Transcription
We in the charismatic movement have created this hyper-grace God that has no wrath for sin. And we've become just like him. He has no justice for victims. He has no vengeance. And we have adopted that exact same mentality. And then we have become like this false god that we've created. When you have abused your position of authority to sexually take advantage of somebody under your spiritual care, you have violated trust on such a level that to reinstate that person back into ministry is to gamble with the souls and the lives of God's people.
Welcome to the Minor Prophets podcast. I'm John Mark Baker. Today I am joined by Dr. Ron Caner. We're going to be looking at Unpunishable. This is a book written by Danny Silk, obviously with Bethel coming under scrutiny. There's so much that is being revealed right now. And I think it's really important that we investigate the ideas that got us into the mess we're in. And, you know, sorry to use a triggering term there, but...
"I picked up on that the word mess."
Yeah. That's going to be subtle foreshadowing here that's going to become important in this episode. So, Ron and I, we've been working on this video responding to the theology and the practice of Unpunishable by Danny Silk. Now, this book lays out a jurisprudence for restoration of fallen ministers. There are two major cases that Danny lays out as the proof of his concepts that they actually work. And so we're going to examine the theology and then we're going to examine those cases. Those are the cases of Ben Armstrong, which Bla1 and Christina Fere did an excellent job interviewing Sarah, who was Ben's victim, you know, the survivor of Ben's predations. We're going to be looking at that. Then there's another case, the case of Jonathan Welton, which the last three chapters of Unpunishable really center around. And we're going to examine Danny's jurisprudence that's laid out in the book and then applied to the case of Jonathan Welton and ask ourselves, does this actually bear out? One, is it biblical? Two, is it practical? And three, does it make for a safer church or a more dangerous one?
And, um, so before we dive into some of the arguments and get into some of the theology, Ron, do you have anything that you want to add here in the intro?
Yeah, I would say that, you know, we're not doing this just to do it. We believe that this book is deeply problematic. That it has contributed to this idea that predators can be restored to ministry. That you can take somebody who is a wolf interested in devouring the sheep and reform them, redeem them. And we're not, obviously Jesus can do anything in terms of redemption and changing someone's life. But it does not mean that the ultimate goal is that you're in ministry, as if ministry is just the chief goal of every human being. And if somebody is a wolf, if they've proven once, twice, three times that they're willing to prey upon God's flock, you know, I'm of the persuasion, and John Mark, I think you're of the persuasion, that that person cannot be trusted in that position. So, and this book has been used wide and far to say, "Hey, yeah, we can get this guy back in ministry." And Danny Silk himself, from what I understand, gets well-paid to come into a situation, several hundred dollars an hour, allegedly, to restore pastors who have committed clergy sexual abuse. And more and more, I think most Christian psychologists and counselors and social workers and certainly many pastors have come to the conclusion that once you have, we're not talking about walking into a bar and meeting a girl and cheating on your wife, which is horrible. We're talking about using your position of authority and preying on somebody, manipulating prophecy, manipulating your position as a moral authority to appease your sexual gratifications. That, in our opinion, is punishable and it is disqualifying.
Yeah, it's disqualifying. Danny Silk says in his book that his attitude towards those ministers who have fallen, who have really preyed upon those under their care, is that he approaches them like a scared deer and he tries to make himself, he's not a threat to them. He's not there to control this person. Let me just read the quote. Actually, Danny says this about his attitude towards those he is restoring. "One illustration I use to describe the spirit of gentleness in reference to Galatians 6:1 is to imagine trying to pet a deer. The only way I am going to be successful is if I can convince that deer that I pose zero threat to it. That means I need to eliminate as much anxiety from the encounter as possible. I need to demonstrate that I will not attempt to control it or hurt that deer in any way. The spirit of gentleness flows from the belief that I do not need to control you. I am not afraid of you or your mess. I'm not here to punish you, shame you, or try to protect other people from you. I am just here to help you get out of this hole."
Now, this is the attitude of the guy who's telling the story of these victims. So, in Unpunishable, the first chapter that's dedicated to the story of Ben Armstrong and Sarah. Sarah gets two sentences dedicated to her in the first chapter. Her story is told without her permission, the story of her abuse, and it's used to sell books. And so we don't, and everybody just sort of applauded the story of restoration as told by Danny Silk without ever having heard what Sarah had to say. And the same is true of Jonathan Welton. His story has been told by Danny Silk and by Jonathan Welton.
Yeah, and I think it's interesting that both of those cases, case studies, we now know, were faulty. Without going too deep into it right now, I'll just say that right now Ben Armstrong has been taken out of ministry. He's been put on administrative leave, I guess they would call it, because Sarah has told her story. Not just Sarah, also Roz came forward a few weeks ago as well and said, "I was groomed by Ben." I got out of the relationship, and this was before his issues with Sarah, probably just before, maybe a year, maybe less. But what they're realizing is, and in that story, in that first chapter, the word "affair" is used seven times. And when we use the word "affair," that is a consensual relationship. But in both Sarah's testimony and Roz's testimony, they were groomed little by little. I mean, Roz is very clear that when he met alone with her on the few times they met alone, in public, but alone, it went from his arm suddenly going around her. Now, again, this is, I guess he's in his late 30s at the time, and she's in her early 20s, and this is your, I guess they called it revival group leader. Suddenly, his arm is around you. I mean, I cannot imagine a scenario where I would be alone as a minister in a room and think it would be okay for me to put my arm around somebody who is not my wife, not my daughter. And then it went from there to, you know, where this is what friends do. And you have a relationship issue, intimacy issues, and I'm going to, God showed me you have intimacy issues. I'm going to help you with those intimacy issues. And then his hand goes in her leg and then it goes up her leg. And that's when she began to pull back. So, when you base a book on a story like that, and then seven years later since the book, you know, 16 years later since the almost an affair since the abuse, that that's a problem. And then in the issue with Jonathan Welton, the book was published before he was restored. In other words, it's like, well, we really got to get this book out and...
You know, he's halfway there or three-quarters, so let's just cross our fingers. But those who are his victims, as we'll hear from later, would say, "No, he didn't finish the process, and the book was never updated." And of course, we might mention here that Shawn Bowers wrote the foreword to the book. And as you said earlier, you guys a year ago came out, but you blew the whistle that we many of us knew about. It was kind of the worst-kept secret. But you guys publicized it, and you made it so it had to be dealt with. And of course, then Mike Winger, two months ago, coming out with a six-hour video regarding Shawn Bowers. So, Shawn is writing the foreword of this book, who has, who is himself a predator. And Danny at some point finds out that Shawn is a predator but leaves the foreword in his book for seven years. And only under pressure. Not that he woke up one day and said, "You know what? This is wrong. I probably shouldn't have a predator who's faking prophecy writing the foreword to my book about restoration." It took public pressure for him to come out and say that, yeah, I guess I should remove that.
Well, it was apropos that the foreword to Unpunishable would be written by a guy that they refused to punish. So, if we dive into some of the theology here, the reality is this book, the central thesis of this book is making a distinction between punishment and discipline. And so, Silk claims that this distinction lies at the heart of the New Covenant and Jesus' correction of humanity's false view of God. So, here's a quote from page 84 of the book: "In revealing the Father, Jesus systematically confronted and exposed humanity's false views of God. In particular, the view of God as a punisher who endorses the human punishment paradigm while revealing his plan to eliminate the punishment paradigm by forgiving sin." So, punishment, on his view, is not part of God's nature, but rather a manifestation of humanity's baser urges. Discipline, by contrast, is a manifestation of restorative justice, which is a more pure reflection of God's nature, according to Danny.
And so, another quote here from the book, this is from page 110: "In the New Covenant, discipline is focused on benefiting the person who has made the mess. In the punishment paradigm, the focus is on protecting the interests of everyone but the offender. But in the New Covenant, we understand that helping the mess-maker clean up their mess is ultimately what will produce justice and healing for everyone affected by it. Instead of taking the mess away or requiring the mess-maker to deal with the consequences alone, the Father's heart is to walk through the consequences alongside them, bringing comfort, correction, wisdom, and courage as they clean it up."
And what do you make of that so far, Ron?
Well, one of the things that concerns me is that Danny keeps saying, "in the New Testament, in the New Testament," as if the God of the New Testament is different from the God of the Old Testament. It's not like in the Old Testament, he was grumpy and angry and he just wanted to punish people, and then he got born again. And in the New Testament, he's suddenly... That is not what we believe. We believe that the God of the Old Testament, and yeah, there are things in the Old Testament that make you scratch your head, but the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. The grace that we find, and this is another misnomer, that the New Testament is about grace and the Old Testament is about works or law. But we see the grace of God all throughout the Old Covenant. The Israelites being rescued from Egypt was not based on merit. It was based on grace. And so, and I think this is kind of a Bethel thing. I think it was Bill Johnson who, I'm going to paraphrase here, but I think he says something like, "If you see Jesus, you know, you see the fullness of God," which I would agree with. But if there's anything else contradictory to Jesus, then it's not the real God. I have a real problem with that. I want to look at the Bible as a whole. I wouldn't, obviously, I'm not judging Jesus. I'm saying that, by the way, Jesus appears quite a bit in the Old Covenant. We see him in Joshua as the captain of the armies of the Lord of Hosts. We see him in the fire with the three Hebrew children. These appearances of Jesus. I believe that's who ate lunch with Abraham in Genesis 18 or 19. So, we're not trying to reconcile Jesus with the God of the Old Testament. They are one and the same. Yahweh of the Old Covenant, Jesus in the New Testament, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It seems like either Danny is saying the Old Testament is different from the New Testament in terms of the nature of God, or he just ignores it, the Old Covenant altogether, and just says the New Testament teaches in the New Testament.
Another thing that we'll see, and we alluded to it earlier, is he talks, you see in this one paragraph, and I'm going to look at it. We see the word "mess" at least one, two, three times. I can't remember. I think I counted well over a hundred times the word "mess," "mess-maker," "my mess," "your mess." And it's another word for sin. It's a nicer word for sin. And so, when somebody commits adultery, no, they don't just commit adultery, but they prey on somebody in their congregation. They use prophetic words like, "The Lord showed me my wife is going to die and you're going to be my future wife." So, when somebody does that, that's called making a mess. Most of us look at that as horrific, destructive behavior that deeply wounds the soul of a victim. But Danny constantly refers to that as a mess. And the person's responsibility is to clean up their mess. And I see in his book almost no emphasis on the scar on the soul, the wound that takes place on the soul of the victim. I have spent the last two years. I have talked to so many victims of clergy sexual abuse or spiritual abuse, and coming out of that is so difficult. But again, maybe he's written another book on that, but this book, the focus is solely on the "mess-maker," and that's a concern with me.
Yeah, I'm going to show a video here, and this illustrates exactly what the priorities of restoration look like according to the Unpunishable doctrine.
"There was, you know, there was terror in your eyes. What did you think was going to happen?"
"Well, you know, I thought my job was done. I didn't even have any question. I'm like, ah, okay. This is ministry's gone. All that's gone. Do whatever you need to do to clean this up with your wife and kids."
"Like that wasn't even my thing. You asked me a question early on. Actually, we were sitting in your office and you said, 'So, what does coming back to ministry look like?' And I was surprised you even asked that question because I didn't think that was even on the table."
So, immediately he's asking Ben Armstrong, "What does coming back to ministry look like?" I mean, this is, this is immediate. I happen to know Sarah was not asked the same question. What do you think about Ben Armstrong coming back to ministry? This goes to what you're talking about, Ron. The jurisprudence here is not about, um, it's not about restoring those who have been emotionally scarred by abuse from somebody who represented to them Christ, who was to them a spiritual father, who is, there's a betrayal on such a level that goes so deep to the soul. And rather than having the first question asked, "Why, what can we do to restore you, Sarah? What can we do to make this community a safe place for you to heal, Sarah?" Instead, it is, "What does coming back to ministry look like?" Well, why? Well, because he seemed repentant. He seemed repentant. And, um, if you notice who's at that table, you've got Danny and you've got Ben and Heather. There's somebody else that's missing in this great testimony of reconciliation and restoration. Who's missing at that table?
Yeah, well, obviously Sarah is missing there. And, you know, I have a book coming out soon called When Shepherds Prey. And we have a whole chapter on restoration. And one of the first things I say is, "Why is the first question that people ask you? You see it all the time. Can he be restored to ministry?" So, recently, there was Ted Shuddlesworth Jr., who is some sort of new prosperity preacher. Him and his wife have a congregation, and he has, I don't know if it was with somebody in the congregation, but he's had a moral failure, committed some level of adultery. And in the very first article, the very first response from him and his wife is, "Yeah, we hope he'll be back, you know, and in the meantime, you know, the wife is going to run the church." It's like the ministry must go on at all costs. And that is deeply concerning. That's what Danny is asking, you know, Ben, what does ministry? Why are you even talking about that? Let's just talk about, actually, Ben has the better response. "My, I have no ministry if I don't have my wife and kids." That's what they should be talking about, not restoration to ministry. But you're right. There's somebody who isn't there because she is gone. For some weird reason, in that video, Danny represents Sarah as still being a part of the community. Now, I don't know if he is lying or if he just doesn't know, but she is long gone. She stayed, so it happened in, I think 2009. She stayed around for, I think about a year, and then she's gone. And then here this video is made, I think in 2018. This is seven years after she left. And he presents her as still part of the community. The last place she was was defiantly working in the coffee shop, saying, "I'm not going to disappear. I'm going to be here. You're going to have to deal with me. You're going to have to see me." But eventually, she did move on, and bless her heart, she got married, has kids, and she's a wonderful young woman. Thank God for his healing power. But we see who is in there. You have Ben who is being restored and he's getting his dream job back without any regard for the soul of Sarah. Where is she at today in 2018? Well, I guess she's part of the community, but she's actually not. Nobody's followed up on her. Nobody's called her up. Nobody from the HR department. I think there's one or two people in their massive church, and they have two people in the HR department. Nobody has checked up on her.
So, in the meantime, no one's checked on her. Heather says something insightful in this video that I think we should do well to pay attention to. Let me show it here.
"A lot of good choices in here, and it takes a lot of good choices. It really does."
"I mean, I was always sometimes questioning in the back of my mind, as I mentioned, Danny had just wrote a book about what we're talking about, the honor."
"I had just written Culture of Honor the year before, I think."
"So I thought maybe they were keeping Ben along because they were testing out if the book really worked."
"We're just propping this book up."
"Yeah. Yeah. We, if we don't do this, like I just wrote a book that says this works."
"So, so no, but beyond..."
"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking."
"Yeah. Yeah. What?"
There's a proverb in there somewhere about, you know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Or there's a little bit of truth in every... You are the wordsmith, so you probably know the idiom I'm thinking of.
Yeah. Uh, it's, I think the one I'm thinking of is, "It's funny because it's true." So, yeah, they're all laughing because they know that's what's going on. You know, she's clocking the fact that he is propping up this idea. This again goes to Danny's view of God. God does not punish. Humans punish, and it is a human punishment paradigm that we see playing out in the Old Testament. But Jesus comes to correct the narrative of humanity's false view of God. That's what he's saying.
So, for Danny, under punishment, it is upholding the rules. Pain is inflicted to pose worldly sorrow. Repentance is irrelevant. Forgiveness is irrelevant. Punishment requires submission of control. Punishment requires the stopping of bad behavior. And good behavior is compliance and manipulative. It is powerless. It's fear-driven. It has the goal of self-preservation and is an external law imposed on people. Whereas discipline is all about restoring the relationship. Pain is embraced, and it leads to godly sorrow. Repentance is essential. Forgiveness is essential. It requires responsibility and self-control. It transforms the heart, and good behavior is the fruit of love. Where punishment is powerless, discipline is powerful. And he kind of, that's his language for the locus of control being internal versus external. So, if you're powerless, you have an external locus of control. Whereas if you're powerful, you have an internal locus of control. So, discipline is love-driven. The goal of discipline is connection, and it is an internal law that is coming from the heart.
Now, so here's the question. I think that we would agree, right, that there is a form of punishment that is unhealthy. It is imposing upon people consequences for their sins, whereas forgiveness would bring an alleviation or an abatement of consequences that would otherwise be justifiable. I think that goes without saying. You and I deserve hell. We deserve eternal separation from God himself. We deserve that. But because of God's mercy, he took upon himself the punishment for our sins. You know, tipping my hand here, I believe in penal substitutionary atonement. Like he bore in himself the consequence for our sins. The one who would be our judge bore our, took our sentence, and in so doing, he gave us righteousness. He gave us his life. So, we believe that. We're not in any way contradicting that. The problem is that when we take this, when we take this very narrow view of what punishment is versus discipline, and we say that God has never been a punisher, we make mince meat out of the Bible.
And so, when God says of himself, he proclaims his name to Moses. This is God's introduction of his core attributes, his very nature, to Moses, the covenant mediator, the one who is really truly introducing Yahweh to humanity through the people of Israel. He has this moment where the Lord is, for really the first time, telling us who he is. And he passes by Moses and he shows him his goodness and he proclaims his name, which is his essential nature, his essential attributes, his character, who he really is, to Moses. And he says this: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation."
And so, "visit" in the sense that's used here is an idiom for to punish.
Well, actually, if you look at the NIV, the NIV says, "Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents." So, yes, you're right. The word "visit" there could just as well be translated "punished."
Yeah. So, the idea here is that it is God's justice in the form of punishment is presented as being intrinsic to his nature. It was a declaration of his name. And so, I want to read maybe just a couple of quotes from some commentaries. This is from the New American Commentary by Stuart Douglas on Exodus. "God then issued a corrective against the natural human tendency to accept grace on the assumption that because an infinite God can produce an infinite amount of grace, sin has no significant consequence. This corrective is introduced simply by the normal Hebrew word for 'and,' which the NIV justifiably translates as 'yet,' but which is not a strong adversative word. Perhaps an even more revealing, even if tendentious, translation would be something like, 'Forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, and at the same time not letting anybody off, making sure that the guilty get what they deserve.' So, God is merciful and an avenger. He is a merciful God and a punishing God. He is a just God."
And this makes absolutely perfect sense to anybody who has undergone severe victimization. I think everybody wants God to be all mercy all the time until somebody severely violates a family member of theirs. And then something on the inside of them, this recognition of this basic human moral intuition, when we realize that if somebody has committed rape and then murder, and then the judge says, "You know what? I'll forgive you. You know, I can tell you're totally reformed. You're never going to do this again." And let's say he knows with perfect knowledge the guy's never going to do it again and he's totally reformed. And so therefore, punishment is unnecessary because all we need is restorative justice. All we need is somebody to just be totally reformed, and then we're good. We would instinctively have this righteous outcry to say, "That is wrong." Why? Because when we recognize that punishment for the guilty is just, we are, we have an instinctive moral intuition that that is what is right.
And what if the murdered person was a family member, a loved one, someone that you deeply cared about? They're gone from your life. Yes, you would assume that there would be justice, and you would call it injustice if the judge said, "You know what? He really gets it. He really gets it that he should not have murdered your wife or your daughter or your friend. So, we're going to let him go." You know, it's again, it's not that we're, we do get the difference between discipline and punishment. And those words can be interchangeable. I could say to my child, who's my three children in their 30s, but when they were younger, I could say to them, "You know, if you do that, you're going to be punished. If you do that, you're going to be disciplined." They understood those words to mean the same thing. But there is a difference. If I walk in the house and I catch one of my children doing something they shouldn't do, and I just fly off the handle and I rip my belt out and I just start hitting them violently, and we want to call that punishment. Well, that's bad. We all agree that that is not constructive. That is not going to help them in any way. Now, if I sit down with my child and I say, "You know what? Here's what you did that is wrong. Let me explain to you why it was wrong. And there is going to be a consequence, and you're going to have to, you know, I'm going to take away your phone or your TV privileges or whatever for seven days. And then after seven days, we're going to have another talk." Okay. Yeah, that's a better way to go about it. But let's not pretend that God does not punish. We see in the very first story in the Bible, these two people, Adam and Eve, disobey God, and as a result, there's a huge consequence. Sin enters into the world. Now, Danny would say, "Yeah, that God didn't punish them. They're just experiencing the consequences of sin." And then he does a similar thing with Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother, and no, I look at that as God punishing Cain. And God punished Adam and Eve for their sin. And yes, Jesus comes later and redeems it. But one of the great examples is King David. You know, if I had a nickel for every time somebody fell into sin and people say, "Well, well, what about King David? You know, God restored him." You know, in my book that's coming out, we call it the King David deal. You don't want the King David deal. Nobody should want anybody who says, "I can be restored to ministry because David was restored to ministry." They have no idea what they're saying because David suffered even after he really, really repented. In fact, he repented so good that it's recorded in one of the most famous Psalms in world history, Psalm 51. "Create in me a clean heart, oh God." Keith Green wrote a beautiful song about it. I mean, everybody knows Psalm 51. Yet the son died, and then one of his other sons raped his daughter, and then his half-sister, and then Absalom kills Amnon, his half-brother, because Tamar was his full sister, and then he gets banished from the kingdom. He comes back, but then he tries to steal the kingdom. It's a, I hate to use the word, but it's a real mess for David. You do not want the King David deal because he suffered greatly. And by the way, David's sin wasn't just what he did with Bathsheba. It wasn't even just what he did with Uriah. There were a bunch of other men that went with Uriah to the walled city who also got killed. David had a lot of blood on his hands, and God punished him.
Yeah. If let's look at 2 Samuel 12:7-14, and we see exactly God's response to David's repentance. Nathan said to David, "You are the man." You know, "You're the man, David." Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: "I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. And I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.'" David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." And Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die." So, there's the forgiveness that is extended to David, but the consequences of his sin were not removed. Look at verse 14: "Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die." Unpunishable.
Yeah. And if you look at the Israelites who, you know, they can't find Moses. He's been gone for, you know, almost 40 days. And they build a golden calf, and a lot of Israelites died after that. Then there's Numbers 25, the famous story where Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, comes into the camp and sees Zimri and Cozbi, a Midianite woman. They're together doing what they shouldn't do, and he kills both of them, which stops the plague. But I think it was 23,000 people had already died because of the plague that God visited, visited, there's that word again, upon the Israelites because of their sin. So, to reinvent God as a non-punisher, that he never punishes, I don't think is an honest reading of scripture.
Now, what someone might say, particularly if you come from the idea that, you know, if anything contradicts Jesus, then you have every right to question it. Someone might say, "Well, if in the New Testament, things change because it's a new God and it's a, everything's new, but nobody gets punished. How would you respond to that?"
Yeah. Um, I would just ask Ananias and Sapphira what they think about it.
Well, unfortunately, they can't answer because they got punished.
Yeah. Yes. Or Jezebel from Revelation 3. Or, you know, you see God exacting punishment. I would say, I would also just point to a major theological issue with that is that when God says, "It is vengeance is mine, says the Lord, I will repay," he's making a statement about his nature and who he is and what he will do. That he hasn't read Unpunishable and needs to go through some counseling, get some inner healing.
Because... Well, the reality is, the only hope we have is the wrath of God. The only reason I can forgive is because I trust that God is just. The reason that we can let go of vengeance ourselves is because we can say, "God, in your hands is justice. You can judge, and you will judge rightly." Now, Danny Silk says this. He paints God not as an active punisher, but as somebody who passively allows somebody who is unrepentant to encounter the consequences of their own decisions. That's how he paints hell. Hell is just that's what you chose. You chose to go away from God. And it's not God actively punishing you for your sins. It's just God allowing the natural consequences of your sins to be visited upon you. He's just sort of like, "Whatever. He removes his hand." So, this is his quote: "Remember, God's wrath and punishment are always a matter of him removing his hand and honoring our sinful choices and their consequences."
So... Yeah, let me just go ahead. Let me just comment on that real quick because I remember back in Bible school, our Old Testament professor, who was a scholar in ancient Semitic languages, particularly Hebrew, and he would say that when people claim that the God of the Bible is, he doesn't judge, he just, he just, he allows you to be, he allows Satan in. He first of all, there really isn't a whole lot of difference because if he could prevent it and yet he doesn't, then he is actively allowing it. But the Hebrew does not say that this idea that hell, hell is just what you make it. Hell is, you know, you chose to allow God to remove his hand. No, hell is an active action on behalf of God to disobedience, just as salvation is. Just as granting forgiveness is, it is an action on the part of a holy God.
And it is good. It is an active good. We would say that if we all adopted this sort of jurisprudence that, you know, to be the agent of punishment is to be part of the punishment paradigm for somebody who's unrepentant, like that's not what we do. Instead, we just allow the natural consequences of somebody's actions to befall them. How can we justify the imprisonment of people by the state? You know, for somebody who's part of like this, this dominionist attitude that was like, "Hey, this is the New Testament jurisprudence. What we need to do is apply this New Covenant framework to all the seven mountains of influence." And then, God forbid, we get our hands on that government mountain and then start to apply this same jurisprudence, suddenly the unpunishable attitude towards the Ben Armstrongs and the Jonathan Weltons would be applied to civil government as well. And here's the thing: if it's not good for civil government, it's not good for church government because good is good. I like the context doesn't change the fundamental nature of what is good. We can't say punishment is good for the government to do but it's bad for the church to do. No, good is good. And what does the Bible say about the authorities? It says, "The authorities that exist," Romans 13, "the existing authorities have been established by God." That leads me to believe that they're doing what God wants them to do. They're not doing what he doesn't want them to do. And what is that? "Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority, meaning the government, is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right, and you will be commended. For the ruler is God's servant for your good. For your good. For the good of society. But if you do wrong, be afraid. For the rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. Get ready. They are God's servants, agents of wrath. God's servants, agents of wrath. God's servants, not Satan's servants. Agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer."
So, now this idea that the secular government is this evil thing that God is tolerating and somehow through some mystical way he's using them. That doesn't seem to be what Paul is saying here. Yes, secular governments can be evil, and they can be noble. But the principle is noble, and the principle is that you need governments in society so that you can have a proper functioning society. And part of their job is to punish criminal activity. Any society that says, "We're not going to punish criminal activity if the person says sorry," is not going to have a great society. And if we say, as New Testament leaders and elders, "Well, that's the secular government. Let them do what God's called them to do. But we as leaders, we know better." See, here's what happens. That's where you get to taking a pet and saying, you know, "We're not going to report you to the authorities and ruin your whole life. You're just 22 years old, you know, and yes, you did this to a three-year-old, and that was bad, and you also did it to a five-year-old, and that was really bad, but we're going to work with you." No, you report them to the authorities. And the best, if you really care about that person and you care about your congregation, then the grace of God for them is going through the authorities and being, dare I say, punished.
Yeah. Yeah. I want to give, I want to be fair in my criticism here. Danny, I think would agree with everything that we just said, but also disagree in the same book. So, in page 180...
And that's why it's confusing. That's why it's confusing because you're reading the book and you're going, "Well, yeah, I kind of see that, but then the conclusion is the concerning part."
Exactly. So, he says in page 189, "Our job as shepherds is to protect innocent people from harm." Amen. Like parents, we feel responsible if one of our kids gets hurt on our watch. So, when we perceive a threat, we confront and extract it as quickly as we can. However, we must remember that the mess-maker, there's that word again, is also one of our kids. When leaders err on the side of protecting the group against the mess-maker without being able to see that the person is repenting, they can end up punishing the mess-maker and cutting them off from reconciliation." Um, there we see it right. It's like, here he recognizes the responsibility of a pastor, of a shepherd, to protect the community. But if we, so that was page 189. If we just go a few pages back, in page 129, he says, "I'm not here to try to protect other people from you." And I think at its core, what we see here is a failure of discernment, a failure to recognize when there are wolves, a failure to recognize when there's true repentance versus faux repentance. And then, and then finally, a failure to recognize when it doesn't actually matter whether it is true repentance versus faux repentance.
I'll say this. There's this, you know, theological debate that people are having right now about whether people should, whether it's biblical that somebody could be restored to ministry versus not restored to ministry. Is it biblical to say somebody is permanently disqualified from ministry? If in fact the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness and we are forgiven, if somebody is totally forgiven and they have been transformed, who's anybody to say, this is the argument that Danny makes in this book, who's anybody to say that they can't be restored back to their...
...position?
Yeah. So, for instance, Danny says this: "People are naturally wary," by the way, this is page 199 of the book. "People are naturally wary about a fallen leader returning to a position of influence, especially once they find out that he is a repeat offender." Yeah, duh. However, often this weariness is an expression of the punishment paradigm. The reality is that many leaders today are repeat offenders without losing their position. They are just successful in hiding their sin or sinning in an acceptable way. For some reason, the sins of fear, anger, self-preservation, idolatry, gluttony, lust, and pride often get a pass in certain leaders. The sheer number of leaders regularly using porn in this present generation is staggering. But if we don't know about it, or we struggle with the same things ourselves, we continue to trust in power and follow these broken leaders. Ron, tell me what you think about that.
Uh, it's a horrible argument. It's an absurd argument. What he's saying is that because some people don't get caught, we shouldn't be too hard on people who do get caught. That's like saying, there's a guy that has been shoplifting from my local grocery store and he's just really, really good at it and we can't figure out who he is. We don't know his identity. And then I go in there and I take a loaf of bread and I get caught and I say, "Whoa, wait a minute. There's this other guy out there that you guys can't catch, so you got to let me go, too." So, what Danny seems to be saying is that if we can't hold everybody accountable that we don't know about, who might be committing adultery, who might be abusing the sheep, who might be abusing children, then it just doesn't make sense. It's a really bad argument. And I remember reading that same thing and underlining it myself. But I want to go back a little bit further to what you said. Because somebody could say, "Well, what's the big deal about, you know, yeah, I do have to protect my kids and, you know, what if the thing that the person did to them wasn't really that big of a deal? What if it was a minor issue? They gossiped about them and then they apologized. Yeah, we want them to be reconciled and to grow in that." That's not what the book is about. The...
The book has two case studies in it. One is Ben Armstrong, the other one is Jonathan Welton.
Uh with Ben, they called it an affair, but then they find out Danny allegedly finds out in the book, and I say allegedly because some people are saying that the Bethl leaders knew about his first quote unquote affair. But in the book, he finds out, oh, 12 years earlier when you first got married, you also committed adultery. And what does he say? "We hit pay dirt." When you hit pay dirt, like he's so excited about getting that piece of information, it doesn't enter his mind how destructive adultery is. What, what, what the pain? You know, Heather decided to uh uh push it under the carpet, sweep it under the carpet, and they just pretended. Yeah, that is just way too simplistic to to uh categorize or explain the pain of betrayal the way he did.
So, I want to be clear, the sin he is focusing on in the book is the sin of adultery and and clergy sexual abuse. We, we now know, maybe he didn't know, but we know now that what Ben did would be classified because we, I believe Sarah, this is my opinion based on believing Sarah's testimony and believing Roz's testimony, what they explained would be classified as grooming.
Um, with Jonathan Welton, the first uh situation that he had, and we'll get into that later, was with somebody under his authority. And then he did other very uncomfortable things with other women who were under his authority and and to men as well, not necessarily sexual, but but but manipulative. So that's what the book is about.
So, yeah, let me be real clear. If there is somebody who is going to sexually abuse my children, you better believe I'm going to keep them out of my house. I'm not going to say, "Well, I love the mess maker, too." No, if you're a mess maker, stay away from my house. Stay away from my church. My job is, yes, there is redemption. And we believe in that. But our primary calling, what do they call us? What is another word for pastor? I can't remember. Starts with an S. I think it, I think you're thinking of shepherd.
>> Shepherd. Thank you so much. Shepherd. Shepherd. And they, you know, the the the responsibility of the shepherd is not to the wolves. It is not to the lions. It is to protect the sheep. And my job as a shepherd is not to protect my buddy who committed CSA. And as you know, I was a sadly involved in a situation where somebody very dear and close to me uh committed some level of CSA and and it was, you know, I had to deal with it. I had to take the side of the victim. Why? Because that's what a shepherd is supposed to do. He does not cover for his ministry buddies. And I think that's the problem we're seeing in places like Bethl where they covered for Shawn BS for all these years where they cover for each other. And and and I really believe why it's so important that we're talking about this right now is because John Mark, I think it's far worse than we ever imagined. If, if you know, you and I both had similar visions. You know, for me it was in 2020. I don't know when you had yours, but but they both had to do 2021, but they both had to do with uh destruction coming upon the church at the by the hand of God, at least in my vision. um punishing sin within the leadership. And I just, if you had told me back then that it was as bad it w as it is. I mean, Mike Bickl was my, he was my in the charismatic circus I could always say, but Mike Bickle, love that guy, you know, good, good solid.
So make no mistake, the issue that Danny is exc saying saying is not that big of a deal in his book, or I don't want to put words in his mouth. uh that he is referring to as the messmaker that we have a responsibility to is somebody who is feeding on the sheep. Mhm. Right. And as you said, the part of the lack of wisdom that we see present in this book is nobody is ever a wolf, as long as they say sorry. There's nobody's ever a wolf. He says this, "The mess maker is also one of our kids." Well, what if they're not?
>> What if they're not?
>> So, the the other thing here is it's not just about personal sins. I mean, in the quote that we read earlier, he said, um, he said this, I'll, I'll read it again. "For some reason, the sins of fear, anger, self-preservation, idolatry, gluttony, lust, and pride often get a pass in certain leaders." Well, the sin of fear, anger, self-preservation, idolatry, a lot of times those uh those sins can be personal sins where there is not a victim. But when you have abused your position of authority to sec take advantage of somebody under your spiritual care, you have violated trust on such a level that to reinstate that person back into ministry is to gamble with the souls and the lives of God's people. It is evil. It is not, it, it is less than wise. It is, it is wrong to do that. And to say something like, "Well, you don't know that person's heart, right?" Um, you don't know whether or not they're actually repentant. Um, true. We don't know. Maybe
>> we heir we heir on the side of protecting the sheep, not the messmaker.
>> That's right. Yeah. Right. I like the reality is we don't, we don't know people's hearts. We can't tell when somebody, we can't always tell when somebody is truly repentant. So Danny is simultaneously trying to play the role of counselor with this Rogerian unconditional positive regard that is meant to be therapeutic to the person that he's, he's in front of. And that's important for somebody who needs a counselor. But if that counselor, that therapist also has the duty of protecting the community, then they are in two roles that are actually at cross purposes with each other. And so this is a conflict of interest. And we see that that conflict of interest plays out in both of the cases that that Danny Silk lays out to support the ideas of his book. Um, and but so if we have this idea that, well, this mess maker is one of our kids too, let's compare that with God's heart. Who, God is there anybody that God does not love? Is there, is there anybody that God is not uh lord over? Is not creator over? Uh, but let's look at his heart from uh Matthew chap 24 uh 45-51. "Who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master has set over his households to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find So doing when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that wicked servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed,' and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will restore him in a spirit of gentleness like one of his no will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites in that place where there will be weeping and nashing of teeth." This is God's heart for protecting his people that he would he would exact punishment. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. He will exact punishment on those leaders who abuse their position of authority in order to take advantage o of those who are underneath them. We see the same uh uh attitude in Ezekiel 34.
But uh Ron, why don't you share a comment? I was, I was that was going to be my comment is that take a look at Ezekiel 34 where, you know, God, you know, pulls no pulls pulls no punches when it comes to his anger at the shepherds of Israel because they're feasting on the sheep. Now, let's just suppose because again, I think people who, if they're seeing us for the first time, they might think that we're being a bit harsh. We, we do care for the Ben Armstrongs of this world and for the Jonathan Weltons, and we do want them to repent and we do want them to be restored 100% to Jesus. We, we love them. We care for them. We don't think that they should be, if they are professing repentance and walking through the steps, then they, they have a place in the New Testament church to be loved, to be part of the community. What we're saying is this is that you prioritize the sheep over a broken shepherd, over a shepherd who is, even if he fell and acted like a wolf, even if it was only one time, you prioritize the sheep.
And so in the, in the case of Ben, Ben Armstrong and Sarah, the very fact that they stayed in the same congregation, I mean, that is that is malpractice, as as pastoral malpractice, because what they should have done is they should have sat down with Sarah. First of all, they should have discerned it that it was not an affair. They're simply now, I, I believe she has said that she sat down with them. She told them what happened. Um, and and we've all heard her story by now. I mean, it's very clear that he acted upon her and she froze. And then he acted upon her a second time. Uh, this time he got her drunk and then tried to pull her into a bedroom where I can only assume that he wanted to have sexual relations with her and she said no. And and he still poured her. I mean, it's criminal what he did. He still, after saying no, he pulled her into the bedroom. And again, it didn't go as far as as uh intercourse, but it's horrible behavior. And they just left the two of them in the same congregation. Again, I don't know exactly how much they knew. I know that she had to walk into a room in Bethl. If you're listening, boy, you need to address this. She walked into a room with six to eight men who then asked her what happened. Not one of them could bring their wife in. They couldn't have a, a female psychologist, an advocate, somebody there to hold her hand, to give her some tissues, but just a group of men asking her about something just so intimate and horrible and traumatic in her life.
So, what you should have done is said, "Hey, Ben, we love you. We care for you. We're not going to throw you out, but you can no longer be in this congregation. We, we have other Bethl congregations and we're going to send you to to one of our other ones. And and we're going to get you the care that you need to restore you as a man, as a person, as a believer. But you, this poor girl is working in the coffee shop." And Bennis says he's bemoning. "Yeah, I had to do my mentoring there." No, you didn't. No, you didn't. There's nobody, no other place in the universe that you could have done mentoring with. And and kind of shocking that you're even doing mentoring at that point. I don't know how long that is.
>> Exactly.
>> Exactly.
>> But but no, you did not have to use the coffee shop. God bless Sarah for being basically saying, "I'm not going to disappear. I am going to take this job in the coffee shop. You're not going to get rid of me." And and again, I have to go back and listen to the interview with Danny, but I seem to remember him kind of bemoning that he had to see her when when he would do mentoring in the coffee shop.
Yeah. Um, exactly right. Exactly right. What's interesting to me is that we don't seem to have these theological debates about restoration because people people are like, "Well, if they if you're forgiven, let's just put them right back in ministry." We don't have those same theological debates about restoring uh child abusers to nursery ministry. I, I wonder why that is. No one's asking for the Bible verse that says, "Well, what Bible verse are you leaning upon?" you know, uh, Jonathan Welton and and uh, Joel Richardson had a text exchange that Joel published, uh, where Joel says, um, you know, "You're you're permanently disqualified from ministry." Jonathan Welton says, "Well, you know, what verse uh, are you what verse are you using to create that theology for yourself?" Is the
>> I would have responded with uh, 1 Corinthians 9:27 where Paul says uh, uh, "I discipline my body. I beat it daily," meaning that he, he controls his appetites, which would include food and sex and things like that. "I beat my body daily and discipline it, lest after I have preached to others, I myself become disqualified." So scholars argue on exactly what he means by disqualified. You know, for me, he's talking about preaching. I discipline my body because if I don't, after I preach, I will be disqualified. So I would say that what Paul is saying that there in in 1 Corinthians 9, let me finish my thought. I'm, I'm, I'm arguing with myself. In 1 Corinthians 9, um, he clearly says that he can be disqualified. Uh, we're not quite sure what he's talking about in terms of what actions they would be. Actions that prioritize his flesh over his spirit. So in 1 Corinthians 6, he is connecting these ideas of not disciplining your appetites with the uh, the horrendousness of sexual sin. He says, "You say the food for stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both. The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. But his, but by his power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will also raise us. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ themselves? Shall I take them members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?" So now he jumps two, three chapters later, and he's talking about not disciplining his flesh leading to disqualification. So, I do believe there are spiritual uh precedents for being disqualified from ministry. But again, it goes back to what I was saying.
>> Add on to it.
>> Well, add on to it Paul's qualifications for leadership in 1 Timothy chapter 3. "The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, uh the husband of one wife, soberminded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace into a snare of the devil." So all of these qualifications, above reproach, husband of one wife, you know, temperate, self-controlled, uh, like all of these things are violated when somebody commits clergy sexual abuse.
Yeah. And again, we, we do care for that person and we do want to help this person. But there is certain circles in the body of believers. I think Rick Joiner uh espouses a theology or a belief or a philosophy that the ultimate goal Galatians 6:1, that we restore in gentleness those who have fallen into sin, that that the ultimate goal is to get them back into ministry. When we have this passion to see a predator or someone who has acted as a predator restored to ministry. And you know, in the case of Rick Joiner and Todd Bentley, uh Rick said in his, he, he wrote about this after Todd was exposed, I don't know, for the third or fourth time back in 2019. He said that, "I already, I knew the Lord showed me that that uh Todd would have more problems sexually, but the Lord gave him a verse, 'A righteous man falls down seven times, but he gets up.'" And he's saying, "Well, that's Todd. He keeps getting up." That is not talking about sexual sin. That's about somebody who is doing the right thing and gets beat up by life and they keep going. They don't stay down. They keep going. It is not talking about somebody who's perverse, who is using prophecy or their their position in ministry to get women to take off their tops and send them pictures or far worse things than that. Because we, if you take that that idea and you say, "We just got to get him back in ministry because he's an evangelist. The call, the people he's going to reach." Are you not worried about all those interns that were defiled or or fans that he uh connected with online and got them to do unclean things or requested that they would do unclean things and then they blocked him? How do you think those people felt afterwards? "Oh my gosh, I just connected with Todd Bentley, who I just adored and loved as an evangelist, and he asked me to do something weird." You don't get over that in 10 minutes, Rick. And so, you seem to prioritize the need for Todd to be back in ministry over protecting God's flock. And that's why probably, notice everyone I said probably, you were being sued right now by former minors who were abused in your ministry allegedly uh uh because you tolerate it. But if we protected the sheep and not the mess maker so much, I think we would see a lot less sexual sin. If we had higher standards on restoration to ministry, like for me, I'll just tell you right now, if I ever cheat on my wife, I'm done. I'm done. I'm out of ministry. Not I don't even just mean clergy sexual abuse. Any type of adulterous behavior, I'm out. I'm done. And and that's my standard. If we had a standard like that, I think we'd see a lot less. But in a lot of these circles,
>> John Mark, I think they wink at it. I think you know Rick Joiner said recently in a message talking about Bob Jones who committed horrific CSA against a mother and daughter at the same time. He said, "This is something men do." No, it's not. Not men of God. Men of God for the most part don't do this. We control. Yeah. Listen, I'm attracted to women. I'm a man. But we have self-control, right? And it is a prerequisite to be an elder, to have self-control, to be temperate. Self-control. By the way, what was Paul, what was Paul thinking? I mean, how dare Paul put such a high standard on
>> what a religious spirit he had.
>> I know. You got to be faithful to your wife. Does he, does he even know how hard? I mean, he didn't have a wife, so he doesn't know how hard that is. But no, that's that's the minimum. The minimum is you don't cheat on your wife.
>> Yeah. It's, it's obviously obviously it's absurd um that that we would have this, but nevertheless, people are being very pedantic and they're saying, "Well, what is your biblical justification?" And, you know, though we've given the biblical justification, I'll even say this, let's say you disagree with all of the the entirety of the biblical case we just made. Let's say that you dis disagree with all that. You say, "You know what, you guys are uh misapplying the scriptures and you're, you're isogating in order to see your your uh priors inside of the text." And we'll say, "Okay, um, for the sake of argument, we'll just grant that. I think that you're wrong, but, um, let's do, nursery workers now. Um, what's your biblical justification for not restoring uh child abusers to nursery ministry?"
>> Yeah. Do you need a Bible verse for it?
>> No. Obviously, it's absurd to say that you don't need
>> I don't know. I don't know.
>> I'm going to, I'm going to give you a little pushback because Chris Valatin, Chris Valatin two years ago when he was expressing his undying love for a predator, Mike Pickle, who had, who had already been known to have been with a 14-year-old, at least been accused. Tammy Woods had come back and come out in early February. And in late February, Chris Valatin is expressing his undying love to Mike. "I love Mike Bickl. He's my brother." And then he talks about Ben Armstrong. And then he says, "And no, we don't put any restrictions on him when it comes to meeting with women." So by that by that standard, I would imagine that
>> you'd have to apply the same jurist prudence to to to right. They don't they because they intuitively recognize it's a it's an absurdity. They don't do that, right?
>> But they apply the same jurist prudence
>> to to their adults uh um people in their care, the adult members of their congregation. So, so, um, why is there not an argument right now within the zeitgeist? Why is there not an argument right now about restoring pets to nursery ministry? Well, um, I think one, we recognize it as intuitively absurd, uh, because we recognize that to restore a pet to nursery ministry is to gamble with the lives of children, and it's utterly reckless. It is utterly evil to do, and you should go to jail if you try to do it. And it's the same thing that we're seeing there. The other reason, we're not thieves, and we don't take thieves. We don't take Bernie maid off. if he gets born again and we say, "Well, he's dead now." But we don't say, "Hey, Bernie, you know, now that you're saved, we're going to put you, we're going to make you the treasurer. We're going to make you the the CPA of the No, we don't trust somebody who has been a thief to to count the money." But but by that logic, that hey, they've repented, they're born again, so we're not going to put any restrictions on Ben when it comes to being, if we see him alone with a woman, that won't even raise alarms for us because that's how much we trust him. Then it should be the same not only for nursery workers, but thieves and and everyone else. Or maybe we just use common sense and we say, this person committed adultery at some level when he first got married. Then we have a testimony that he had, they what they called an affair. I don't call it that, um, in 12 years later. Maybe we shouldn't put him in situations where he might be tempted. Even if we do bring him back into ministry, which I would not have done, maybe we should not encourage him to be alone with women as opposed to walking in a room, seeing him alone with a woman with his arm around her and go, "Hey, bless you, Ben." Being in ministry is not that important. The, the reason that we're not seeing the the uh push to restore pedophiles to nursery, uh, nursery ministry is this. There's no vain glory
>> available to people
>> for nursery ministry. There's the only reason that we have this push is because, uh, because people crave their platforms. They crave the influence. They crave the money that's that's involved. They crave the the glory, and and they think, "This is my calling. This is what God has called me to do. Shouldn't I be exercising my gifts?" You know, if you're a teacher, and Jonathan Welton says, "Well, I've been given a teaching gift. Should I not exercise that?" There's so many other places where you can use this. It is not that important. It is not that important to be in ministry.
>> I think what we see with a lot of these guys, I'm thinking of somebody right now who has sadly been exposed as a prophetic fake liar. And not just that, somebody willing to curse people. You know, "God showed me this, God showed me that," when he clearly didn't. Um, you, you, you, you see somebody panicking that they're they they're losing their entire platform and they can't do anything else. You know, they're in their late 30s or early 40s and they have no other skills. They're conmen. They've been conning the church. And maybe they, you know, at what level did they at one time have an experience with the Lord? I don't know. I believe many of them were at one time walking with the Lord, but now they're they're later on in life and they they have nothing else. They're going to have to go get a job, you know, collecting grocery carts at the grocery store because they, they don't have any other skills. And the ministry is a way of making money. It's a way of feeling important, my place in the community. And you're very right that that you don't have that in the nursery. You know, you typically don't get paid and you don't get celebrated. Um, so, and that, and that's why it is a red flag when someone says, "I just got to get back into the nursery."
Yeah. Right. Right. I, I think that this reveals the idolatry that we have for for what ministry is. We have flipped it on its head. No longer is it service to God's sheep. You know, uh, Jesus in reinstating Peter, "Do you love me?" "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." "You know all things. Then demonstrate your love for me in this way. Take care of my people. Feed my sheep." As shepherds, this is how we demonstrate love for Christ is to tend well the people that he loves and gave his life for. To prioritize the replatforming of people who have been utterly disqualified by harming his sheep is is to do the opposite of what Christ has called us to do. And in so doing, I believe we are showing contempt for him by the way that we treat his body, by the way that we treat his flock. We are showing contempt for Jesus. That's a strong statement, but I don't think you can refute it. I, I think that this is this is this matters. This matters to Jesus how we treat his people. And we will give an account for what we have done to replplatform predators, to to make this the jurist prudence that it's it's more important that this this predator finds healing and saves his marriage versus the life that he destroyed having a home and a safe place to heal. I'm speaking of Sarah. You know, it, it is, it is more important. And and again, I, I think it's worth, I'm grateful that you've done this, Ron, throughout this conversation. We're coming out really strong here uh about predators and predation. I, God cares about Ben Armstrong. Um, God really does care about Ven Armstrong. And uh, I, I hope and and uh, choose to believe that he truly is repentant, that he wants to serve Jesus and and and love God and love his family. Well, I, I choose to believe that. Um, nevertheless, to reinstate somebody with that track record is to gamble with God's people. And it's just not worth it.
>> It's not worth the risk.
>> Yeah. And if, uh, this entire book, and this is our motivation here, we're talking about a book that has been used all over the world uh to justify restoring those who have committed clergy sexual abuse. Read the end of the book. That that is the conclusion Danny Silk comes to is, "We'll, we'll see, we hope to see these people back in ministry again." Ministry, I could, I would be very happy to live without ministry. I don't need ministry. I've, I've uh, it is this idol that we need to let go of. I do love doing what I do. I love teaching the word. I love, so I, I, I love who God has called me to be. But I could live without it. My family is more important, and my relationship with God is even more important. Um, but at the end of that book, the book is about getting people who have committed adultery or committed clergy sexual abuse, getting them back in ministry. And that just has not worked out well in the two cases. Uh, let's, this just briefly again over regarding Ben Armstrong. Danny's whole thing. He, when did he hit pay dirt? When Ben was honest with him about the first adultery, he said, "Now we hit pay dirt." Except he wasn't honest with you. He wasn't honest with you about the nature of his relationship with Sarah because you kept calling it an affair. When in fact, clearly she wanted nothing to do with him, and and and he is touching her and getting her drunk. So he wasn't honest with you. So that really invalid. If you're saying this guy proves that it works, I'm saying it proves that it doesn't. And with Jonathan Welton, you know, we, as we will hear later, I, we, you and I know Mark and I, John, Mark, we know as a fact that when the pastor who was pastoring Jonathan Welton got a copy of that book, having worked with Danny Silk and a group of other uh people in Jonathan Welton's life for many years, that when they got when he got that book in the mail, it was representing a ministry to Jonathan that he was involved to involved with as if it went great, as if they got to the root of things, even though it was clearly unfinished, and he opens up the package, and he's got this book, which by the way, has still has a fourword of Sean BS, and he is shocked that he's being represented in the book, and he had just dysfellowshipped Jonathan Welton.
So, let me just, for for those who aren't putting all that together, Danny Silk writes this book. He has two case studies. One is Ben Armstrong. The other is Jonathan Welton. And as the book comes out, Jonathan Welton, who is this great success story on his way, has just been kicked out of his church by his pastor who was part of that team overseeing his restoration. And yet, he didn't, Danny didn't say, "Wait a minute. We got to get that book back. We got to get that out out of print or no, let's just wait and see. Hopefully, it'll have a better, a better uh outcome in the future." So, it is my conclusion that there is some dishonesty in putting that book out.
>> Yeah. uh dishonesty, conflict of interest, writing a book about the guy that you're restoring. When you claim in the book that you're getting your theology for the book from the guy that you are restoring, um, there's so many conflicts of interest here that to, uh, it boggles the mind. The common thread I'm seeing here is that, uh, when it comes to restoration, victims come last. And That's the, that's the unpunishable jurist prudence that I think truly needs to be undone in as we are learning the errors of what led to this downfall within the charismatic movement. Um, unpunishable was the uh, was the clearest articulation of what I think has been, uh, our modus operandi for a long time. Um, this Danny Silk didn't invent this. Um, this has been this has been around for decades. Um, the reason that we are going after, uh, unpunishable is because we have seen, just in stark relief, the type of damage that has been done that God is right now exposing within our movement and within our community. And this needs to be undone. Here's, here's the reality. Uh, Danny Silk has painted a picture of God that has no wrath, does not impose consequences, does not impose punishment on people. He merely allows them to experience the consequences in a passive sense. And you know the scripture says about those who worship idols, um, those who worship them become like them. I, I think that this is what has happened. We, uh, Danny and we in the charismatic movement has created this hyper grace god that has no wrath for sin. And we've become just like him. He has no, uh, justice for victims. He has no vengeance. And we have adopted that exact same mentality. And then we have become like this false god that we've created. And this is a truly, truly a travesty that we need to repent.