.gif)
It wasn't the robbers Jesus castigated in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. It was the religious leaders.
The most harrowing part of last week’s report on the SBC Executive Committee might be its summary of interviews with survivors of sexual abuse. Christa Brown speaks with excruciating eloquence on the consequences not only of abuse in the church but of the callous inhumanity that greeted the survivors’ attempts to tell their stories.
“For most people of faith,” she says, “their faith is a source of solace,” a reservoir of peace and resource for healing. For her, however, faith is “neurologically networked with a nightmare.” She was raped repeatedly as a child by her pastor and endured a torrent of hostility when she told the truth. “It is not only physically, psychologically, and emotionally devastating,” she says, “but it is spiritually annihilating. It is soul murder.”
The pattern is consistent throughout the report. An individual suffers the horrific evil of abuse then suffers a second evil of monstrous indifference from religious authorities. The second evil is uniquely desolating. It is one thing to suffer at the hands of a single low-down hypocrite. It is another when the company of the high and holy treat you as though your suffering means nothing.
This same pattern, of course, is also found in one of Jesus’ most beloved parables. The parable begins with an innocent traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. On this hard and narrow path, robbers set upon him, strip his clothing, and beat him to near death. A priest passes by, avoids him, and leaves him to die naked and alone. A Levite, a man who serves the worship of God at the temple, does the same.
Then a Samaritan, the last person Jesus’ audience would have expected, shows mercy ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
