Romans 12:1 says,
“Therefore I exhort you, brothers [and sisters], through the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your reasonable [rational] service.”
I’ve been naïve and sheltered apparently, because I was in my fifties before I found out how this expression, this good Bible verse, had been perverted beyond recognition. For me, beyond imagining, until I learned it was real.
The perversion of this Scripture
I have several friends—who don’t even know each other—whose childhood abusers explicitly told them they were “living sacrifices.” Maybe you can fill in some of the details I’m not providing there.
Also, some children, especially children of missionaries, have been told that the reason their parents sent them off to boarding schools was so their parents could focus on mission work, and sometimes the children have been told to be “living sacrifices” as part of this explanation. Because abuse has often happened in boarding schools, for these children too, abuse often became a part of their internalized definition of “living sacrifice,” even if it wasn’t explicitly stated as such.
Also, some adults who are victimized (such as wives in domestic abuse situations) have believed they should continue to allow themselves to be harmed because they want to be “living sacrifices,” hoping that somehow the sacrifice will be salvific, that through it their abuser will come to salvation.
But these kinds of “sacrifices” are not what God meant by Romans 12:1. Sacrificing the vulnerable to abuse is a perversion of all that is holy. It is, in fact, a perpetuation of evil.
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This article has now been truncated because it has been editing and incorporated into the book . You can find that book here.
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This comes close to home, as the practice of sending missionary children off to boarding schools has been the norm in my country’s mission organisations as well. That was the norm for decades – at least in the largest and oldest missions agency.. They did lots of good, as they spread the gospel in Africa and Asia since the late 1800’s, and were among the first in Japan & China … but the price was sometimes very high for those children.
In the early 2000’s it came to light that there had been systemic abuse, sexual exploitation and torment going on in one boarding school in Taiwan .. The staff member behind this was someone able to pose as very pious and good, so he knew how to fool the parents. All this created a big scandal here, sadly there never was a court case, let alone a conviction. Don’t know why, enough people had come forward to give their testimony.
Sadly, I know about the case more than I can write on a public forum, but it goes all together with the abuses I have heard happening in other missions agencies (the documentary about the topic was heartbreaking..)
The mentality that wants to separate children from their parents is just unhealthy, even if it may work for some (obviously, not every Christian boarding school is run by pedophiles)… People should always be free to make their own prayerful decisions, use their discernment and see what is good for their family. There can be exceptional circumstances, and sometimes children may be in danger because of God’s calling for the family, but it is different from exposing them to wolves in sheeps clothing.
I read a book a few years ago by a Christian psychiatrist who wrote about burnout on the Mission field. She said that most of those missionaries were working from a slave ship mentality, versus a sonship mentality. Working to earn Gods approval, versus working from a place of being loved by God first. I can’t find the title of that book. It is as a small book, obscure, and I don’t believe it’s in print anymore.
Oh so true. I believe Jack Miller has also written quite a bit about Sonship. And I write about it under the topic of “our New Covenant identity.” It’s one of the facets of it. Here’s one of my early posts about that: https://heresthejoy.com/2013/06/a-song-i-love-to-hate/