During the past few weeks I have consumed a ridiculous amount of content on YouTube dealing with the impact of Mike Winger exposing a culture of cover up in the charismatic side of the Christianity pool.

In my last blog post I shared a bit about my own experiences in that environment. I’ve decided to refrain from sharing more of my story in public for now, because I hope that there is repentance in the hearts of those who have hurt me. I hope the scandalous domino effect of what Mike Winger did puts their feet to the fire and pulls their head out of the clouds.

What they actually do next is up to them.

When it comes to how I share my side of the clergy abuse story I lived, I am determined to land the plane in a way that honors Jesus.

In my forty-something years on this planet so far, I’ve learned that there is peace in the space exactly halfway between forgiveness and boundaries.

It can be way too easy to confuse turning the other cheek with letting yourself be a doormat.

Jesus was teaching how to stand your ground and maintain your dignity (by offering the second cheek) as a lesson for the Jews who followed him, who had a decent chance of already being slapped by the Romans occupying their home at the time when they heard this lesson.

Turning the other cheek is a form of nonviolent protest against oppression.

This same teaching has been weaponized in church culture to encourage people to be doormats.

Doormats tolerate and enable abusers, and lose themselves in the pursuit of a misguided concept of what purity requires of them at their expense (and for the benefit of their abusers). They forgive and overcome until they are entirely depleted and void of hope, having failed to overcome evil with good (by giving evil the silence and submission that it wants).

Doormats are running on an imbalanced equation. Enabling or empowering evil to continue isn’t good. Anyone protecting a predator isn’t acting in eternal love.

Overcoming evil with good requires confrontation. It requires the establishment and adherance to ancient standards of decency.

Complying to the popular judgment can be a betrayal against universal truth. Saying “this is wrong because it was always wrong, starting with (insert Psalm or Proverb here)” is uncomfortable, and also genuinely loving. The wounds of a friend are always better than the kisses of an enemy.

I say this with the authority of being a recovering doormat. Life is a journey.

At some point I learned that I need both forgiveness and boundaries to truly access peace.

There are many victims of this cover up culture who have been coming out of the dark since Mike Winger released his almost six hour expose of Shawn Bolz, (followed up a week later with another four hour video about a different abusive leader, Todd White).

This is the start of a new chapter in the movement. Whether leadership chooses to accept it, or fights it is up to them.

You can’t take back the stone after it is thrown, or the word after it is released.

There are more foxes in the hen house, and in due time they will be exposed, denounced, and removed. The Lord is behind this.

Exposure is the only way for anyone in this culture to get through the noise of now and into the nourishing light of actually obeying the commands of the Lord.

When it comes to what those commands are, that is a whole different post, but everything I believe about the situation comes from what I learned in a collection of 66 ancient books that somehow tell one cohesive narrative about a God who just wants his people to love him and love their neighbors (in a nutshell). He was serious when he said it the first time, in those books (the Bible). He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God hasn’t magically changed his mind because so many televangelists and hirelings have been teaching their flocks to hate their neighbors for decades. The church lost the plot. The plot never changed. Now the church has a chance to rediscover the original plot, and I’m hopeful that it will.

Let God be true, and every man a liar.