Is Exposing Evildoers a Violation of the Ninth Commandment? A Response to Tim Challies (Part One)

A few days ago Tim Challies posted two blog posts about the ninth commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” here and here. He focused on how the ninth commandment applies in a day of social media, when vitriolic watchbloggers are violating the ninth commandment by calling out abusers.

Tim Challies and I go way back. Just kidding; he doesn’t know who I am, except as the author of a devotional book he had his daughter read and promoted in the video I referred to in my explanation of awkwardness in this Facebook post. (The awkwardness is born of the crossover between my two fields of writing: first, missionary books and biographies, and then, abuse in the worlds of fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism, which is Tim Challies’s world.)

To be fair, his accusations of lies in social media weren’t directed at me at all,  but were directed at much larger websites like perhaps The Wartburg Watch. They expose evil; I generally only examine the teachings of those who support the evildoers (and in some cases those who turn out to be the evildoers themselves).

So with that intro, I’d like to examine the teachings of Tim Challies regarding the ninth commandment. The quotations are from his two blog posts (here and here).

What does the ninth commandment encompass?

Based on the Westminster Larger Catechism’s lengthy expansion of the ninth commandment, Tim Challies draws out many applications to Christians as they interact on social media. Here is part of his introduction to his two posts about the ninth commandment:

I notice two things about this statement. For one thing, he has expanded the law from speaking or writing false witness to hearing or reading false witness. Expanding the law to claim other things to be sins beyond what the law stated is what the Pharisees did. (Which is different from what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount when He examined heart intent.)

Another thing I wonder about here is, since he doesn’t give any examples of the falsehoods about others he was reading, how does he know for sure the things that were being posted were lies? Is it simply because he wanted to maintain unity with certain people, such as in the case of the scandal involving  Sovereign Grace Ministries/Churches, and so would refuse to hear anything negative about them?

Again, he somehow seems to think the ninth commandment should encompass far more than it says.

And again, I ponder. The best way to righteously protect someone’s name or reputation in cases where there are many accusers would be to allow the accusations against them to come forward and for there to be a trial.

But in the case of CJ Mahaney’s Sovereign Grace Ministries/Churches child sex abuse scandal (which, among others, attorney Rachael Denhollander has sought to bring to light), Tim Challies instructed all his readers to refrain from trying to get information but instead to refuse to look at it.

So whose “names and reputations” end up being belittled in a case like that? Those who have claimed the child sexual abuse who are ignored and shamed as tarnishing the “names and reputations” of important men. For example, when Al Mohler joked about CJ Mahaney’s name being discussed by bloggers, all his audience, primarily seminarians, guffawed.

Whose names and reputations were in that case being scorned and unprotected?

The accusers—those who had been sexually violated as children.

I believe his application of the ninth commandment is inaccurate—throughout the Scriptures, the description of “false witness” is only about ones who disseminate lies, and that is all. Those who listen aren’t held responsible,  I would assume largely because they might not know they’re lies.

Here is where his misapplication of the ninth commandment is so devastating. Though God told His people not to “bear false witness,” Tim Challies expands it to all of us not to listen to or read “false witness.” But is he going to be the one to tell us, “this is false witness”?

We must, in this land of free speech, be free to listen, read, and ponder different viewpoints. There should never be anyone telling mature adults, “Do not listen to that person”—we need to learn on our own that the person is a liar, a hypocrite, or a charlatan.

Mature adults need to be able to judge for themselves who proves to be telling the truth and who seems to be hiding something.

Challies highlights the expansion of the ninth commandment executed by the Westminster Larger Catechism, which, of course, is not the Scriptures. The majority of this Catechism promotes truth, with which I fully agree, but some parts of it I believe do not.  For example, the Westminster Larger Catechism says the ninth commandment applies to:

Yes, we are to preserve and promote truth in regard to others. That’s the point of the ninth commandment.

However, I beg to differ about preserving and promoting “the good name” of anyone who is a secret evildoer, which might indeed even be our neighbor. That person needs to be exposed.

Is this really about reputations?

Tim Challies then goes on to draw applications out of the various statements of the Westminster Larger Catechism, rather than looking at the actual Scriptures. I’m quoting his applications:

Here’s the thing about reputations: If that person is an evildoer, then his reputation deserves to be tarnished.

Reputation should match character. If a reputation is good while the character is evil, then the reputation is a lie. Jimmy Hinton tells the story of his father, a very well-liked and well-respected man with a good reputation in the community, a man that Jimmy called his “childhood hero” . . . who, as it turned out, was a pedophile with dozens of victims. 

Did he deserve to have his reputation tarnished?

Just in case you’re hesitating on that point, I’ll provide you with the answer.

Yes. Yes, he did.

Again, I will say, if the “good reputation” is a false one, then it deserves to be exposed.  Brenda Ratcliff was married for over thirty years to a respected professor of Wheaton College who was eventually exposed to be a pedophile. His reputation deserved to be tarnished.

The only thing a person deserves when it comes to reputation is to have his reputation match his character. If his character is good, then his reputation should not be tarnished. But if his character is bad, then his “good reputation” deserves to be exposed as false.

Yes I do feel grief when I see the sins of others that are the kinds of things I write about. But the grief I feel is for the ones who have been harmed.

And when it comes to identifying sins that are “so egregious that they threaten to undermine the gospel of Christ,” I think Challies may not be the best person to identify them. I wonder if he has any awareness how many former Sovereign Grace Ministries/Churches members have walked away from Christianity because of the abysmal way their leaders handled the many allegations of sexual abuse? “If this is Christianity, I want none of it,” they say. Don’t you see that this kind of behavior, focused on protecting the “good reputations” of those who have covered for abuse (and perhaps have participated in abuse) is absolutely undermining the gospel of Christ in the lives of these survivors?

What about “slander”?

Again, how do you know these reports you’re referring to are slander? How do you know they aren’t true? There were many people who said that the reports coming out about Bill Gothard and his brother Steve were simply slander, but under the weight of testimony and evidence, the wrongdoing was finally acknowledged by several who had been in leadership under him.

Slander is lies spread purposely. When I wrote a critique of a sermon by Ryan Fullerton of Immanuel Baptist Church (which later confessed to being Rachael Denhollander’s former church, the one she lost because she spoke out for abuse survivors), one of the elders of that church wrote to me telling me I was slandering his pastor. Actually what I was doing was analyzing his pastor’s sermon in light of truth, but this is an example of how easily the word “slander” can be tossed around to be defined as “anything that makes me or someone I care about look bad.”

Interesting word choice, “transgressions.” This means “law breaking,” so if these websites are talking about people who have actually broken the law, then this has nothing to do with the ninth commandment. Thomas Chantry would be an example of one of those, a formerly well-respected pastor who has been accused of child abuse.

Doesn’t Ephesians 5:11 say, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them”?

Why, yes. Yes, it does.

If big name church and ministry leaders are covering for each other’s transgressions, they why shouldn’t someone expose them? We want the church to be purified, according to  1 Corinthians 5, Hebrews 12:15-16, and other Scriptures. What about when Paige Patterson covered for Darrell Gilyard, who had raped many women? Should the church at large have continued ot have been kept in the dark, simply because Paige Patterson says he is a believer?

This is a good thing, yes, as are a few other things he says. If another believer, even someone I may differ with theologically, is progressing in his or her love for God and others, I’m delighted to hear about it.

What in the world? When a woman wants to tell you about her rape by a Christian leader, you will refuse to hear her because she can’t substantiate it? I have listened to many, many, many women, and some of them have named pastors and Christian leaders and other impressive people as their abusers. Should I refuse to hear them because they can’t substantiate their claims? This kind of response is exactly what abusers are counting on.

And wouldn’t we say that when predators are in the church, it’s the business of everyone? When I first started learning about abuses in some of these circles (through the bloggers, btw), I thought, “Well, I don’t know any of these people,” and I turned aside. I was wrong.

When I began to get to know the people  themselves, I believed it was right to get involved in a larger way, so my initial offering was the website www.bjugrace.com, started with some friends, and then blogging more and more about this issues here. My response, as I continued to learn what was happening, was, “How can I turn away?”

Indeed, I wonder how in the world Tim Challies can say this is no business of ours.

Challies had two blog posts about the subject of the ninth commandment, and I’m going to need to do the same in responding to his words. But this isn’t the first time I’ve addressed the silencing some have tried to impose on bloggers in the name of the ninth commandment. In this post I wrote

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Part Two of “Tim Challies and the Ninth Commandment” is now published here.

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This article contains many links, some giving further information about the abuses I refer to, and some giving commentary. The Here’s the Joy blog posts  I link to in this article are these:  

Rachael Denhollander lost her church over her advocacy for abuse survivors

Maintaining a false unity (a commentary on the SGM scandals)

Tullian Tchividjian, Tom Chantry, BJUGrace, and gossip

Paige Patterson and a culture that breeds a generation of abusers

The “innocent until proven guilty” question: a response to Ryan Fullerton

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