I’m reading a lot of Substacks lately and a reckoning is coming. Sexual abuse has affected so many people that there is no more time for bullshit. Sexually abusing people does damage that no one can legitimately think it’s a good idea. And all those people who know in their heart it’s wrong have said, “This is the line in the sand that you cannot cross”. Somehow people in power who think that the rules don’t apply to them are astounded when this action so off the charts to most people is punishable by law.

The great reckoning regarding sexual abuse is coming, if it’s not here already. Cornell’s 7 seems to be that breaking point. It

should be, and one should have been long before this.

Because people who abuse children steal innocence from all of us, and because that is always an abuse of power, people in philosophical circles look for areas of power to look for abuse. Because the ultimate power in the universe, according to Christians, is God, people have begun to blame the human expression of God — the faith called Christianity.

Christianity, they say, establishes power that then gets exploited by its followers in things like manifest destiny, hierarchies of gender, destruction of the environment and so many other ills in our society. All of those things are true. Christians have engaged in horrible crimes against people who were doing no harm to them throughout history. men try to control women’s bodies using Christianity as their basis for doing so. Whole populations have been removed from existence by people claiming Christianity as their reason.

Because of this, pastors or priests or anyone else in the faith that has a position of power and sexually abuses a child has combined the worst crime with the religion of Jesus. Those people deserve the reckoning that is coming.

Just as “social Darwinism” isn’t about Darwin’s theory and is, in fact a bastardization of it. Power dynamics / political Christianity is not about Jesus, but is a bastardization of it.

When Jesus is quoted as sayimg, it would be better for them [people who damage the faith of little children ] if they had a millstone tied around their neck”, he is not kidding. When the Bible says “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven”,it is easy to put those two things together and believe that the destruction of the innocence of a little child will not be forgiven. The betrayal of the Holy Spirit by using it to do evil, and hurt the faith of a child can be seen as unforgivable. Since Jesus said those things, the religion of Jesus can not be said to justify or encourage sexual,abuse, particularly of a child.

Any person in a role of power using Jesus’ name who thinks they can abuse a child needs to hear those words with all the seriousness that is intended there by Jesus.

When John the Baptist says to the Jews of his time, “and don’t say, “We have Abraham for our ancestor“ to avoid responsibility, I believe that Jesus would say that to those who use their religion to harm others, especially innocent children

But while I picture the reckoning of abusers as a thousand busses driving toward them, I want to pull Jesus out of the way. There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that indicate abuse of a child — or frankly abuse of anyone— is acceptable. In the one place in the Bible where Jesus seems to deny aid to a woman (not even abuse, but neglect) he changes his mind and heals anyway.

That is the closest Jesus gets to abuse of a person in the entire Bible and he doesn’t do it.

We must always distinguish between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of the very human church.

Those who don’t, won’t or can’t, find themselves on the edge of blasphemy, even while saying others sin.

Justice, which Jesus is for, means taking aim at the right target. Jesus himself is not that target.

That’s all the have for now.

Peace,

John