Truth and Love
In high school I knew a girl who had a patch on her backpack. It read:
I don't care how much you know until I know how much you care.
Today, "Facts don't care about your feelings” is a common refrain.
Unflinching Truth. Radical Love.
Every abusive church starts with bad theology expressed in the person of the pastor. Generally, that bad theology is taught from the pulpit, infecting the church. This abusive theology, these abusive people, cause immense amounts of harm to those around them.
The process of separating the bad people and the bad theology from good theology and your view of God can be extraordinarily difficult and painful.
This isn’t a new problem. Finding the language to speak of God when talking to audiences who have experienced trauma has challenged preachers for as long as we have confronted the reality of trauma.
Disentangling the abusive theology and replacing it with properly researched and understood theology is a complex process. Often the two processes need to go hand in hand. Understanding the most important points can provide an important north star when examining theology.
The whole of the law is summed up:
Love God. Love Each Other.
This brings us back to where we started: Speak unflinching truth with radical love.
What makes love radical? It is self sacrificial.
Can you stand to be around someone who loves God and loves you radically, self-sacrificially? Someone who will be honest with you, even when it hurts… and who will sit with you and work through that hurt?
I think most of us can honestly answer yes, we would love to be with that person.
However, the people who failed to live up to that standard did not reflect God. Their theology which led them to treat you as they did, it is a false theology.