Why The Church Welcomes Bullies

And How To Stop It

Driscoll was taking advantage of young peopl which is what prompted my initial online protest efforts back in 2004. He could leverage them because being young they lacked the one thing they needed in order to protect themselves from him - life experience.

I was saved at the age of 21.

We joined a cult-like church with a very strong pastor who was as gifted an orator as Driscoll but unfortunately she was also a woman and because I hadn’t read I Tim 3 yet didn’t realize that was wrong :-) meaning apparently she should have sat down and listened to me talk instead :-)

This was where I was also initiated into the unfortunate practice of comparing my best with others’ worst.

We were encouraged to bask in our spiritual superiority over other Chrisitans who were blind to the things we saw (or as the case may be not see) in scripture thus helping our leaders accomplish the larger goal of infecting as many of us as possible with spiritual pride.

If you’ve spent more than 5 years as a Christian you have your own version of this story. It probably took you another 5 years to figure out you weren’t crazy and then another 5 years to work up the courage to leave.

Why do we put up with this?

Spiritual pride is not only the primary cause of our inability to spot bullies; it’s the number one reason we welcome them and why, in many ways, we need them.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How did the church become a safe place for religious bullies?

• Why do we allow them in the pulpits of some of America’s largest and most influential churches?

• Why do we put oversized microphones in their hands, multiple cameras on their faces,and digital resources at their fingertips to reach millions?

• Why do we pay them garish amounts of money to do it?

• What are the spiritual genetic markers in our systems that “predispose” us to miss the warning signs and minimize character flaws we swore we’d never accept in a leader?

Ironically, you and I are the ones responsible for creating the environment that welcomes spiritual bullies. Until we own our partnership and co- dependency in this symbiotic relationship, nothing can change. This dangerous dance will continue resulting in spiritual confusion and many rejecting Christ due to His guilt-by- association with the system that gave license to religious bullies.

You and I need to lead ourselves out of this place, if not for us then at least for the young people who are most susceptible to the influence of spiritual bullies. I don’t think it’s too far a leap to conclude that the dramatic increase in people disavowing any religion (a.k.a. the Nones) has been influenced in part by the sudden increase in awareness of the spiritual bullies leading our churches. Until we realize how we contribute to the problem, we won’t be able to eradicate it.

Before doctors and nurses discovered the miraculous power of hand washing they ignorantly passed deadly germs from patient to patient. As the author of The Biography of a Germ put it, “Most experts laughed at the notion that creatures too small to be seen could fell armies and turn cities into cemeteries.” Consequently, instead of helping people, these caregivers infected them; all the while they were performing sacrificial and even heroic acts, often risking their own lives because God told them to.

Unwittingly, many pastors, board members, and ordinary people are passing spiritual pride to each other in the name of God. It’s making a lot of people sick and more and more are losing their spiritual lives because of it. The disease is spiritual pride and its presence is the chief reason religious bullying is active in the church.

Spiritual pride weakens our immune system and makes it easier for bullies to emerge into influential roles in our churches.

As a Christians, our

1. lack of humility

2. high degree of reactivity to difference,

3. epistemic arrogance

4. uncertainty avoidance conspire like a deadly cocktail to blind us and bind us to religious bullies.

Like Israel of old we ask for a king thinking he will provide protection only to discover we’ve become his victim. (See 1 Samuel 8:6-18.)

Bullies like Driscoll are what physicians call the presenting problem. The real problem is us . . . you and me. We welcome bullies. We seek them out, and when the bully is our bully, we’ll defend him to the death. All of that is to say that if I’d been saved in 1998 instead of 1968, it is entirely likely I could have chosen to join a church named Mars Hill with a male autocrat named Mark Driscoll.

I wish Driscoll would publicly repent, quit the ministry, go to AA, find a kick ass sponsor and get a sales job. That would effectively remove him from this type of exposure and public ridicule. Frankly, who cares if he knows how to preach - he’s harming thousands of people who spiritually speaking don’t know their right hand from their left and they come first.

Until you and I stop supporting church systems that essentially require bullies, until you and I stop looking the other way when spiritual abuse is taking place, and until you and I stop putting our trust in a king instead of The King, we have only ourselves to blame for the bully in the pulpit, on the board, or in the Sunday School class.

The church system that infected me with spiritual pride made me into a junior bully. I thought more highly of myself than I ought to have. As a result, I avoided people, leaders and ideas that would challenge my own ideas. I cultivated spiritual pride in young people I discipled and spent time doing things to advance my own church instead of the kingdom. I was deeply certain that I was right and everyone else was wrong. Youth was celebrated; elders were tolerated. Age and experience were interpreted as weakness since those who lived “back in the day” could not know what had only recently been revealed to my group.

I now know that a decade of my life was wasted by spiritual pride. Id like to help others skip that part. Maybe people are ready now.

My goals?

Help young people avoid 10 years of stupidity

Help Christians spot bullies and create an environement that repels them

Help churches grow past the spiritual adolescence stage that bullies feed off of

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