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A La Carte (3/12)
- 03/12/10
- 5
Sexual History - Russell Moore answers this question: “How Much Do I Need to Know About My Potential Spouse's Sexual Past?”
With Arms Wide Open - Mike Dewalt interviews Daniel Hyde about his new book, Welcome to a Reformed Church.
Careful - Maryanne (my little sister) is writing about the necessity of being careful of sexual predators within the church. She speaks from family experience where almost every one of us kids was targeted at one time or another through either church or Christian schools (though, thankfully, none were victimized).
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (5)
I want to comment anonymously on your sister’s post, Tim.
Too often being “careful” translates into being unfoundedly suspicious. Sadly, many in the Church resort to a knee-jerk reaction against stereotypes, a discernment issue we have never resolved.
For instance, in far too many churches, any man who is pushing 30 years old and still single is viewed as either a closet homosexual or a pedophile. This is a lumping action, too, as individual comportment goes ignored. A man may be widely acknowledged by peers as completely safe, but if enough input comes in from people who don’t know him simply because he fits a stereotype, all bets are off.
I’ve watched too many solid Christian men who worked with children have their careers derailed for no other reason than they got too old and lacked a ring on their finger. What makes this worse is that being married doesn’t prevent someone from being an abuser, but the public tends not to understand that reality.
Discerning the molester from the normal person takes great discernment. But please, let’s not “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” on this issue. Plenty of good people get taken out by the blowback, and that’s not how the Church should operate.
While I certainly don’t believe being thirty and single makes you a molester, I think there are precautions we should take in churches that should be applied universally, even to people who are considered “safe”.
Background checks is a good start, for anyone who wants to work with kids. My church has a rule where each kids classroom has either two adults (usually a man and a woman, or two women) or an adult and one teenage “helper”. This rule is applied regardless of who the adult is- no adult is ever left in a classroom alone.
I found your sister’s post to be extremely valuable, with some good insights on intuition, which too often gets ignored.
We don’t allow our children to sleepover anywhere, though other kids can sleep over at our house. Not always understood, but too bad.
As I think about this topic, I believe that it is wise to take precautions against the possibility that something of this nature happening.I think these precautions protect everyone, for indeed just an accusation of wrong doing can ruin someone’s reputation. It doesn’t matter if they are guilty or not, or if they are found to be innocent, in the minds of a lot of people once an allegation of this nature happens, they are not to be trusted.I certainly don’t mind these precautions taken with me; they are as much for my protection as anyone else.
Tim! Awesome post from Russell Moore. A must-read for anyone single, or who has kids, or who might possibly want kids, or maybe even might someday encounter a single Christian :-)