UPDATE 2/3/2020 - PMC has removed the sermon from their online video archives. In response, I have disabled the sermon clip which was originally included in this article. My appeal to Elder Nelson requested consideration of the harmful impact on survivors and asked for openness to increased education on abuse. 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

I’m going to walk into a minefield for a minute. 

If you read my stuff, you already know I live in the twilight zone — so if I’m warning you that a topic is tricky, it’s a safe bet that what comes next is way beyond my normal level of awkward and uncomfortable.

This weekend, I received concerning messages about a live-streamed sermon by Dwight Nelson, a high-profile television preacher on a prominent university campus. Shocked by the reports I was getting, I watched the sermon myself, hoping to find clarifying statements to balance the disturbing implications. 

There were none.

Given the sermon’s public live-stream platform, and the tens of thousands of people who may watch it, I feel obligated to respond in an open post. My desire is to bring education and awareness, not to personally attack anyone. 

Nelson starts with a newspaper story about a neighborhood who had a violent, convicted, high-risk sex offender move there. The town was on edge, when this man who had been convicted of rape and sodomy got arrested for not living at the address he had reported to his parole officer. A Christian family with two small children decided to bring him home to live with them. 

Neighborhood parents were outraged at the risk to their own children and shocked when the Christian family insisted, “We trust him around our kids! We let him sleep across from the children’s playroom!” One day, the ex-con vanished, trying to avoid a media interview. 

Nelson presents the anecdote as a brilliant example of “Love on the Move”, and compares it to the Good Samaritan. 

But these two stories are nothing alike. 

The Good Samaritan helped a bleeding victim he found by the road — not the perpetrator of the beating. There was no reason to believe the injured victim was a menace to society. The Samaritan also took the wounded man to a professional place of business for help — he didn’t bring him home to endanger vulnerable children. There are many other ways the stories deviate, but these two alone render them an incompatible comparison.

In Scripture, rape and sodomy were punishable by death. No one would have dreamed of bringing home a known violent sex offender and risking the innocence of children in the name of “love”. We know from researchers like Anna C. Salter, in her chilling but essential book Predators, that the typical sex offender has 50-150 victims before first arrest, and many more after.

Why? Precisely because being able to get away with sex offenses requires a deadly combination of charm, believability, masterful manipulation, and absence of conscience. 

Dr Martha Stout, in her brilliant book The Sociopath Next Door, explains that 1 in 25 people in today’s society are sociopaths — meaning they have no conscience and can do absolutely anything without feeling bad about it. Of course, not all sociopaths have violent proclivities. But it is not unreasonable to recognize that most violent sexual offenders are likely to be sociopaths. You cannot reach the point of being able to cause violent sexual harm, without having killed off your conscience long before. 

In Lundy Bancroft’s powerful book Why Does He Do That?, Lundy outlines the remarkable ability of abusers to maintain a magnetic and charming public persona, while compulsively lying and diverting attention from their capacity for abuse and harm with such compelling demeanor that outsiders will leap to defend their “good character” with enthusiasm. 

Nelson reads the neighbors’ letters to the Christian family stating how they were “demonstrating a total disregard for our feelings, our fears and our safety” in a tone that sounded painfully like he is mocking their concerns.

He goes on to apparently applaud the Christian family’s pushback to neighborhood warning posters by replacing them with new posters proclaiming “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and quoting Bible verses on forgiveness and brotherly love. 

This is sin-leveling and ethical naïveté at the very least, bordering on spiritually abusive… 

...and I profoundly disagree with Nelson that this story can be endorsed as a healthy model of Christian charity.

This is one of the most dangerous myths we believe about the predators we trust in faith communities - and I co-wrote the book on these myths HERE. Biblical forgiveness does not equal blind trust. Biblical forgiveness NEVER includes risking innocent children at the hands of an unrepentant rapist.

(How do we know he was unrepentant? Because he was overtly not cooperating with the terms of his parole. True repentance accepts responsibility for limited freedoms, and doesn't sidestep consequences.)

Should we love violent criminals? Yes.
Should we love sex offenders? Yes.
Should we express love to dangerous people in ways that risk the well-being and safety of the little ones God has given us to protect? No.

Loving well includes holding people accountable. Love protects the weakest and most vulnerable. Love includes loving the victims too. Love uses wisdom and discernment. 

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Love does not bring the wolf home to bunk with the lambs. 
Nor could it advocate doing so. 

I do believe love should be on the move. In this case, love moves to protect the vulnerable from re-victimization by church leaders promoting irresponsible and unsafe applications of biblical forgiveness and acceptance. Love moves to speak hard truth in the face of celebrity influence. Love seeks to repair damages done to those who tremble at the idea of considering church a safe place, because they have already survived abuse justified by twisted scripture. 

Love moves to write this:

Pastor Dwight, I appeal to you as a scholar and author — please seek more education on the subject of abuse. Please consider the countless survivors of rape, sodomy, and child sexual abuse who heard your sermon today and experienced triggers from their memories of abuse. 

Think of your listeners who were silenced over and over, manipulated into never telling, never reporting to authorities — because “you aren’t perfect either, so let s/he who is without sin cast the first stone”. 

Think of the students who are suffering abusive relationships right now, who just heard the message reinforced that forgiveness means they should keep on trusting without asking for evidence of change. 

You have a worldwide platform of influence and notoriety. You could powerfully leverage that platform to inspire healing and lead the church to extend compassion and protection to victims of sexual offenses. 

Would you consider retracting this illustration, or at the very least, clarify a better understanding? Please?

To all the listeners who were triggered by this sermon — as an advocate, recovery coach, and fellow survivor… I am sorry. 

I’m sorry for the times when church feels unsafe all over again.
I’m sorry for the learning curve still ahead of our faith community.

Please keep seeking healing, and know that you are not alone.
**************
Watch the full original sermon HERE, starting at 43:00. 
UPDATE 2/3/2020: This link has been disabled by the church.

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