Do the Evil People in Our Churches Mean Our Theology is Evil too?
I remember believing my parents knew everything—when I was five years old. Any question as grand as God’s eternality to as simple as the thoughts of ladybugs. Any question I had, they could answer it. Or so I believed.
As I grew, like many children I was slowly disenchanted. I began hearing more, “I don’t know,” “Ask your teacher,” or, “Ask the pastor,” type-answers. A new enchantment began as I believed maybe those people knew all the answers. I have sweet memories of attending a Christian summer camp where my camp counselors almost seemed to glow with holiness and knowledge. If only I could be like them, I thought. If only I could reach their level of spirituality, maturity, and knowledge.
A few years passed and I became friends with one of my camp counselor’s younger sisters. I was so excited the first time she invited me over. To see her sisters in their home and how they interact with each other—to hear them talk about God again and see how his love pours out of them. I felt anticipation with each step up their long, rocky driveway.
Yet in that house, the bubble of enchantment was once again shattered. I listened to teenage sisters argue and bicker. I heard them complain about how much time the other one took in the bathroom. I saw them roll their eyes at their mother.
They’re… just like me, I thought, my heart deflated. I felt like a child who had just learned that Santa and the Tooth Fairy didn’t actually exist. They’re just… ordinary, sinful girls. Like me. As I’ve grown, I’ve watched more “perfect” believers become ordinary, sinful women like me. I’ve become friends with pastors and heard them apologize. They sin just like me.
Despite how many times my enchantment has been broken, I’ve continued to raise people and groups up in my mind. I’ve done it with theological camps. I’d settle down into one and breathe a sigh of relief as I’d lean my head back and take in the new, fresh air. Here is a sanctuary, a place where people are hardly ever wrong—especially not on big things. Here, with such solid theology and a high view of God and holiness, people will rarely sin.
But the serpent has invaded those sanctuaries too.
It didn’t take long to find people spitting hateful, spiteful, and rude words at each other. It didn’t require much digging to find a twisted Bible verse or misconstrued doctrine. And before long, I found terrible stories of abuse too.
It can leave you cynical, this constant disenchantment. You begin to wonder what’s the point. Questions around God’s goodness start to bubble up. Perhaps you begin to blame theology for such a mess of people like this.
There’s validity in asking if the fruit you’re seeing from people in a particular theological camp is produced from incorrect, abusive, and unbiblical theology. If the majority of people who claim a theological title are rude, abusing one another, degrading fellow image bearers, and disobeying God’s law, it might be because the theology isn’t actually biblical. All theology bears fruit. Good theology should bear good fruit and bad theology will inevitably produce bad fruit.
No one can deny the reality that we live in a broken, sinful world. There isn’t one perfect person on this planet—only Jesus lived on earth without sinning. That means that no matter where we turn, what school of thought we chose, what camp we settle in, what church we attend, or what friendships we form, we will be confronted with pain and sadness. We will be hurt and we will hurt others. If we choose to let bad experiences dictate what we believe, we’ll never be able to stop shifting and searching. We’ll never trust anyone and we’ll never find a place to call home.
Does this mean we should endure abuse, manipulation, and harmful theology being taught from the pulpit? No. We should leave those places, seek out justice, and flee to safety. Instead, this is a call to let God’s Word dictate our beliefs rather than the evil people who distort it. We need to look beyond the people and to the God who calls us to our faith. As our Saviour and Creator, he does get to decide how we worship him. We were created to bring him glory, not the other way around. He doesn’t serve our ever-changing desires, but we serve him as our constant, perfect, unchanging God.
This doesn’t mean your experience isn’t valid or painful. Of course it is. And it should be listened to and tended to, like a fresh, smarting wound. Go to therapy, talk to a friend, write in a journal, read a book. Take the time you need to heal—even if that means taking some distance from a certain theological camp before you can sort and discern what the truth really is.
But don’t let evil people keep you from worshiping God the way he has commanded us. Don’t let experience dictate what you believe or how you interpret Scripture. Leave that to God. Seek the truth and come to conclusions based on being convinced from God’s Word and the work of the Holy Spirit. He is worthy of your proper worship. Will we get it completely right this side of Heaven? Will we understand it all without fault? No, but God is worth our effort to do our best, and his grace extends where we fall short in our understanding.
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