Untwisting Scriptures and offering the Living Water, to help others (especially those who have been abused) experience the joy to be found in Jesus Christ
It’s actually a beautiful verse.
But sometimes it’s used as a cudgel.
After I had heard two different people refer to this Bible verse as a verb (as a cudgel that had been used against them), I knew it was time to write about it.
Here it is: Continue reading “Have you been Philippians 4:8’d?”
Before I began to work regularly on untwisting Scriptures at this blog, Here’s the Joy, I was regularly doing that over at BJUGrace. That was the blog some friends and I set up to discuss the GRACE report on Bob Jones University and serve as a platform for abuse survivors who wanted to speak. (It was also where I first began, in 2014, to expose false teachings and show what the Bible teaches instead.) Continue reading “Because it’s appropriate for a victim to name her offender”
In a recent interview (which you can watch here), Rachael Denhollander, who spoke in court against the sexual-abuser-disguised-as-a-doctor Larry Nassar, talked about the horrific ignoring, enabling, and victim-blaming that has been perpetrated in USA Gymnastics and at Michigan State University (which she detailed in her victim-impact statement). Here are her words in that interview: Continue reading “Rachael Denhollander, SGM, and Bob Jones University”
Yesterday I published a synopsis of and response to “Helping Women with Child Sexual Abuse in Their Past,” by Zondra Scott, a teacher of nouthetic counselors (going by the name “Biblical counselors”) whose husband Stuart taught “Biblical counseling” at John MacArthur’s The Master’s Seminary and who currently teaches it at Southern Seminary (SBC) in Louisville, KY. I wrote this in light of the way “Jane” from The Master’s University says she was counseled after having been raped.
I emphasized that their style of counseling is one that they called “Biblical” but I’m calling “nouthetic” since that was its original name and there are other styles of counseling that are equally Biblical and arguably more so.
Though the details of “Jane’s” so-called counseling experience were of course unique, the overall picture looked eerily familiar to me. Continue reading “Here’s an abuse survivor’s plea about nouthetic “Biblical” counseling”
In the beginning, I had a little blog called Here’s the Joy on which I just wanted to blog about the Christian life and the wonderful truths of the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ in us, the Hope of glory. I was happy with my eight readers, and life was (relatively) uncomplicated.
Then I began to interact more and more with abuse survivors and those who blog about abuse. That does have a way of upending your world, doesn’t it? I may still have only eight readers, but my blog has taken a turn.
So yesterday I was supposed to be working on the publishing policy for Justice Keepers Publishingand other fun things, but I got waylaid for a bit by someone’s blog post with links and more links. Eventually it led me to a blog where I had a spirited discussion with the blog admin, who had said we should keep silent regarding scandals such as that about Tullian Tchividjian and Tom Chantry, because otherwise we are breaking the ninth commandment, “thou shalt not bear false witness.” Continue reading “Tullian Tchividjian, Tom Chantry, BJUGrace, and gossip”
How was it that I had begun to take certain wrongdoing so lightly? How was it that I could justify theft?
I was a graduate assistant at Bob Jones University. That meant while I was taking my grad classes, I was also working thirty hours a week at Bob Jones University Press to pay my school bill.
Except there came a point where I wasn’t working. I don’t know how it happened, really, Continue reading “Airing my dirty laundry at Bob Jones University”