Trevin Wax (click here for a bio) writes honestly and sorrowfully about the recent sexual abuse allegations that have been made about some leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention churches (click here for the story). He rightly wants all Christians to look at a very ugly part of the Church in order that we can take steps to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation from taking place in the Church again. And Trevin is a good writer to pay attention to.
In his article (click here for the article), which appeared in the Gospel Coalition website, his article contains his own thoughts and the thoughts of a few other Christians asking what can be done to stop predators in their tracks. And asking that cannot be a more pressing issue for the Church. We must ask what can we do to prevent predators from obtaining opportunities to traumatize others.
But there is another ugly side to sexual abuse in the Church that is not being asked. That question is this: How do some fellow Christians become sexual predators? Asking that question requires that we try to understand why some become sexually abusive. And trying to meet that requirement is like asking us to try to understand why the terrorists attacked our nation on 9/11. For some, trying to understand the 9/11 attacks implies that we are trying to either absolve the terrorists from guilt or portray them as victims. The same applies to the call to try to understand why some become abusive.
A better way to look at trying to understand why people become sexual predators is to say that by such understanding, perhaps we can stop sexual abuse of those who are vulnerable before it can start. What if by education we can learn what contributes to people becoming sexually abusive, do we not have a better chance at changing what we teach and expose others to so that fewer people become predators? And perhaps the most sensitive question for us religiously conservative Christians is this: What if some of the Church's teaching on sex is contributing to some becoming sexually abusive? Would we be willing to change what we teach?
The time is now not just to shore up our defenses in order to protect the vulnerable, it is also time to study what contributes to a person becoming sexually abusive.
But there is a fly in the ointment here. That fly is that us religiously conservative Christians pride ourselves in explaining people better than secular Psychology does. And learning about what makes people predators might have us rely more on the secular social sciences than we would feel comfortable with. Again, there has been a mostly unilateral turf battle between religiously conservative Christian leaders and the social sciences over who has a greater understanding of people. Our leaders often tell us how Psychology doesn't account for God or sin in understanding people. And our best encounters with the secular social sciences still portray our fellow Christians as having a better understanding of people than those secular Psychologists. For our best encounters consist of religious conservative Christians christianizing the psychological concepts they learn. That effort to christianize those concepts sometimes ensures that, in our own minds, we remain superior to secular therapists in being able to help people. But that also leaves many of the rest of us insulated from we can learn from secular disciplines.
Yes, we urgently need to ask and answer questions regarding how we can prevent sexual predators from gaining opportunities to abuse others. But maybe it is also time for us to go with pen and notebook in hand to secular social scientists in order to learn about the dynamics involved in people becoming sexually abusive and whether what we teach each other are involved in those dynamics. Doing so might be painful for us today, but it certainly cannot even be as painful to those who will become abuse victims tomorrow.
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