This blog apostle gig is exhausting. I have to talk endlessly about Submission and Authority. I have to figure out how to justify an apostolic authority without an apostolic succession since I’m not Catholic.
And I have to protect all those people with my apostolic authority.
Oh, wait…I can’t say that. Because when it comes time to actually cover someone, where am I?
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You know…screw it…I think I have been too subtle. Let’s try blunt. It turns out that I can’t get my Funny Bone re-attached on this one.
Let’s try ranting, raving flamingly, in your face unapologetic. Noel told her story on www.sgmsurvivors.com about her three-year-old daughter being molested by a 15-year-old boy in a Sovereign Grace Ministries church, and the ensuing pastoral counseling ordeal that spans YEARS. The boy lies to the pastors about his actions and his evil. The pastors, in a stroke of utter insanity, play spiritual patty cake with the boy and villainize the parents. Why? What can be the logic? What can be the motive?
I can’t begin to understand the stunning lack of objectivity in the actions of seemingly every Sovereign Grace Ministries “leader” associated with the story. And since every “leader” at SGM keeps note on EVERYBODY, that would leave NOBODY out of the chain of responsibility.
I marvel at the lack of concern for justice: the stunning obfuscation between vengeance and justice. I marvel at the utter impatience with Noel and her husband Grizzly to work through the process of their own grief. I marvel at SGM “leadership” determination from the outset to minimize what this 15-year-old had done.
(What did it matter if the child was asleep while she was being fingered? What did it matter if she never knew? So if I shoot, say, Robin Boisvert in the head while he’s sleeping, that makes the assault less immoral? Can I be on staff if I don’t call John Owen a sissy? Since I did it while Robin was sleeping, I should be qualified? He never knew after all?)
Larry Tomczak, where the Hell are you, in all your Apostolic Glory? Che Ahn, where are you in all your submission and authority magnificence?
I know WHAT you are. A couple of gutless-wonder charlatans more interested in a form of righteousness and a pathetic need to justify your own existence and not a shred of action that even pretends at the power of apostolic office. I mean what EXACTLY is this Apostolic authority used for? I mean really… isn’t THIS the thing you national SPIRITUAL AMBASSADORS claim to be FOR? Defending? COVERING? PEOPLE?
You were PRINCIPAL parts of the insanity that has become Sovereign Grace Ministries. You know the inner workings. You both suffered those inner workings. How can you turn a blind eye to the methods: their power and determination to tyrannize? What are you clinging to? Some absurd super spiritual determination for reconciliation?
There is no reconciliation with Sovereign Grace Ministries…there is no reform with evil. Chamberlain already tried that. REMEMBER! There is no brotherly participation with men whose governmental philosophy makes them Elected Official, Police Force, Judge, Jury, and Spiritual Executioner–“Men” who reserve the right to doctrinally enforce ignorance or nosiness depending on how it serves their purpose. “Men” who turn their craven Care Group leaders into the Waffen-SS. (You care group leaders are no men… go ahead and cut it all off. It’s useless. No wonder you need CJ to tell you how to romance your wives and act like men.) “Men” who reserve the right to make the sin of lying superior to the CRIME of molestation!!
Larry, how does this fail to strike your very manhood? Did CJ keep your testicles in a box when you “signed” your humility letter? You were booted for lying. A 15-year-old recidivistic child molester lies repeatedly about his actions and because he can read Sin and Temptation and speak the CJ speak, he is put in Children’s ministry. Just think of what you COULD have gotten away with. Your 401K and cushy Montgomery County salary could have remained intact if you’d just been willing to say Hail John Calvin and Goose step down Muncaster Mill Rd.
Che Ahn, how can you remain silent? How can you remain uninvolved? Or are you hedging your bets by some quiet influence behind the scene? Or has it not even occurred to you that you bear responsibility?
Where does this collective unwillingness to emphatically and absolutely call Sovereign Grace Ministries a force of evil in the modern world come from? Dozens of stories have been openly shared on www.sgmsurvivors.com and www.sgmrefuge.com of the tyranny and abuse; and the email pour in from others too scared, or too detailed to publish. I marvel at the apologizing and the endless timidity that tries to pass for humble, clement spirituality: the relentless effort to not appear angry or passionate or judgmental.
Bullpucky and nonsense!
We have lost our sense of proportion. Christians will rail en masse about Todd Bentley’s personal failings and his screwy calls for angelic visitation, but we get timid, meek, and mild when stories of stunning abuse and the cover-up of criminal activity are revealed by former members of Sovereign Grace Ministries? All because CJ Mahaney has elevated himself to poster child of humble communication and a demagogue of the Mathew 18 ethic to mean he gets to reconcile with only those who have offended HIM?
Are you JOKING?
The implications here are vast. When Evil can call itself Righteousness and then parade itself with impunity and those defending TRUE Righteousness must apologize for bringing a judgment, humanity is LOST. Christianity has forfeited the right to be called Salt and Light. And PRETEND apostles are revealed for cowardly, gutless, craven, frauds.
Che Ahn, if you have a fivefold calling now you had one then, back when you were a part of PDI, then the calling did not change. The authority you claim to have NOW is the same authority you should have used to stop the madness. So, how is it you think you are absolved? What? You think because you are part of a bunch Charismatics dubbing each other Apostles that you have arrived? Is Apostle-ness expressed in word or is it in DEED?
Whatever. Your theologizing is irrelevant.
You are BOTH a couple of gutless frauds. If you can’t speak out openly, publicly, and with moral clarity, and utter, absolute, outrage at the conduct of your “Apostolic Brothers” at Sovereign Grace Ministries, you have forfeited the right to call yourself a lover of righteousness, or covering for people. (And this goes for ALL national “Apostles” that fail to do their job!)
Stay comfy in your apostolic office. Furnish it well with tithes and offerings. Be at ease in your silent cowardice. Keep covering the asses of all those other “men” who need someone to have spiritual asses covered. You and your butt buddies can guard the prophecy mic… make sure nobody speaks in tongues out of order. That is a very, very, very important apostolic responsibility. Make sure everything is decent and in order. Keep your priorities straight and your reputations pristine. People need to be able to look up to their spiritual coverings after all. Well… in your case look behind, since you are very obviously not in FRONT.
It’s okay… The work of resisting the evil pouring out of the cesspool of SGM is being done.
The women and children are carrying the fight against the misogynistic forces of evil at Sovereign Grace Ministries. Well, the women and children are carrying carnage.
Also, you must be very clever at hiding your irony, because I actually can’t tell if you’re actually claiming that Paul was misogynistic, or if some people simply use his doctrines for misogynistic purposes.
And I actually can’t believe I said actually twice in one sentence.
Hey Lawrence… you on the right site? my name is john? are you looking for Jim from survivors?
and if you are on the right site… not sure which comment about Plato and Paul you are talking about.
oh… I see which comments you are talking about. uh…. let’s see…
Since you have studied Philosophy, then you know what Plato’s metaphysical and epistemological assumptions were about man and the human condition. And you know that Augustine applied those assumptions to Christian interpretation. Hellenism (its worldview) dominated Christianity from about the middle of the second century onward. Many of our contemporary doctrines stem from that worldview.
I contend that Plato/Augustine worldview is not the worldview that God sought to instill in his people. As a result, many of the historic arguments and debates and subsequent conclusions are wrong. But most modern Christians don’t know they are wrong because they don’t realize the historic forces that shaped the specific interpretive methodology.
And yes… you are right… my irony is a bit subtle sometimes… The question is whose misogyny is represented in those Pauline passages.
and thanks for the question … I don’t mind clarifying.
Haha yeah that’s what I get for posting when I’m tired. I have no idea why I said Jim, I don’t even know any Jim’s :-).
I agree with what you’re saying to a point. Clearly Augustine has influenced western thought in general, and Christianity and particular. And clearly Augustine borrowed from Plato’s thoughts and reasoning, especially concerning the nature of man. But that basically only applies to western thought (and thus only the western church, no?.) How then do the places with the greatest current growth in Christianity (Africa, Asia, Latin America) come to the same fundamental conclusions about the Bible as we (the western church) do? Which were the same fundamental conclusions that the Hellenists came to? Which, I would contend (and I would assume you would disagree with), were the same fundamental conclusions that the early Jewish/middle eastern Christians came to?
Lawrence,
OK… that is a pretty good response: a fair question. I don’t want to misstate your comment but let me see if I can sum up. Because we have church growth in a location that is not considered “west” and these people are adopting the same ideology of the western church, there must be a common source for the assumption.
Good so far?
You didn’t say this but it is implied I think: since they are arriving at the same conclusions, their source is Bible. Ergo, asserting that Plato is a driving force of Christian theology is wrong at best and a ridiculous overstatement at worst.
A couple of things. First, this assumes that all “church” growth springs from pure isolation and remains ideologically homogeneous.
This would only be true of a man with no cultural understanding of western culture was marooned on Mars with nothing but a Bible. This person’s conclusions would be worthy of study because theoretically, the sum of his understanding would derive from one academic source. But we would have to further decide what cannon he is reading. The Catholic Cannon? The Protestant Cannon? And then we would have to take into account the interpretations that were rendered in translation that have their source in Augustinian presumption (of which there are many).
And then we would have to take into account which specific translation he has been given. Is it a translation from antiquity? Or one of the modern translations? These translations have already done some ready-made exegetics that lead to some specific hermeneutics.
Which of course leads nicely to the issue of translation. Any time we cross language lines, we also cross cultural lines. As a result, Cannon must be adjusted to best capture the sense of the writer’s intent and successfully address modern cultural understanding. In the world of translation, the spectrum for achieving this goal looks like this:
Free — Dynamic equivalent — Literal
The constant tension of translation is how literal do we make the text and yet make it relevant to the hearer. The reality is no one is ever just handed a Bible. They are always handed two things: the Bible and the tradition of how to read that Bible. And that tradition starts with the interpretive methods applied to translation.
Most modern translations are renderings of Greek and the few that are not are renderings of Latin. Uhh… by definition, these languages are by default Hellenistic. Language and culture are almost inextricably intertwined. I don’t care if the final language is Swahili, the source of the translation held Hellenistic assumptions. And even if the language is not at fault, the translators are inclined to default to the historic “orthodox” interpretations. Anyone claiming orthodoxy is without fail appealing to western theology.
Secondly, this presumes that all “church” growth springs from the same doctrinal pedigree. All things church are not necessarily all things Bible. Denominations are largely responsible for missions work and, with very few exceptions, denominations are the product of the Reformation. So their intellectual heritage is effectively western.
I am not up to speed on African revival, but I suspect a casual evaluation would show that the vast percentage of outreach is being done by decidedly western thinking organizations. (or even worse… decidedly Marxist/Collectivist western thinking… but I digress)
If I thought about it for a while, I could come up with a whole list of caveats to producing a truly isolated and subsequently homogeneous understanding of biblical texts. I can tell you are a thinker… I suspect you can easily think of a few yourself.
And the fact that you have identified these same ideological assumptions springing up in non-western locations, I think, goes to my overarching point. These concepts are so deeply embedded in our Christian understanding that they end up finding voice in cultures effectively alien to the West. This stands as a true curiosity because the Bible is written by and to a Semitic people with a very Middle Eastern worldview. And the Hebraic worldview stuck out mightily in contrast to its neighbors. Their worldview was in stark contrast to the rest of the world … and it does not share many similarities to Plato’s worldview.
…sorry for interupting the Plato convo, guys, but
Juli
if you read this, can you call me? I left a message on your cell.
Thanks.
it’s interesting that we typically doubt man’s ability to arrive at truth independent from anyone else…including the “church”..in whatever form or geographic location that may be.
and it’s also interesting that when we see some sort of collective mindset being manifested, we tend to assume that this hive-mind is therefore “truth”.
Personally, nothing is more beautiful and powerful to me than seeing truth bear itself out in a world full of people individually created in the image of God…and the many shapes, paths and forms this takes is simply breathtaking. And not once does this diminish or compromise the nature of truth itself, it only illustrates its power to maintain and flourish in fact in such circumstances.
Yeah… if truth is defined by multiplied numbers believing the same thing, then don’t we have to become Buddhist or something?
What spiritual pedigree do they have over there? A couple billion people can’t be wrong, can they?
Who’s Jim from survivors? 🙂
that would be a typo… I think the website is refuge. I’d have to check though.
Well-50 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong…can they…I mean, maybe the Las Vegas years were as good as the Sun record sessions.
Anyway-sorry for the sidetrack-John-I’m fascinated by your mention of Hellenistic influences on Christian theology. It’s something I’ve stumbled across in my readings of the early church. I’d go so far to say when you hear a Christian preacher go over the “Classical Attributes of God” they are basically using the Bible to try and prove Greek philosophical assumptions about God.
Would you agree or disagree with that statement?
Musicman,
I think this a perfect example of the kind of thing I’m referring to.
I don’t want to overstate my case. Hellenistic does not mean without truth. And Hebraic does not mean specifically truthful. Indeed, I submit that Socrates offered the intellectual predicates of reason that Yahweh had instilled in his people. Truth goes abroad in the earth. And like all ideas, and thinkers of those ideas, the Greeks took foundational concepts and pressed them to the next logical assumption.
But the modern theological failing has it seeds in adopting the predicate assumptions of Hellenistic thinkers and purporting those assumptions as authoritative merely because they were advocated by church authorities.
The classical attributes of God is a very good example. Most people will go to the argumentative stake over the philosophical assumptions that the Christian God must be omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence to truly BE God and never once understand these are Greek intellectual issues. While at the same time be wholly ignorant of the names of Yahweh openly extolled through out canon: e.g. Elohay Kedem, Elohay Mishpat, Elohay Selichot, Elohay Marom. And even worse…when the translations of those names are exegete, these same Greek zealots will pooh-pooh the nature of God’s own self-revelation as if a general trait of god-ness is more important than Yahweh specifically revealing himself.
I’ve been reading Thomas Cahill’s book about why the Greeks Matter..Sailing the Wine Red Sea. It’s insightful and makes me wonder why I never hear this stuff before….Hellenism has SATURATED the modern “church” and mindset and people don’t have a clue why they believe what they do and why they do…and it really rips open the whole idea of orthodoxy, canon, and everything else….if one dares enough to enlighten themselves and maybe walk away with a bit more truth than they had before.
To whoever writes these articles… I am a member of Larry Tomczak’s family and we left a long time ago from SGM. We were the pioneers of leaving SGM. Please post something that is correct. No offense but it makes me sad that you have to post things that are not any longer true. I would also like you respect everyone even if they are wrong. C.J. did hurt our family very badly but we have forgiven him and gone on with our lives! SGM yes indeed is not a good place for everyone but yet there is much healing that has come about when it comes to all the people who have left. I happen to be a poster for SGM survivors and we have been in contact with the heads of the group. They are great people. You post the following: Larry Tomczak, where the Hell are you, in all your Apostolic Glory? Che Ahn, where are you in all your submission and authority magnificence?
To this I have to say Che and Larry haven’t been connected with SGM in over 10 years. Please be respectful even to people who don’t agree with you. Using the word for male anatomy is not a good turn of phrase. All I ask is respect is due everyone. No, I do not like C.J. but I respect him as a man!