The following is a transcript of my remarks to the Society of the Perpetually Aggrieved. The occasion for the address was a response to a court order, and it was in anticipation of the next sexual scandal that is going to be thrown against our community, whenever that might happen to be. A car was running outside, and I had a police escort.
Good evening, harpies, hostiles and intoleristas. I am sure that you all would rather not be here, and I think I can say that I feel exactly the same way, and so let’s just try to get through this together, shall we? The court order was as much of a surprise to me as I gather it was to you, and my only explanation is that a few Trump judges got together, and they each of them had one or two beers too many. So with the pleasantries out of the way, let me get to the substance of my remarks, and then we can be done.
I am here to explain to you why we won’t be complying with your demands when the next ginned-up sex scandal erupts, whenever that may be, and you all start demanding that I be a little more forthcoming with my answers to your imperious questions. Here are the reasons why none of that will be happening anytime soon.
The Lord Jesus one time faced down a crowd of men who had rocks in their hands, ready to stone the woman that they had caught in the “very act” of adultery. How they managed to catch her in the very act without also catching the man—a key ingredient to that very act—is perhaps worth asking about, since the law of Moses required the same penalty for both the man and the woman. But that is not my point here. Jesus dispersed the crowd of these accusers, and they trickled away starting with the eldest, by saying that the first stone should be cast by the one without sin. And He was not requiring sinless perfection, obviously, otherwise no justice could ever be done by any human courts, but rather He was saying that the one without this sin, the sin under discussion, should cast the first stone.
Now in this upcoming situation that I am anticipating, the accuser would have to be an entity that we might for convenience call Mr. Internet. The situation you all are so hot about is one that involved [please select one or more] a. child porn, b. sexual abuse, c. grooming, and d. incest. Now here is my question, and it is rather a pointed one. Is the Internet without sin when it comes to any of these things? No, actually, it is neck deep in all of them. More on this aspect of it in a moment.
There are actually two characteristics of the Internet that need to be examined here. One would be the qualifications of “the Internet” to investigate something like this, and to challenge the quality of the care that was given by actual pastors. The other would be the exuberant participation of “the Internet” in the very same sins we are discussing, not to mention the role of “the Internet” in helping to create the particular disaster we are now discussing.
With regard to the first issue, some of our accusers have called my counseling qualifications into question, saying that I have not been adequately trained and so forth. So what are my qualifications to address this [unhappy future situation]? The bottom line that the qualifications of an experienced pastor who was on the scene in the immediate aftermath of a crisis far surpasses the qualifications of various anonymous randos on the Internet fifteen years after the fact. Their only qualifications are bound up in the fact that they have rocks in their hands, and necks full of righteousness. They don’t know the people, they don’t know the facts, they don’t know the Scriptures, they don’t remember their own browser history, and they certainly don’t know their own hearts. One indication of their robust levels of ignorance is that they invariably want to stone the firemen, and not the arsonists.
This brings us to the second issue. It is not just the fact that the Internet is overflowing with the same kinds of sins. In this [particular] instance, we have straight line correlation. The situation you are currently yelling about was created by the Internet. Thanks to the world of porn—a form of debauchery that you, in other debates, ardently defend as a form of “free speech”—we now have six-year-olds experimenting with practices that previous generations learned about in their second year of medical school. It is as though your vaunted pornified free speech Internet dumped a load of toxic chemicals in this family’s backyard, and then when the kids all got sick and were rushed to the ER, you decided to wait fifteen years before pulling a third of the medical records in order to critique the judgments of the ER doctors, in front of a yelling mob. To be fair, I know that this is not how you would characterize your actions. That’s your problem. You ought to.
Once the Internet has put the issue into play, it takes on a life of its own. Reporters call, documentaries are made, questions are asked. Inquiring minds want to know.
One of the ways you have of keeping the mob yelling is by demanding that I simply “answer a few questions” about the counsel I gave at the time. Why would I not want to present my case to a panel of your frothing jurors?
Well, apart from the frothing, here are a few additional reasons. There are sound reasons why our legal system protects pastoral confidentiality. Now when going into a delicate counseling situation, I never promise absolute confidentiality because I don’t want to have the person then tell where they buried the body. But there is still such a thing as genuine pastoral confidentiality, and it is an important tool in the maintenance of moral order in our society. When men and women have something serious on their conscience, the right that they have to seek out spiritual counsel is an important part of bringing things to light so that they can be dealt with in a constructive way. When someone confesses to a minister, this is not part of a cover-up. The problem, whatever it was, was already covered up. The problem is actually now being surfaced. So one of the reasons why a faithful minister would not acquiesce to the pressure of your demands to spill the dirt is that this would demonstrate to that minister’s congregants that they were being cared for by a hireling, and not by a shepherd (John 10:12). A shepherd’s job is to protect the sheep, and not himself.
Second, after years have gone by, and one of the participants in the affair decides to make a public attack on those who tried to help at the time, the attack never comes with a signed release form, giving the church the right to make public all the records they may have concerning this person’s case. Like I said, they don’t do that. But even if they did do that, the accuser doesn’t have the authority to grant a release for all the other people who were involved in it. What this necessarily means is that the person who has a sacred trust to not allow his sheep to be mangled or shamed by those who specialize in digging up bones is one person who can therefore be accused. “Don’t you realize that your lack of cooperation here means that you can easily be accused of complicity and covering up?” Yes, I do realize that. Let them.
Third, there are times when certain aspects of a case have become public, and it at time becomes necessary to speak about it. But even in the rare cases where that has occurred, it should always be remembered that that public portion of a tangle is invariably a small fraction of the whole story. And that means that a minister who is speaking about it is almost never in a position to say, “Let me tell you the whole story.” It would be appalling if he did that.
Fourth . . . ah, friends, I see that I have reached my court appointed word count. Good night, and God bless.