When the One Who Raises Their Hand Becomes the Problem

I want to write to you, church and ministry leaders.

I’m not writing to advocates right now. If they want to listen into what I share, they can. But this isn't for them. It's for the brother or sister who loves Jesus, loves His church, and has grown tired of the endless drumbeat of awareness and advocacy and accusation filling up our feeds. 

You’re frustrated because there is so much of that going on these days. You’re exasperated because you know lots of good work is being done through ministries of the Church, but the exposure pokes at people‘s confidence in the Church and you’re seeing people throw out Jesus and his body because of it. 

Not only that, but sometimes it seems as though the people who are loudest advocates have unprocessed trauma of their own, and “raising awareness” is more a way for them to take out their anger than it is a way to actually fix problems.

I understand these frustrations because I share a good bit of them myself.

But there’s a reason these things matter to people. There’s a reason raising awareness catches like wildfire on social media. And there’s a reason the more you try to discredit what’s happening on social media, the more your own people suspect you. 

So allow me to share some thoughts about it.

Why I Understand the Frustration

I'm not writing to you as someone standing off to the side, thinking out loud about a problem I've only read about. I've walked this road from a few different angles.

First of all, I have personally faced psychological, emotional, and spiritual abuse. I know what that looks like from the inside. I've been near enough to physical abuse to feel its heat, even though, by the grace of God, I was never touched. I have been the recipient of cyberbullying. I've walked alongside people who lived through the kind of abuse where a man bars the doorway and makes his family sit and absorb whatever he's unloading. I've walked with people navigating threats to their bodies and their safety. 

And in a church leadership role, I’ve been a part of teams that have had to navigate this kind of thing, including a situation involving a couple of young people exchanging sexual images. That included a legal investigation and everything that comes with it. Honestly, we weren’t prepared for a situation like that. That made us realize the importance of having a protocol thought through, articulated, and in action before the emergencies arise.

And through all these experiences, I witnessed how people who claim the advocate's banner stretch the truth until it borders on falsehood, the same way I've watched defenders of the accused ignore the evidence sitting right in front of them and play their own games of manipulation. Many times it has cut both directions.

So when I say I get the frustration, I mean it.

And I've seen the other unhealthy trend, too, the one baked into so many of our churches. The moment there's any inkling of a scandal, people jump straight to a conclusion, and it's almost always the worst one available. We don't have a clean, settled sense of who we can trust. It's a genuine mess and I feel the exasperation as much as you do.

The One Thing I Don't Get

Here's something I can't make sense of, though.

Why is there such a strong default to defend and restore the accused, and to turn the blame, the suspicion, the accusation onto the very person who came forward pointing out the problem? Somebody raises their hand and says, "This is happening," and almost on reflex the room turns around and starts listing off everything wrong with them. Every fault. Every failure. Every place they've stumbled.

Of course they have faults. So do you. So do I. Every one of us.

That person never claimed to be perfect. They never said they had it all together. They pointed at something serious and said, "There's a problem here that needs dealt with." And instead of leaning in, we made them the problem.

Do we not realize that alone tells everyone something has gone wrong?

I grew up hearing an old saying, one I always took to be a decent rule of thumb for reading the health of a situation. It went something like this: when the person who points out the problem becomes the problem, you have a problem. If somebody raises their hand to say, "We have something serious here," and the group's response is to decide that the hand-raiser is the real issue, then we've stumbled onto a deeper sickness than the one they were trying to name.

A healthy home, a healthy church, a healthy anything, gives space to hear a person out when they say something is wrong. We ought to lean in. Get curious. Wait, where's the problem? Say more. Even when you're the one in charge – especially then. If I'm the father in a household, the leader at work, the elder in a church, I need the capacity and the humility to let people show me where the trouble is, even when the trouble is me.

For some reason, we've decided that naming the problem is dishonorable. As though being honest about a situation is inherently divisive.

I've got news. Letting the problem go on unnamed is the far greater dishonor. That is, unless the only thing we actually care about is our reputation and our image, and not Jesus and His kingdom.

If my wife raises her hand and tells me the way I'm treating her isn't safe, why on earth would I not spend the time, the energy, and the money it takes to become someone who is safe? If people I'm leading come to me and say, "When you do or say that, we feel this," why would I not want to understand how they're experiencing me? I can hold two things at once. I can lean in to hear them without pretending they carry no responsibility of their own for their growth. But the moment I rush to point out how much they have to grow, I've only proven their point. That reflex exposes my own toxic insecurity and need for help.

Jesus said it plainly: "There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known" (Luke 12:2). 

If I truly believe that, then I have nothing to protect by hiding. Even if I think I'm innocent, why would I not lean in and ask, "What are you feeling? What's going on here?" That will be the default posture of who truly love others and desire to serve them from a reverence for Christ.

Instead, we have a default posture that treats every accusation as an attack to be repelled. I myself have a lot of red flags whenever I hear fellow church and ministry leaders say, “We’ve been dealing with a lot of spiritual attack.” It has become a common way of minimizing the concerns people bring about the very organization one leads. It’s a classic case of DARVO. It isn't the way of Jesus. It's pride wearing the costume of spiritual discernment.

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We Must Pursue Emotional Health

Some of us have been abused ourselves, and we're also carrying the weight of church leadership, and so we feel this pull to push everyone forward, to keep the focus on walking in the light and moving on. Quit focusing on the failures and get started with redemption. I understand that pull. I want people walking in the light, too.

As Jay Stringer puts it, we aren't healthy when we're still triggered by our triggers. That's true. A great many of us, if we sat down and looked at ourselves today, are primarily defined and regulated by our triggers, and that isn't the goal. We're not yet emotionally whole when our reactions still run the show.

But here's what I want church leaders to hear. That reality isn't a mark against a person. It's not a reason to push the blame back onto them. If we actually care about someone's healing, we want them to understand what's triggering them. We want them to be able to name it, process it, find their way to safety and wholeness. And when we shove the blame back onto the very people who are triggered, we are not being a safe place for them to find healing. We are not caring for them. We're proving we can't be trusted with their pain.

We as church leaders need to become trauma-informed. We need to understand triggers, including our own. Why does it set me off so much when someone points out a problem? Why does that fire up my self-defense before I've even heard them out? We need to be curious of ourselves as we are also curious of the pain and concerns of others.

Being asked to lead a church doesn't make any of us the healthiest person on the block. Sometimes we may actually be the least healthy, and nobody noticed at first. Sometimes we built on a sandy foundation, looking mature and whole, and then the weight of responsibility got handed to us before we were rooted and anchored in Christ. So we framed up the skeleton of the house, the load came, and the whole thing started to buckle underneath.

Emotional health was never a one-time destination. It's not a state you arrive at and check off. It's an ongoing pursuit, for the person in the pew and the person behind the pulpit alike.

We Must Change Our Way

What is the reason for why there’s so much awareness and outrage in our feeds today? Because we have a history. A history of cover-up. Of looking the other way and neglecting abuse. We have a history of not knowing what to do when someone raises their hand and so, by default, we do nothing and let those who abuse keep their grip and their reign.

We have a long history of trying to change things by simply being the change. We do this by quietly working with the victims. Loving them. Walking alongside them and supporting them in practical ways. That's good. But we do not have a history of understanding the psychological and emotional trauma victims of have gone through. Neither do we have a history of standing like a brick wall in front of the abuser and saying, "You shall not pass! This evil goes no further. Not on our watch!"

Scripture doesn't leave that posture optional. "Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them" (Ephesians 5:11). "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves... defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8-9). Standing in the way of evil is not a departure from the way of Jesus. It is the way of Jesus.

Let the Governing Authorities Bear the Sword

It amazes me how many of us love to quote that the governing authorities do not bear the sword in vain when we're trying to justify our involvement in national politics. But when it comes to actually dealing with an evildoer in our own midst, suddenly that same verse is off the table.

Paul wrote that the one in authority "is God's servant for your good... he does not bear the sword for no reason. For he is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer" (Romans 13:4). Bringing abusers to justice is exactly what governing authorities are for. God has ordained them to punish those who do evil and to protect those who do right. So when someone is abusing others, let the authorities come and do their God-given work.

To be clear, "bearing the sword" was never a license for a Christian going to war or killing, the way many have so often yanked that passage out of context. Rather, it's a picture of holding the line and carrying out justice. It means governing authorities, when they function as God intends, stand in front of evildoers and say, "No more!"

It is not a violation of 1 Corinthians 6 for one believer to point out abuse being done by another believer and call in the governing authorities to deal with it. This passage has to do with personal disputes and lawsuits. Why not rather be shorted in a business dealing than to turn on your brother in a pagan court, Paul is asking. Paul does not intend this passage to negate Romans 13.

In fact, when we look at the end of Romans 12, we’ll see that submitting to governing authorities is a way of letting vengeance in God’s hands instead of taking it into our own–which seems to be a similar point to what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 6. The issues has less to do with whether to ever go to court and more to do with the type of violation that one is experiencing. If it is truly evil, let the governing authorities take care of it.

It is also not disrespectful toward a husband to call out when he is being abusive. It is not dishonor toward someone in authority to stand up and say what is actually happening when it’s obviously wrong. 

In fact, it is the greater honor and the deeper love to take the hard action. To stand in the way on behalf of God and say, "You are heading down a path that leads to death, and we want life for you. Because you've refused the counsel of your brothers and sisters, we are now bringing in the governing authorities." 

I do not understand why the church is so afraid to follow through on what God has actually called us to do in this regard.

Give People Permission to Be Frustrated

It's messy. It's frustrating. But consider this, when we respond out of our own stress, when the pressures of leadership come at us from every angle and we snap, we want grace for that. We want people to understand how hard this is. Don't we? Then we owe the people we're serving that same grace, if not more. Because we're the ones in a position to actually do something, and many of them can do nothing but tell their story and advocate online.

Maybe some folks are reacting in ways that are over the top. Maybe some responses are unhealthy. But think about it almost like a math problem. If we've had fifty years of cover-up, should we really be shocked by a decade of loud, frustrated awareness-raising? I'm not saying we should keep score. But it's strange to me that we look at people who've spent years trying to be believed, only to be brushed aside again and again, and our critique is that they're too loud or not doing it with a proper attitude.

Folks, we've only just started scratching the surface. Of course people are frustrated. Of course they're angry. If for years you tried to raise your hand and get someone to listen, and over and over you were pushed aside and ignored, you wouldn't respond perfectly either.

So don't spend your energy being upset at the person advocating on social media.

Spend it being grieved at how little gets done where it actually matters.

Consider: What have you learned from walking with someone who raised their hand and wasn't believed? And where might Jesus be inviting you to lean in with curiosity, instead of defending an image that was never worth protecting in the first place? If you’d like, you can respond in the comments below.

Grace and peace,
Asher

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