Completing the Last Chapter

My wife has found her calendars on which she recorded her activities for many years. She did not include some of the things I was doing, but she did jot down most of what we did together as well as her involvement with the children and with her friends. These actual facts have messed up my cobbled together sequence of events, however, and so I must rework a few of these chapters. The events are the same, what happens exactly when might vary.

At the same time, I have been reminded of the very real hurts many who lived in these communities experienced, some of which were devastating. My choice to forgive, to embrace, and to extend all redemption is not a flippant or an easy thing. I do so now because of the Salvation of God coming through me.

Nonetheless, healing only comes with resolution; continuing to blame only increases one’s own injury.

I am convinced that every conflict ever experienced between two humans will be resolved, most usually with both on their knees towards one another (every knee shall bow). Things said to me may have hurt me, but I also, even if only in my own internal accusations and fear, also hurt others. Nonetheless, none of us are innocent except in God; all of us have done overt acts of injustice or spoken cruel words of hurt, and we will be on our knees before the one whom we sinned against until that one releases us.

This is God’s justice, and no human will escape. It is a River of Life.

Before establishing a life-saving balance we must have, then, I want to add two more things that took place during the early months of 1996 while I was first sitting among the elders.

Two Late-Winter Experiences
There was a really cold stretch through this time. I was asked to watch the North Star Logging Camp for a few days because it was too cold for machines or men to work. The camp was situated to the east of the Alaska Highway, much further north. I drove a new Suburban up, so I felt quite safe. It was one hundred miles north from the Alaska Highway on a snow-covered logging road, fifty miles on beyond the closest other buildings where there may have been people.

Through this time of year the days are short and the nights are long, with the sun rising around 9 AM and setting around 3 PM. It was likely colder than -40 F. The logging camp was a series of trailers, including one in which was a large diesel generator. My job was to check all the buildings once a day and to check the oil in the generator every other day. I stayed in one of the bunks. The freezers were filled with good food and I could eat whatever I wanted.

I found a book in one of the bunks, The Frontiersman, by Allan Eckert, the story of Simon Kenton, a significant figure in the settlement of Ohio and Kentucky. From this story I learned the meaning of a blood covenant and I read the account of Simon running the gauntlet set for him by Shawnee Indians, only to fall at the hand of the last old lady in his way.

This picture of the gauntlet, in which a man runs for his life between two rows of Indians striking at him from both directions, is a critical picture of our run into the knowledge of God-in-us and we-in-God, for we have always had enemies, both demonic and human, trying to stop us or to divert us by any means possible.

More than that, this picture described how I felt through this time. I loved the experience of sitting among the elders, and I moved in full integrity, but I still felt inside that we had come to the wrong place. More than that, I wrestled with the fact that “moving in the anointing,” which seemed so easy for many, seemed at times almost impossible for me. The conviction that there was something terribly wrong with me had begun during my last year of college and had only grown more difficult ever since.

And so through these days, all alone in the bitter north, far from any human help, I walked the boardwalk outside, back and forth, shouting at the top of my lungs. “God, what is wrong with me. God fix me. God, if it be possible, save even me! God make me to be anointed like all these other people.”

I never heard a word. I did not know! I did not know – that He had already answered all my cry inside of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One other thing that happened during these late-winter months was that, as I was sitting waiting for an elder’s meeting to begin, one of the elders arrived with a note for me. The brethren at Graham River had called, needing my help.

The note said that the front window wall of the Tabernacle I had designed, the one facing the gardens, had shifted. They had braced it immediately, but they needed to know how to fix this problem. As I read that note, the realization struck me that I had made a great error and that, indeed, my grand design was quite capable of falling down, even to crushing people inside the building.

Here was the problem. I had designed the building originally to be an L shape, and we had put in the foundation for adding the short leg of the L. In that larger design, the forty foot window wall facing the gardens continued on for at least twenty more feet with enough solid wall to brace it. However, we did not build that further wall, which meant my window wall did not have enough sold wall in-between the windows to prevent it from shifting. It could easily collapse, and only the strength of the roof kept it up.

As it turned out, I was able to give the brethren at Graham the advice they needed, and the problem was fully resolved. Nonetheless, I was shocked to the core, a sobering up that I needed, most certainly, but that also ended my youthful self-confidence.

A Life-Saving Balance
What do you do with abuse of authority in a Christian gathering? Where is the balance between respect and justice, between honoring those whom God has anointed and protecting those who are being hurt?

I have used the phrase from David several times in this narrative, that is, “Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.” Both Jesus and Paul brought this same principle into the New Testament by stating it this way – “Do not speak evil against a ruler of My people.”

I can safely assert concerning anyone who believes in Jesus, that the primary intention of God in your life is to shape your heart to fit His, that He might share His compassion through you, even towards those who offend. A second intention of God towards you, then, is a necessary companion of this first intention, and that is to remove every vestige of contempt for others from your heart. And the removal of that contempt must include the removal of contempt for those individuals who positioned themselves in some way over you and who abused that position.

At no point and in no way, however, does God’s removal of contempt from our hearts ever remove justice. Even forgiveness cannot remove justice.

There are few actions more wicked inside the church than when those who are anointed and who are in a place of leadership, use “God” as their whip to assert control over other believers in Jesus. And one of those whips in the hands of such people is “Touch not Mine anointed.” Another one is, of all things, “Bloom where you are planted.” These statements can be true when the one showing you the kind intentions of God towards you places him or herself beneath of you in all honor and regard. In the hands of abusers, they become great weights of despair.

My terror, all through these years, was that the God I wanted to know with all my heart was against me and that I was in trouble with Him. This teaching is the greatest of all Christian evils.

This is 1996; two years later, I will make the decision to leave that fellowship because of the false actions and the false teachings of some of the individuals named in the last chapter. And a significant element in our decision to leave was to protect our children from a false use of authority.

This gauntlet in which we are caught is no light thing. And in showing the mercy and kindness of God through me towards my brothers and sisters in Christ, imputing just innocence to them in spite of their wrongful words and actions, I am in no way condoning those actions and words.

You see, if we stand against wrongful actions done by others, yet we ourselves possess hearts filled with rancor and bitterness, and we ourselves do wrongful things against others without thought inside our own spheres, then our “standing against” is an equal crime with those who abuse God’s people for self-exaltation. We accomplish nothing but more destruction.

True judgment comes only through those who impute the just innocence of God, especially where it is not deserved, as Jesus did upon the cross. Yet that judgment, by its very nature, pierces like a sword, and requires the one receiving it to humble themselves and confess, “I was wrong,” and even to say, “What I did to you was wicked.”

It is certainly my hope that some, in reading this account, will be moved by my forgiveness extended freely towards them, to repent of the wrongful things of self-exaltation they have done or even continue to do.

I must extend this critical and life-saving balance a bit further.

Abusing one’s authority is not a move community problem, nor is it a Christian problem. Abusing authority is a human problem. One of the most important pieces of understanding God gave me inside the public school and inside a Spirit-filled Christian school, is that the exact same elements of abuse and the arguments supporting it were found in those two realms, just like they existed in the move communities. And thus it is incorrect to say, “Well, it was that ‘cult.’” The world is always much worse.

Now, I do not want to bring in here things that ought to unfold through the flow of this narrative. But I do want to draw one line of distinction.

Most who abuse places of authority inside the Church, still love Jesus, more or less, and still can be good and kind. Of all the people towards whom my own attitude has changed through my giving of this account, my father-in-law stands at the top, having passed from the “worst elder” in my experience, to my realization that I, also, was wrong and to my ability to see his heart and to extend compassion and understanding.

BUT – there are a few who are vicious religious abusers. They are anointed of the Spirit, they hold a place of authority, but their actions and intentions are wicked. Part of the heart of wisdom God wants to share with you is the ability to distinguish between these few and the many.

Consider the enormous difference between my placement of Nathel Clarke and my placement of Lloyd Green. I receive Nathel as a friend forever with all joy, but I do nothing more with Lloyd Green than to place him into the capable hands of my Savior. I have no further thought towards him. I do not know him – yet I do know Sister Nathel well, that she loves Jesus.

So, here is the balance. Abuse cannot be allowed to continue inside any fellowship, especially abuse of authority. Abuse that is not stopped will destroy the lives of many.

BUT – if those removing the abuser have contempt remaining in their hearts, and not the imputation of the just innocence of God, then all you have going on is a power struggle, one set of abusers removing another set of abusers.

“Touch not Mine anointed,” does NOT mean allowing abuse to continue. It does not mean submitting to that abuse. It does not mean that the hurt caused by the abusers is anyone’s fault but theirs. It does not mean that you should not point out wrongful teaching that drives fake wedges between precious believers and their Father. And it does not mean that you should not warn others concerning that abuse.

The hard reality is that allowing abuse to continue makes you part of it.

What “touch not Mine anointed” does mean is that we neither hold contempt in our hearts nor speak against that person. Saul was an abuser, anointed of God, but David did not strike against him. Yet neither did David remain under his abuse, nor did he ‘sugarcoat’ or excuse it. But then, of course, David was caught doing a similar abuse and had to repent of it.

Allowing abuse to continue makes one a passive part of the abuse. Striking against the abuser, however, out from the same heart of disconnection from God, and with the same contempt and desire to hurt, makes the original “victim” an equal abuser, with an equally twisted self-story that will come to open confrontation inside the presence of a holy and  just God.

And so I want to reference again the picture of Eliza found in Chapter 20, “In the Womb of the Church.” The slavery she has escaped is, in my case, the Nicene definitions of “God” and of “salvation,” that is, the gospel of the serpent. The dogs are the voices of elders and apostles. Eliza is me. The babe in her arms is the precious word of truth and the knowledge of God which I carried. The distant shore is my present knowledge of our wondrous union with Christ.

BUT – the icy St. Lawrence is the death of falling into my own speaking against, my own joining the abusers by abusing them. And that is one of the primary issues of this narrative.

I am no victim. All my life has been ordered of my Father, and I see the Lord Jesus upon me inside every step. I justify God and give thanks inside of and for the sake of all.