although the divorce rate has leveled off, it remains at historically high levels. People are also postponing and even foregoing marriage.

Whatever the reasons, as Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins puts it, "the central place of marriage in our family system is eroding." And that erosion has consequences that affect all of us -- especially our kids.

In her book, Love and Economics, Jennifer Roback Morse tells us there's an "impressive body of evidence" pointing to the difficulties faced by kids raised in single-parent homes and step-families. On average, they complete fewer years of schooling and are more likely to drop out of school; they're more likely to "commit delinquent acts" and abuse alcohol and drugs than kids growing up in intact families.

These are only a few of what researchers call "adverse outcomes" associated with the erosion of the two-parent family. You name the problem and chances are that it's more likely to occur in single-parent homes and step-families than in two-parent families.

By any measure, the rise in the number of children being raised in "unmarried partner" households is a disaster waiting to happen. For example: A cohabiting boyfriend is thirty times more likely to abuse a child than a father married to the child's mother.

But even when abuse isn't an issue, the uncommitted nature of such a relationship affects the child. Brown University's Frances Goldscheider, as reported recently in the Washington Post, says the higher rate of break-ups among unmarried couples "causes instability in children's lives." Obviously!

Which makes me ask: If these changes are so bad for our kids and our society, why are Americans embracing them? Because, in this culture, personal autonomy is considered life's greatest good. It's the one value that trumps everything else.

While we say we love our kids and want what's best for them, too many parents won't let that "love" get in the way of their personal lifestyle choices, or their self-gratification. We're expected to support everything from reformulated gas to tax cuts "for the good of the children." Yet, staying together for the sake of those same kids is, by today's standards, too much to ask.

Well, figures can lie, but they lie a lot less than we do. And these figures ought to tell us where our hearts really are. Which is why Christians need to help their neighbors understand what these numbers are saying about our choices -- and the consequences for those we love.

_____________________

For further reference:

Cohn, D'Vera. "Married-With-Children Still Fading: Census Finds Americans Living Alone in 25% of Households." Washington Post, 15 May 2001; p. A1.

Morse, Jennifer Roback. Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 2001.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

According to the Census Bureau, the 1990s saw a marked increase in every kind of household, except one: the traditional two-parent family. Demographers tell us that we're in the midst of a redefinition of the American family. But what are the consequences of this "redefinition?"

The data from last year's census showed that married couples, with or without children, comprise a lower percentage of American households than ever before. In fact, people living alone outnumber traditional "married-with-children" families.

At the same time, the number of households with "unmarried partners" rose seventy-two percent. And, at least one-third of these have a minor child living in the home. There was also a rise in single-parent households.

Demographers cite several possible reasons for the changes. The first is divorce. Although the divorce rate has leveled off, it remains at historically high levels. People are also postponing and even foregoing marriage.

Whatever the reasons, as Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins puts it, "the central place of marriage in our family system is eroding." And that erosion has consequences that affect all of us -- especially our kids.

In her book, Love and Economics, Jennifer Roback Morse tells us there's an "impressive body of evidence" pointing to the difficulties faced by kids raised in single-parent homes and step-families. On average, they complete fewer years of schooling and are more likely to drop out of school; they're more likely to "commit delinquent acts" and abuse alcohol and drugs than kids growing up in intact families.

These are only a few of what researchers call "adverse outcomes" associated with the erosion of the two-parent family. You name the problem and chances are that it's more likely to occur in single-parent homes and step-families than in two-parent families.

By any measure, the rise in the number of children being raised in "unmarried partner" households is a disaster waiting to happen. For example: A cohabiting boyfriend is thirty times more likely to abuse a child than a father married to the child's mother.

But even when abuse isn't an issue, the uncommitted nature of such a relationship affects the child. Brown University's Frances Goldscheider, as reported recently in the Washington Post, says the higher rate of break-ups among unmarried couples "causes instability in children's lives." Obviously!

Which makes me ask: If these changes are so bad for our kids and our society, why are Americans embracing them? Because, in this culture, personal autonomy is considered life's greatest good. It's the one value that trumps everything else.

While we say we love our kids and want what's best for them, too many parents won't let that "love" get in the way of their personal lifestyle choices, or their self-gratification. We're expected to support everything from reformulated gas to tax cuts "for the good of the children." Yet, staying together for the sake of those same kids is, by today's standards, too much to ask.

Well, figures can lie, but they lie a lot less than we do. And these figures ought to tell us where our hearts really are. Which is why Christians need to help their neighbors understand what these numbers are saying about our choices -- and the consequences for those we love.

_____________________

For further reference:

Cohn, D'Vera. "Married-With-Children Still Fading: Census Finds Americans Living Alone in 25% of Households." Washington Post, 15 May 2001; p. A1.

Morse, Jennifer Roback. Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing, 2001.

_________________________

Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

We first meet her in Genesis 16, she is an Egyptian servant in Abraham’s well-off world. We will see her used and abused by Sarai, her mistress. She will always end up either running away or being driven off into the wilderness. Her name is Hagar and she carries deep inside her heart a hunger we all secretly share.

When her baby, Ishmael, is finally known to be on the way, the reward for her submission to Sarai’s manipulative and faithless behavior is abuse (16:6b). And so Hagar does what we see her constantly doing in Genesis, what you and I also constantly are doing, she runs away. She carries within her all that she really owns, her unborn baby, Ishmael. She wanders out into the desert on the road to Shur.

But she is not really alone, even as we can never really be. The angel of the Lord meets her near an as yet nameless spring and asks, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” It is a basic question we should still be constantly asking ourselves. She honestly opens her heart to the angel, “I’m running away.” she defiantly whispers through her tears.

The angel tells the frightened girl to do the last thing in the world she wants to do, return to the abuse from which she has fled. In the language of poetry, he promises her that there is more going on than she can see, more than she can possibly know. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful picture, the angel singing a song of hope in the desert to a hopeless pregnant girl.

As the angel finishes his song (vvs. 11-12), Hagar abruptly responds to the angel who knew her name. She speaks to God a new name, “Lahai Roi,” “The One who sees me.” In her fear, hopelessness and despair, God met her in the wilderness with His perfect provision. It was all she really needed or wanted. She wanted simply to be seen, and the God who sees, saw her and sang to her a song of hope.

After a six-year pursuit, my wife Susan finally responded to my courtship by telling me that she felt I was the first person to really see her. It was only then that I realized inside myself how much I needed her to really see me too. Twice, the gospels tell us, Peter is “intensely gazed at” by Jesus. (John 1:42, Luke 22:61) That is, Simon Peter becomes aware that Jesus can see to the heart of who he really is, a man so fatally flawed, and yet still love and even die for him. It must have been the first time for Simon to sense that he was so completely known. Later in Acts, Peter really sees the need of a crippled beggar. It is not healing he needs so much as Jesus. And so the “seen” disciple, who has learned to really see the heart, gives to the beggar both healing and Jesus.

“Where have you come from and where are you going?” the angel asks us all. Have you come from a world that has shown you only abuse and blindness to who you are? And are you now in headlong flight from intimacy and genuine relationship, having tried to give up on the hope of ever being truly known? Then what hope could you possibly have had? And where are you going? Back into that same sightless, heartless world? What hope could you possibly look forward to in such a world? We constantly ask for provision when what we need is the clear-sighted Presence of Jesus. We sense His gaze on our lives, and we reflexively turn away from being so lovingly seen, our souls so leprous and untouchable. But His gaze is relentless.

The things we ask for in prayer are almost certainly not what we really need. We need most to be seen, to be understood for better or for worse for who we are. This deep desire is one of the evidences for our being created for relationship with God. Would He give us this profound longing and not perfectly fulfill it by loving us so unconditionally in Christ?

Ask for the grace to look into your deepest longing. You may be in the desert. You may have given up on ever being seen at all. But let me tell you, as one who has been found again and again in the wilderness, there is an Angel of the Lord who is prepared to sing you a song. He asks where you have been and where you are going, already knowing the answers to both questions. It is almost as if He wants to give you the sacred space to respond to the question He already knows. It is as if you need to hear yourself say how bad it was where you’ve been and how hopeless it is where you are going. Only then will you be ready to hear His song of hope sung to you. Only then will you be ready to drink from the Living Spring of the One who sees you. For, after all, there is a Savior who sees all that is unlovable and yet still loves perfectly, completely, sacrificially. And there is a God who knows you and me more than we know ourselves.

Sermon on violence. James 4:1-3

THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

=====================

I. The Passion of the People.

A. Endless cycle of violence in Palestine. Cultures of revenge.

II. The roots of violence.

A. Genetic programming?

B. Spiritual deficit. Genesis 4:6-10

C. It doesn't have to reach murder.

D. Violence starts within.

III. Breaking the cycle of violence.

A. Experience inner peace.

B. Learn to live peaceably. Psalm 4:4

C. Make peace in your own relationships.

1) Listen, rather than attack, defend or escape. James 1:19-20

2) De-escalate anger. Proverbs 15:1, Proverbs 25:15

3) Seek creative outlets for aggression.

IV. God hates violence. Do you?

My Testimony, by Laura Sokolowski

I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior in December 1988. I’m not sure of the exact date because it wasn’t a life-altering experience for me. The changes in my life were very subtle as I began my relationship with Christ. In the first few years, I barely grew at all. I guess by 1994, God had had enough with my stagnant behavior and he led us to a new church which is where my real growth began. During those next few years, I spent more time in Scripture and more time in prayer. I was thirty years old and had three children – Jessica, age 6, Danielle, age 4, and Buddy, age 2, plus we had my husband Glen’s daughters – Shannon, age 17 and Nicole, age 15 - from his first marriage living with us. To top it all off, I had a husband who was never home.

For most of our thirteen-year marriage, Glen worked on a commission-only basis selling life insurance and mutual funds. It wasn’t an easy business and it certainly wasn’t an easy way to live. My marriage to Glen had its ups and downs, as do a lot of marriages, but ours was not just difficult due to kids and money, it was due to Glen’s abusive behavior. When our family was in public, we were the perfect Christian family, but when we were home, it was not quite as pretty. Glen and I would fight frequently. Glen was all about control. If he felt he was losing control of a situation, which happened often due to our financial situation, he would control me. Emotional abuse takes a toll on a person and not only weakens your spirit, but your self-esteem. There were days that I would pray for God to just let him beat me physically because I figured the pain wouldn’t last as long. There were two episodes of physical abuse. The first one occurred in 1994. The second one occurred on September 19, 2000.

In January of 2000, I finally broke down with someone at church and told her how bad things were financially. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore, even though I truly believe that Glen would be upset with me for telling someone. Soon after this, I started counseling with our pastor and he insisted that I get a full-time job. With our pastor’s support for my getting a job, I knew Glen wouldn’t be able to say no. By February I had obtained a full-time job, which helped us financially, but it created a lot of anger in Glen. By the time school let out that year, the anger was escalating. Glen was having a difficult time working from home and having the kids home all day. It was so bad that when I came home from work each day, everyone would be screaming at one another. One day in particular that seems to sum it up was I came home from work and the kids were sitting at the dinner table while Glen and I were putting the food on the table. The kids were horsing around and Jessica’s hand slammed hard on the table and Buddy started to cry. Without questioning anything, Glen yanked Jessica out of her seat, causing the chair to fall on the floor. She fell to the floor in the family room and he proceeded to beat her buttocks and thighs as hard as he could. The scariest part of this whole scene for me was that I could not help her. I was paralyzed for the minute or two that he beat her. Then he told her to (quote) “suck it up and go wash your face.” I followed her upstairs and comforted her as best I could because I knew that we would have to immediately return to the dinner table and be the perfect family. It just seemed to get worse each day and no matter how hard I prayed, nothing seemed to change.

His anger came to a head on September 19th. The day before that I started a new job, same company, but it was part time for virtually the same money. It afforded me the opportunity to be home with my kids when they came home from school. That particular day, I came home from work around noon and soon as I walked in the door, Glen confronted me. An altercation occurred that caused me to get a temporary restraining order against him. This was the beginning of our separation.

The most significant weekend to my testimony was when Glen picked the kids up for his visitation on Friday, March 9, 2001. He arrived around 9 PM and I kissed each of the kids as they left and I told them that I loved them. Buddy had a baseball clinic the following day and Jessica had softball tryouts, so it would be a busy weekend and I would see them at church on Sunday.

On March 11, My phone rang around 7am and the person on the phone asked if my kids were at Mom’s house. I was a little disoriented, although I had just been thinking of them. I realized the caller was my brother-in-law and he wanted to know if my kids were with Glen. I said yes and he proceeded to inform me that my mother-in-law’s house was on fire. I told him I would be there as fast as I could. I grabbed some things that I thought the kids would need and rushed out of the house. I raced from Rockaway to Flanders and was stopped at the top of her street. The entire street was full of emergency vehicles. I was stopped by a police office who asked for my children’s names and then was escorted down the street to a neighbor’s house. Halfway down the street is when I was told that no one was out of the house. This was my first realization that something terrible could happen.

About two hours after I arrived at the scene, I was informed that my three children, husband and mother-in-law all perished in the fire. I just couldn’t believe it. This was just a bad dream, but I couldn’t seem to wake up. It was as if I was watching what was going on without actually feeling anything. I was hysterical and numb at the same time. When I finally got home that day, I remember burying my face in each of their beds just so I could smell them. I somehow managed to function and was able to make the arrangements that needed to be made. The wake was scheduled for Thursday and the funeral on Friday, but the family was given Wednesday for a private viewing time.

That Wednesday morning I wrote letters to Glen and each of my children and collected something to give to each of them in their caskets. Just before leaving for the funeral home, I got on my knees and for the first time in my life truly cried out to God. I knew that I just couldn’t go on without God’s help. I knelt broken and hopeless and begged God to help me. I surrendered every ounce of my being to God that day. I was about to see my husband and children for the first time since the fire. I had no idea what to expect.

Upon arriving at the funeral home that day, I was greeted by our Pastor and Glen’s entire family. No one wanted me to go in the room with Glen and the kids alone, but I needed to. They were my babies and I needed to see them and be alone with them. I walked into the room and immediately saw one large brown casket and three smaller white ones. Before I could step any further, I physically felt Jesus lift me up. At that moment, I was not leaving any footprints because my God had answered my prayers and my Savior was carrying me through the most difficult thing I would ever do. I cannot describe in words the overwhelming feeling of peace that came over me. For the first time in days, I could feel. I not only felt Jesus carrying me, I felt the presence of Glen and the kids.

I went to each casket and lifted the sheathing that had been placed over them. I spoke to each of them, kissed and touched each of them and placed my gifts and letters into their caskets. I didn’t see the deformities that people had told me I would see. What I saw were my beautiful babies whom I loved more than life itself. I never cried in that room that day because I could feel their presence and I just knew that they were at peace with their Father in Heaven.

I managed to get through those first days and weeks because I was in shock. I functioned as if in auto-pilot, almost robotic, doing the things that I needed to do. I was through the grace of God and His strength that I survived. I had always heard the cliché that God only gives you what you can handle. This is very true, but not in the way that I always thought. God only give you what you can handle at that moment in time. I believe that God did not allow me to process it all at one time and therefore, I could not feel all of the pain. God, in His infinite wisdom only allows you to feel so much at one time. I’m not saying that I didn’t feel anything, but most of those days in the beginning, I was living in a fog.

Slowly the shock and numbness of that first week wore off and reality set it. I no longer had anyone to take care of. I no longer had anyone to make meals for, to do laundry for, to put on the school bus each morning. Life was very difficult, to say the least. But God was working in the background. I didn’t see it all at the time, but He not only blessed me, he blessed many others. So many started to question things. So many started to read their Bibles and go to church. So many started to hug their children a little bit more. I started to see the blessings in my own life. A very good friend stood by through all of it and protected me. God put an angel in my life. Through my darkest storm, He gave me my rainbow. That rainbow is my current husband, Ed. Ed helped me to see that I still had a life to live for. I married this wonderful man and God has blessed us with two wonderful children, Brianna and Michael. They could never replace Jessica, Danielle and Buddy, but they certainly bring joy to my life. I think of my children in heaven every day. There is a part of me that died along with them, but by the grace of God, He has not only helped me through my darkest hour, he has helped me grow to be a better person. I try to make the most out of my life because I know that it can change with the blink of an eye.

I have shared with you glimpses of my life, as well as the tragedy that I have lived through, but the most important part of a testimony is what has been learned and where my growth has been. I have learned that although time does not heal all wounds, God will carry me through the days that are just too difficult and He will strengthen me to get through the other days. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” and Philippians 4:13 says that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I have learned not to sweat the small stuff or the big stuff. When I surrendered everything to God on March 14, 2001, He showed me how to trust Him in everything. It is a conscious choice everyday to let God continue to handle everything. I try hard not to worry about anything of this world anymore. Philippians 4:6 tells us to “be anxious about nothing...” and James 1:2 says to “ ... count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” The only thing that causes turmoil in my life now is my struggle to be sure I am always doing what God wants me to do.

I have learned not to take anyone or anything for granted. I never fail to let the important people in my life know how much I love them. I never stay angry with anyone. I really listen to what my children have to say. I truly stop to smell the roses. I watch the blooms slowly come onto the trees. I watch the beautiful sunsets and take notice of things that we all seem to take for granted. I let people know I appreciate the things that they do. I’ve learned to never be embarrassed of my relationship with Jesus because all the glory of my life goes to Him. I’ve learned not be afraid to step out of my comfort zone and do things that I never would have done before.

Finally, but most importantly, my greatest lesson has been to truly see the many blessings in my life and being thankful for them. I am truly blessed in knowing that Glen, Jessica, Danielle and Buddy are in heaven with our Savior and one day I will be with them again. I am truly blessed with God’s gift of my husband, Ed and children Brianna and Michael. I am blessed with the many spiritual gifts God has given me. I am blessed with the trials of my life that have helped me to grow closer to my Lord and Savior. But most of all, I am blessed by a loving Heavenly Father who will never leave me nor forsake me.

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See also “House Fire In New Jersey Kills Five” by Robert D. McFadden and Dexter Filkins, published: March 12, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/12/nyregion/house-fire-in-new-jersey-kills-five.html