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023 | John Crist, Repentance, and Restoration
293 Plays5 years ago
Originally an IGTV interview, Phylicia talks with Ayanna Mathis about the nature of repentance, grace, and why restoration to the church is not restoration to a position. Touches on abuse, cover ups, and how the church can better care for its own by adhering to biblical view of repentance.
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered-down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
00:00:30
Speaker
In this bonus episode of Verity Podcast, you are listening to a recording of the Instagram interview between myself and Ayanna Mathis, my friend and fellow Bible teacher who specializes in talking about abuse in the church. In this interview, we are discussing the issue of repentance and restoration to the body of Christ and to positions of authority.
00:00:54
Speaker
In what situations is full restoration safe when that person has a history of manipulation and abuse?
Interview with Ayanna Mathis on Church Abuse
00:01:03
Speaker
We are using the example of Christian comedian John Christ because his situation is the most recent example of a Christian who abused their power and influence to victimize individuals.
00:01:17
Speaker
This is not something that is limited to John Christ. And in fact, this entire episode is meant to get us thinking biblically and theologically about the issues of repentance and restoration. It is not meant to simply focus on Christ as a person, as you will hear us clarify during the interview. So without further ado, we will jump right to that conversation. Hello friends, Felicia Masonheimer here. And in a few minutes, I'm going to be welcoming
00:01:47
Speaker
my friend Ayanna to join me on this live video where we will be talking about repentance, restoration, and abuse in the church. Hi girl, how are you? I'm doing well. Good, awesome. How about you introduce yourself so that our friends here know more of who you are?
00:02:08
Speaker
Yes, so hi everyone. My name is Ayanna Mathis. I was about to say Thomas, that's my main name. But my name is Ayanna Mathis and I'm a Bible teacher, a disciple of Jesus, a wife, many things. And I'm so excited to join Felicia. Her and I are always having side conversations about lots of different things. So know that everything that she does gets filtered through lots of years before it gets to y'all.
00:02:31
Speaker
And I'm just really excited to join her in discussing this very important topic. I really do have a heart for advocating for those who don't have voices to do so and really educating God's church and others on what essentially holistic discipleship means. So just not Bible literacy or just not prayer, but the whole of our person being intertwined with the Holy Spirit. And so those are just some of the things I'm passionate about, but yeah, that's that.
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm so excited that they get to meet you and hear your heart on this very important topic because one of the things that Ayanna and I want to be sure that you all understand going into this are, first, we are not acting as repentance police. We are not in this to decide that, first of all, the video is not about John Christ. It's about repentance and restoration as a whole. We are using his story as an example.
00:03:27
Speaker
to discuss this topic but we're also we're not the repentance police we're not here to decide that he's repentant or he's not repentant our hope is that he truly genuinely is repentant for what happened which we'll review in a minute and we're also very hopeful for his healing and for the healing of his victims it's important to us that that be
00:03:47
Speaker
the understanding going into this that we are not headhunters as I call who are constantly looking for someone in the church to pick on and look for some opportunity to divide.
Misinterpretation of Biblical Texts in Abuse
00:03:59
Speaker
We just think that this issue is dividing already and that it's important that we understand biblically what is going on and how scripture teaches for us to respond. Ayanna, you touched on the lack of biblical literacy
00:04:14
Speaker
in today's world which we know is a huge problem that people may read their bibles but they don't understand how to apply them contextually and so there are many passages that will get misinterpreted and misapplied to situations like this
00:04:30
Speaker
and that actually end up with further victimizing people already abused so let's start we have quite a bit to go through here but let's start with just what happened specifically with john chris that led to us having this discussion
00:04:47
Speaker
I encourage everyone to go and read the original article that Charisma News put out exposing the original abuses. This would have been in November of last year. John Christ was accused by at least five women who were willing to give their names. Charisma News chose to withhold them of sexual manipulation, trading comedy tickets for sexual favors,
00:05:13
Speaker
goading women into coming to his apartment for sexual reasons. There's a wide variety of things that happened over the course of many years. That's very important here. It was over the course of many years and it wasn't just five women. There were actually more than that. So when this article came out in November, the story broke and I believe he lost a Netflix special
00:05:39
Speaker
He canceled his tours and he disappeared from social
Handling Abuse Cases in Churches
00:05:43
Speaker
media. He did make a statement and in that statement, he did acknowledge that what he did was a sin. He acknowledged that he had hurt these women and he said that he was repentant and that he was going to walk forward into healing. It's important because eight months later, he came back with a video and that video was not his initial statement. And I just want to be sure when we're talking about something like this that we're talking honestly with the real facts.
00:06:09
Speaker
When he did this recent video, or it's called A Message from Me, he basically said, this is how I'm doing. I've been doing, you know, mental health steps. He didn't mention sin, repentance, the victims at all. And it could be because he already did it once in the original statement. It could be because, as some people have speculated, it wasn't his priority. But either way, this video was launched. And then about three or five days later, he started right back to doing his comedy online.
00:06:38
Speaker
And this is why people in the church are concerned because within only eight months of a huge national story breaking about multiple cases of abuse over years, eight months later, we have this person coming right back in to their former position of influence. And if there wasn't coronavirus, the question would be,
00:07:04
Speaker
would this be in our churches? If coronavirus hadn't happened in the first place, would he have remained only offline? We don't know. And so these are questions that we get to ask, we should be asking. And what they really point to is, what does repentance require? What does restoration look like to the church body when you have repeatedly committed a sin against members of that body?
00:07:31
Speaker
And how does individual sin affect the corporate body? How do we respond in situations like that? So that's our setup. That's what we're kind of working towards discussing here. And so Ayanna, I would love if we could start, what if we talk about grace? This is the word we hear so much. Just give grace. We're all sinners. What is that? What does that mean for the church?
00:07:57
Speaker
It's interesting, Felicia and I were talking about this the other day and I actually wrote these down in my notes, but regarding grace, I think we have, we can tend to have in the church a hyper zeroing in on the word grace and the reality of grace, while not completely understanding what it is and what it is not. And what I mean by that is out of all the attributes of God, when you talk to a Christian or someone who's familiar with the church,
00:08:22
Speaker
Grace is usually a way that they describe God. It's in the Bible. I mean, why wouldn't we use that word to describe God? In Ephesians, I can think of, for example, if it wasn't for the grace of God, you know, we would have no way to be saved. And so grace is not a bad thing. But grace misunderstood and misapplied can lead us down very dark paths that look
00:08:45
Speaker
Like light is at the end of the tunnel, but it leads to turmoil and danger and further trauma for victims and survivors of any abuses. And so with that being said, something that I shared with Felicia was that grace does not mean we can avoid sin or the consequences of our sin.
00:09:03
Speaker
And something to take into account when it comes to talking about grace is where that fits and couches itself in the gospel message. Okay. We talk about grace and we think of, you know, being reared in a culture that teaches if you want to be saved, just come to the altar and give your heart to Jesus. If you want just invite a man, just
00:09:25
Speaker
just tell me come on in all you have to do is believe that's all you have to do is believe and you will be saved that is the message that has been historically taught from a lot of pulpits and churches and revivals and while the message isn't completely wrong it's incomplete on its own because when we look at the gospels and we look at the entire narrative of scripture we see that confession and repentance of our sin
00:09:53
Speaker
is a core message, a core tenet of the gospel. We cannot divorce our confession and acknowledgement of our sin because what are we to be saved from if we don't know that we need to be saved from it and we don't know that we've offended a holy and just and righteous God.
Exploring Grace and Accountability
00:10:10
Speaker
And so with that being said, we talk about the grace of the gospel. The grace that is the gospel to us. What that means is that when the Lord saves us, he doesn't do so void of what we've done against him.
00:10:23
Speaker
All of our sin is laid out before us. So when we talk about coming to the altar or coming to Jesus and just saying we believe in him, there is no just you come to Jesus and you don't realize what you have done. That's like disciplining a child and they don't even know why you're disciplining them. You're telling them you did this wrong, you did this and that, and they don't even know why. Same thing goes for our faith, same thing goes for us coming to Christ.
00:10:51
Speaker
When Christ had the wrath of the Father poured out on Him, meaning our sins poured out on Christ because of the grave capital offenses we committed against the Father, the whole Trinity really, but the Father, that means that God looked at all of our sin
00:11:09
Speaker
and he said the sacrifice of Christ satisfied my wrath. He didn't say, oh well, certain things that they did and did not do. I'll slide that to the side. We'll work through those things. No, everything that we've done, our entire being, anything that we could do to commit capital offenses, big or small, against a holy and righteous guy, means that they were all
00:11:35
Speaker
put before the Father. And so He doesn't accept us not knowing what we've done and what we're
Holistic Discipleship and Leadership Accountability
00:11:40
Speaker
capable of. He does so inclusive of all those things. And so when we're talking about grace, grace means that God did not cover up my sin. He covered me, meaning He encompassed the whole of my person, the whole of my mistakes.
00:11:57
Speaker
the whole of my sins, the whole of my abuses. And he did that in the sacrifice of Christ, but it doesn't mean that he said, I'm going to try to hide this.
00:12:08
Speaker
No. Grace does not mean hiding, it does not mean escaping, and that's why for many of us, and Felicia can speak to this, I know she's talked about this on her platform so many times, but when it comes to those of us who have dealt with sexual estate of any kind, when we become believers, when we get transferred from the domain of darkness into his marvelous light, that does not mean that every single thing that we did
00:12:32
Speaker
in our previous life is going to go away completely. Exactly. Exactly. Which is why when we talk about when I teach on sexual sin and addiction, having experienced it, which gives me so much compassion for what in this example, John, Chris has done.
00:12:47
Speaker
Victory is not a destination. Though like if you think like, oh, I'm a Christian, so like this should just go away. I'm never going to struggle again. Sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't. And a lot of times when it comes to sexual sin, which, which affects every part of our being.
00:13:04
Speaker
We have to have very strict accountability in place. We have to be willing to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. We have to do the things that are necessary to bear that fruit. And the thing when someone is in a position of leadership and influence, which in a moment we're going to talk about who falls into that category. Somebody has a position of leadership and influence and they're a Christian.
00:13:30
Speaker
There is this extra measure of accountability that's necessary that they do bear fruit and bear fruit in keeping with their repentance. And so having those bards, if you will, up those guardrails to help you walk in the truth, to walk in what is right, are so essential because you are leading people, whether or not you even like it or know it. If you are a Christian and you are in a place of influence, you are a leader.
00:14:00
Speaker
And I don't care if you're funny, I don't care if you're in ministry, it doesn't matter. You are leading people by your example
Biblical Restoration and Leadership
00:14:09
Speaker
to make an assumption about Christianity and what Christianity is.
00:14:13
Speaker
With sexual sin especially, when it affects all this part of you, if you do not have pieces in place to hold you accountable and to walk in, you know, if you've sinned before to walk in repentance to bear fruit, then you are at risk of not only hurting yourself, but because it's sexual sin, it almost always affects others.
00:14:37
Speaker
almost always affects other people. And Ayanna and I talked before this particular live about 1 Corinthians 5, which I wish I could just read the whole chapter, but I'm just going to read a little bit of it. Basically what is happening is in Corinthian church, you had a man who, Paul says, it's actually reported there's sexual immorality among you, the kind that's not even tolerated among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.
00:15:04
Speaker
Now, clearly we're not looking at a case of incest here. And in most cases, sexual abuse in the church, we're not looking at that. What is interesting is, he says, what's happening in your church is not even tolerated among pagans.
00:15:20
Speaker
Even non-Christians stand up and say this is wrong and you are letting it happen and that should be something that we immediately stop and go hmm, maybe I should think about how me being in the body of Christ how I'm responding to this situation he goes on to say
00:15:40
Speaker
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened for Christ. Our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
00:15:51
Speaker
He goes on to say, I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all, meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters, since you would need to go out of the world. He's saying, I'm not talking about people in the world who are sexually immoral. I'm talking about anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Don't even eat with such a one.
00:16:19
Speaker
For what have I to do with judging outsiders, people outside the church? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you." So this is tough when you've got the Matthew 7 thumpers. When people bring Matthew 7, judge not. You know, you're dividing the church, you're being divisive. What do we do with 1 Corinthians 5?
00:16:45
Speaker
You know, that's kind of our situation. Now, I want to lay this here because this is dealing specifically with sexual sin and sexual abuse. And that's what we're mainly talking about in this context. But one thing that some people may say is, okay, so this person is in the church.
00:17:05
Speaker
in 1 Corinthians 5, but clearly he's unrepentant and that's why he's being separated from. John repented. So what's the big deal? Why can't we just look away because it's been eight months and just restore everything back to the way it was? What would you say?
00:17:22
Speaker
Well, since you mentioned the word restore, so here's the deal. You mentioned, and it came from Matthew 3, 8, keeping with the fruit of repentance, right? Now, I want to touch on this really quick because we're Bible teachers, so we're going to do stuff like this. And I'm also going to mention this as well because we're talking Bible literacy is an issue here.
00:17:41
Speaker
too. But for starters, number one, when a lot of people have rebuttals for whatever side that they want to push, we get very gymnasticy with hermeneutics and we say things like, well it says this here in the Bible as if that is the one place in the Bible that agrees with you that cancels out everything else that's in the scriptures.
00:18:04
Speaker
and so we want to keep in mind that when we're you know when we're talking about these things we're talking from a holistic view of scripture not just one place because you can probably find pretty much anything to agree with your position in scripture if you only zero in on one passage so guys let's keep that in mind and then also too
00:18:21
Speaker
fruit. When we're seeing language of fruit in agriculture in the scriptures, these audiences, original audiences, are people who were very familiar with farming and growing things. And, you know, we have our little quarantine gardens going on like I do, but keeping up with the fruit of repentance, that language there would instantly in someone's mind say,
00:18:43
Speaker
when you're growing a vegetable or if you're growing something it's one thing to grow it that one time but it being able to continue to produce fruit from the same original seed that you planted is a big deal. Right now outside I have tomatoes my tomato plants went for like splits and then I looked outside one day I kept watering it anyways and more tomatoes started popping out off of it
00:19:09
Speaker
and so when we're thinking about keeping up with the fruit of our repentance that doesn't mean that oh well if someone you know gets on a stage or they get in on social media and they say i'm sorry or i did this that doesn't mean that we are being harsh by expecting there to be fruit from that repentance right and so for example if you have small children
00:19:32
Speaker
if you tell them that they did something wrong and you know you send against mommy or daddy in this way and then you know they say i'm sorry your expectation as a parent yes you know they're a kid but also you're also expecting to there to be a lesson learned that the next time it happens
00:19:49
Speaker
things should be a little bit different than the first time.
Impression Management in Leadership Scandals
00:19:53
Speaker
And so with that being said, we tend to think restoration, like in repentance, means that someone is going to assume the original position that they had before they committed whatever act of sin or abuse. And so what that would look like is if
00:20:11
Speaker
For example, someone abused a child, right? In our minds, we would say it's heinous, it's crazy to put them back in an environment where they could harm more children, right? But we think of child abuse as the cardinal abuse of abuses. When in all actuality, while the consequences of those are far more reaching than other forms of abuse, it's still abuse, regardless of if it happened to a child or an adult woman.
00:20:39
Speaker
And so, when we're looking at an outward, and I like to call this a performative restoration, and I'm going to share some things with you guys really quick, what that looks like when we're performing restoration. Because there's lots of angles that we have to consider. There's some great psychologists, Christian psychologists that have done some incredible work in this area. You've got Dr. Wade Mullen, you've got Dr. Diane Lamberg, you have Philip Monroe, who are committed to honing in and zeroing in on these issues within the church.
00:21:09
Speaker
Let me just highlight some things when it comes to performative restoration because something Felicia teaches here is that discernment is vital. Discernment allows us to say this is good and this is not so good. And so when we're looking at someone who is performatively exhibiting restoration or that they have performatively repented, they are usually pursuing external means of appeasing their audience because they have something to lose. And so I want you guys to understand
00:21:37
Speaker
that when you're dealing with Christian celebrities, almost always they have a lawyer involved and they have a PR team involved. We're talking John Christ and others like him. And not even just people like him, people in your local see church who are not as well known. These things still happen, but they almost always have a PR team. They almost always have a lawyer on a chain.
00:22:00
Speaker
And what these individuals are telling them is you need to craft your response very carefully because your next words will be what makes or breaks and defines your future career. He has a Netflix deal that's been paused. Why would he not do those things to pursue it? I'm not speaking to what he has done. I'm speaking to what could be happening and us needing to think critically about those things.
00:22:25
Speaker
And so there's usually that external appeasement to the audience. There's also usually a sabbatical of sorts. I have been doing an investigation as well where I've watched pastor and his wife from a local church here in my city
00:22:40
Speaker
The husband who was being accused and is being accused of many things took a break from social media at the height of when things were getting crazy online. Now he's kind of eased his way back in. He's taking speaking engagement. She's taking speaking engagements. And guess what?
00:22:56
Speaker
they took a kind of sabbatical, not posting as frequently or not at all. That never means that the person has actually done the inner work or behind scenes work to ensure that they don't continue down the path that they were on before. You also have to think in terms of the writing of a letter, the making of a good post, owning offenses. Now in this aspect, this is what Dr. Wade Mullen would call impression management tactics.
00:23:22
Speaker
And that means that there are tactics that individuals and organizations use to alter the public perception of an issue that's going on internally within the camp. And so that's why you see a lot of times, you know, big scandals happening. They'll try to clean up with PR, you know, they might do nice things for the community and post them online or
00:23:44
Speaker
they'll share their struggles and say hey this is what i've been going through so people empathize with them more there's usually no fruit of repentance to go off of so you just have the apology or the whatever the circular speaking around the issue but not really touching on it for example if you have seen chris his apology video i guess that's what we call it it's not really an apology but
00:24:07
Speaker
Not once, as Felicia mentioned, did he mention the victims at all.
Challenges of Accountability for Influential Christians
00:24:10
Speaker
He talked about them in a sense, but not really. Like he didn't say, I abused, I committed this. And a big reason for that is because you're dealing with legal things. If someone owns up to doing something like that, it's legal ramifications. And then you also want to take an account too that victims are typically never contacted
00:24:31
Speaker
or reached out to. And if they are, it's usually in a case to use scare tactics and intimidation tactics. Sometimes that's somebody getting a cease and desist letter. Sometimes that's people within the camp trying to silence the victims so that way they don't pursue any public things to where that person's reputation could be further damaged, although they did that all on their own. And then also there's this downplaying of sins, abuses, et cetera,
00:24:58
Speaker
that minimizes what actually has happened and so they'll speak in these like really fluffy think pink theology terms of oh well you know I'm not perfect and we all sin and you'll if you go to the comments section you'll see a lot of the sympathizers
00:25:17
Speaker
you know if all of my dirty laundry were added on the internet I'd feel like this too and I would you know blase blase blase another thing to take into account is that anomalies in the church should cause us to lean in and pursue those individuals so an anomaly literally means a deviation from the right so if the path is this way an anomaly means it juts off to the side and goes in some other area when we see anomalies usually we think they're lone they're donors you know they're not speaking for the majority
00:25:47
Speaker
When in all actuality, you don't really know when something is wrong until you see the issue. And then you start testing it, then you diagnose it, and then you give it treatment long-term. And then we end up with situations like the fact that an autopsy, what was the leading breakout, if you will, in discovering cancer. That in order to know that someone actually had cancer, enough people had to raise their hand and say, I feel sick inside.
00:26:12
Speaker
something is happening in me. And so those people would be the victims, whether it's John Christ or somebody else. When we hear people who are saying something is wrong here, and this is the body of Christ, if your arm is bleeding, you're cut, your bones sticking out, we're not going to say, oh, just...
00:26:33
Speaker
don't worry about it, it'll heal on its own. No, that's a major issue. Yeah, I love that the analogy of the bleeding wound in the body of Christ because what I'm seeing is people basically saying, you know, let's go with this graphic body image for a second. We're the body of Christ. You're causing division. You're trying to cut people's arms off by, you know, talking about this issue of this person who's
00:26:59
Speaker
you know abuse people in the church or victimize people and they turn on on you the person pointing it out the victim even and say stop trying to cut people's arms off stop dividing the church when in fact it was the person who abused them who was dividing the church and when he dropped Matthew 18 in people's laps Matthew 18 is the one that says if her brother offends you go to him
00:27:27
Speaker
Go to him directly. There's three steps in order to hopefully restore personal relationship between the offender and the offender. Private confrontation, a witness confrontation, and a wider confrontation. And so often when you say, hey, this is wrong. We need to put some accountability in place here. This person has a history, and we're just putting them right back into their position without seeing them bear fruit of repentance. People say, well, Matthew 18.
00:27:55
Speaker
A couple things in this that make an abuse situation or a victim situation not the paradigm Jesus was talking to here. These people in Jesus' relationship that he depicts in Matthew 18
00:28:10
Speaker
They're in a positive relationship, a consensual relationship in the first place. One of them is not being manipulated. It's like a friendship issue or in a regular offense. If I said something, I slandered Ayanna online and she came to me and said, hey, Felicia, I'm your sister in Christ, that was offensive. That would be an example.
00:28:31
Speaker
But that's not what's happening here. What happened here was sexual manipulation from a position of power and authority and trust. There was trust there that was violated. That position of power was used to manipulate. And now what you're basically saying is, I'm the offended one. I'm the one who cut the arm off the body of Christ, Felicia, because you're talking about the issue. And so you need to go to John Christ and you need to do Matthew 18.
00:29:01
Speaker
When in reality what's happening is he cut the arm off the body of Christ. He cut it off, he hurt them, and the people who are speaking up are defending the victims. And so the offended party here, you know, this doesn't fit Matthew 18 and this goes back to the biblical literacy issue.
00:29:20
Speaker
of people, and I don't know why, I don't understand why people are so passionately defending using Matthew 18 to defend someone when there are actual victims in place. It really does puzzle me because it's clearly an issue of these people would have been in Matthew 18 in a consensual, friendship, healthy local church relationship. That's the context of that passage.
00:29:48
Speaker
Whereas in a situation where there was manipulation and abuse, Matthew 18 no longer applies. And one of the things I wanted to kind of segue what you were teaching on abuse a minute ago, I heard, is platform and responsibility and why someone who claims the name of Christ and has a platform, why that's just as big a deal as somebody who is in ministry.
00:30:16
Speaker
Because the other thing that we're hearing in the comments, he's not a pastor. He doesn't teach doctrine. So this is not like, I don't know why this is such a big deal. And so why can't we just let him back on the stage? Well, a couple of things I would say, and I would like you to add to this. First of all, anytime someone claims the name of Christ,
00:30:37
Speaker
You have a responsibility, just basic Christian witness, right? I mean, read through Romans, read through Galatians, walk in the manner to which you were called. That's for every Christian. Now, let's put that Christian on a public platform where the whole world can see them. You are a city on a hill.
00:30:54
Speaker
So now you have even more responsibility. If Tim Tebow did this, we'd be having the same conversation. I don't care what they do or how they do it. If you're a Christian and you're on a platform, you have a responsibility. And so that's just fundamental. Regardless of whether you're a minister or not, you have a witness, the world sees you. They say, Christian, you're very public. They make assumptions about you. You have a responsibility to walk in the manner worthy of what you are called in Christ.
00:31:22
Speaker
But secondly, in this particular situation and in many situations of abuse in the church, the platform was the vehicle of abuse.
00:31:33
Speaker
The platform was the vehicle of abuse. That's it. Because he had this influence, women trusted him. Exactly. Because the platform was in the church, women trusted him. They let their guard down. They let their guard down because he was funded by the church. Even in the article, if you read the article from Charisma News, one of the victims says, I understand. She was very kind. She said, I understand it's hard to break into comedy clubs and they don't pay well.
00:32:03
Speaker
and churches do. And so he geared his comedy towards the church and the church funded him and welcomed him in. And many of us thought he was very funny.
00:32:14
Speaker
But he also allowed that platform to be the vehicle to further his own addiction and his own manipulation. And if you know that you are in the throes of a sexual addiction, like I talked about earlier, I've walked through this myself, and you know that you're standing on a platform that facilitates that addiction and facilitates your hypocrisy,
00:32:36
Speaker
The right thing to do is to step down. Now if you get caught, instead of stepping down, which is what happened, if you get caught, it is the job of the church to hold you accountable.
00:32:49
Speaker
And that's why Matthew 18 does not apply here.
Repentance in the Digital Age
00:32:52
Speaker
It's why Matthew 7 points directly to what we should be doing, which is judging sin and saying, brother, I'm so glad you're repentant. And now we're gonna walk with you while we wait and see if you'll bear fruit in this. While we wait and see if you really are getting help, if you can be trusted to come onto our stages and speak to more vulnerable women, if you can handle it.
00:33:18
Speaker
We have that, that's our job as his brothers and sisters in Christ. And that's why when we look in the comments on these videos and people are saying, you know, my sin is the same as yours, sin is sin, but sin from someone in a place of influence, sexual sin that's acted out, shows a greater level of depravity and giving over and has a greater consequence. And so the consequence here is we need to be holding people who abuse their position of power,
00:33:48
Speaker
accountable. I would expect the same thing for me. If someone found out that I had been using my platform to abuse in some way, I would fully expect that as part of my repentance, I lose my position. And that's why when we talk about restoration,
00:34:07
Speaker
I know we both would say, and any healthy disciple of Jesus would say, I want restoration for people like John Christ, restoration to the body, restoration to peace, restoration to the fullness, not necessarily restoration to a position.
00:34:24
Speaker
agree when you're talking about Matthew 18. It's so funny that this goes back to the Bible literacy piece. All of Matthew 18 says a lot of stuff. If you zero in on certain verses in Matthew 18 you can you might be able to take away a little jab to say hey well you can go to so-and-so. Did you email do you email John Christ and tell him all the things you're saying on IG Live or did you just
00:34:48
Speaker
Or did you? So check this, Matthew 18 says a lot of things. It talks about the parable of the lost sheep, how he'll go after one and leave the 99. We forget that's in there. And it also has in there, starting in verse 6, about causing offense to the little ones, right? And it says, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me,
00:35:09
Speaker
To fall away, it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses will inevitably come, but woe to the person by whom the offense comes. If your hands or foot causes you to fall away, cut it off.
00:35:31
Speaker
and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life mains or lane than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into the eternal fire. It goes on some more but I want to highlight something there.
00:35:43
Speaker
There is inevitably going to be loss associated with true repentance. We truly repent. We're going to lose something. It may not be that you lose your job when you repent for being late to work every day, but in certain cases there is going to be loss. There might be loss of relationships.
00:36:02
Speaker
loss of platform loss of something that shows i am willing to crawl my way to jesus if that means i'm stripping off every weight that's going to slow me down whether it's in the form of monetary compensation for my funny jokes whether whether it's in the form of
00:36:18
Speaker
uh stages and being booked first class to go out fly out and speak at someone's church whatever may
Power Dynamics and Church Support for Victims
00:36:25
Speaker
come repentance says i'm fully willing to put my hands up you got me you found me out it shouldn't be that we get found out in order to repent but should it happen that way because it does it should be real if we get found out we put both hands up that means we drop everything we put our hands up and we say god
00:36:42
Speaker
I'm going to own up to everything that I did wrong here. I'm not going to use any excuses. I'm not going to, well, they should have did this or this is why I did this. You've got me. Caught me red handed. Lord, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make sure defrauded parties are made whole.
00:36:59
Speaker
Right. Period. And so with that, and just kind of another thought regarding restoration, it's deeply concerning to me when we behave in manners as a church, where we forget that social media and public online platforms
00:37:17
Speaker
are really giving you a microscopic view into someone's life right and so what ends up happening is when a victim or survivor of abuse comes forward and they say this big deal showboating person that y'all love every tweet and read their buy their books they did this to me
00:37:39
Speaker
We don't listen to them. And a large part of that reason why is because we can only see that microscopic, but it's blown up in our minds and hearts, view of that person and say, they couldn't possibly do anything like that. And then they actually did.
00:37:55
Speaker
And then instead of looking at that big blown up person because now we're talking power dynamics, they're off. The person with the platform, the connections, the money for legal fees and therapy, John Chris could take months off and go and get therapy or whatever he did.
00:38:10
Speaker
People like that can afford to do things like that. And the victims don't always have that level of access. They don't have people who are like, hey, man, come stay in my house for a few weeks and cool off here. We'll help work you through this thing. They don't have that type of support.
00:38:25
Speaker
And so we're looking at them and we're saying, number one, you're wrong. Number two, that guy could never do that to you. That woman could never do that to you. We're projecting onto them this false sense of relationship that we have with this person we really admire. The reality is when the cameras cut off,
00:38:44
Speaker
When the live ends, when the post gets stale after it's been up a few weeks, we don't know what people are doing behind closed doors. And so yes, that should caution us to speak so definitively on people's lives and so certainly, but it also should cause us to step back and say, maybe I'm too invested in something to where I can't see clearly.
00:39:04
Speaker
Maybe I need to get some of the stuff out of my eyes to see if I am not giving this a fair assessment because I am not all knowing, right? And so one more thing and I'll let Felicia continue but I also wanted to mention just this aspect of the discipleship that comes with restoration, right? We live in a culture where
00:39:28
Speaker
We're used to, you get saved, you get a new Bible, go home, welcome to the family. That's what we're used to. We're not used to seeing churches disciple people through hard things. We're not used to seeing people walk with people through hard things.
Restoring Individuals vs. Positions of Influence
00:39:41
Speaker
And so when there comes an instance or instances where abuse is running rampant within para-church ministries or local churches or even on a comedy stage, we think that this person did a public repentance situation
00:39:55
Speaker
And then they said some sort of apology. And then they said that they're working with someone to help heal, right? Then they get on social media eight months later and like, you know what? I'm going back to what I was doing before. What this communicates to everyone watching is that you can do whatever you want in the church of God and to his bride, to his daughters, to his sons. And the church will still prop you up, say, get on my back.
00:40:25
Speaker
I'm gonna buy your tickets. I'm gonna go to your shows. Even if that means that you're going to die slowly because of it. There's a slow death that's associated with
00:40:38
Speaker
having people prop you up when they need to lower you down and take you in. Yes, I love that that you're giving that picture and this is why anyone who is watching this and missed the beginning where we talked about our intent, go back when we say this and watch the beginning and make sure you hear our hearts here. This is a huge issue in the church and what we're saying is
00:41:01
Speaker
Repentance, absolutely, we believe, we hope that that repentance in this particular situation was genuine. And restoration to the church body, that taking in that discipleship is our goal, not restoration to the position that resulted in abuse in the first place. Repentance and restoration to position are not the same thing.
00:41:25
Speaker
There must be fruit born in keeping with that repentance. There must be evidence over time. And the longer that sin has been ingrained in someone, the longer they've struggled with that, the longer time it takes for restoration to that kind of leadership position. And I know people don't like to hear that. They always want a timeframe. Well, eight months wasn't enough. So what is enough? It's case by case. How long were they struggling? What was the nature of the offense? What facilitated that offense?
00:41:54
Speaker
All of those things are factors in when someone is ready to come back. And really the biggest factor is that personal discipleship. Who's the local church who's taken responsibility for this? Or are all of the churches simply standing there clapping saying, yeah, we want funnies again. And we just, you know, take it back without thinking about the women who, who stood there and had this happen in order to try to protect other women.
00:42:21
Speaker
They spoke up to try and protect other young women.
00:42:25
Speaker
And so, like what you're saying, when the church basically says, grace means full restoration to where you were before, misunderstanding everything that scripture teaches on this, from 1 Corinthians 5 to Matthew 18, you end up with a world that actually looks at the church and says, oh gosh, you guys can't even handle your own abuse case. So, one other thing I wanted to mention was the concept of a safe place.
00:42:54
Speaker
This is an issue that my husband and I have personally dealt with. The church should be, ideally, a safe place for people who struggle. But it needs to be done in a way that protects other people who struggle and are vulnerable. And so when you have created a safe place, if an unsafe person comes into that safe place,
00:43:20
Speaker
The safe thing to do is not to say, come on in, let's just, you know, disciple you alongside these young women who are also very vulnerable. No, we, you distinctly separate that person and say, you know what, we're going to do one-on-one discipleship with you because clearly, you know, there's a pattern here that you're struggling with. If that person is truly repentant, they will accept and embrace being
00:43:45
Speaker
in that position. Same thing with a platform. If somebody is truly repentant, when the church says, you know what, I'm so happy that you're repentant, that you're getting help, that you're walking in freedom, we're not going to be hiring you or having you on our stage for the foreseeable future until we have seen that you are bearing fruit.
00:44:03
Speaker
If he's truly repentant, that will be music to their ears. It will be hard, but they will say, you know what? I understand. I embrace that. I will for sure continue with that. The problem today is even without a physical stage, you have a physical stage online. This is the new public sphere. The online world is a new public stage. And so if this is where it gets tricky, because if someone doesn't have the self-control,
00:44:30
Speaker
to demote themselves essentially and get that discipleship and take the time to really work through something of the magnitude that is sexual addiction without benefiting from the stage. There's really not a lot you can do about that as a church that not support that content.
00:44:50
Speaker
So the online nature of today really makes that difficult. The online nature of Christian celebrity makes that difficult. It's weird that we have that culture that's a whole other different topic. But it does mean that a lot of this accountability that needs to happen
00:45:07
Speaker
It can't happen with online personalities except through things like this.
Empathy and Support for Abuse Victims
00:45:13
Speaker
That's why when Ayanna and I chose to do this, it wasn't because we're like, you know what, we're headhunters. We've never done this before. We don't go around making live videos about every single issue under the sun. But this is a big enough issue that we need to understand. Repentance is amazing. It is so freeing. We want that for every person who
00:45:36
Speaker
has sinned in the eyes of God. Restoration, we want them restored to the body of Christ. We want them healed and we want the people they hurt healed. But part of repentance means accepting the fact that your position may not be restored to you now or ever.
00:45:52
Speaker
depending on the nature of what happened. Right. I would just like to add in there, it's just like some things for us as people to be thinking about, because I'm seeing some of the comments going by, and something I'm seeing is like, you know, when people hear you talking about like, you name a name, like, first of all, if you talk circularly around someone, they're like, why did you just say who it is? And then when you say who it is, they're like, well, why are you doing that? But aside from that, what I want people to understand, those of you who are watching, and those of you who will catch a replay,
00:46:22
Speaker
It shouldn't take something to hit so close to home for us to empathize with what is happening. And there's lots of nuances to be had in this conversation, right? There's lots of, you know, what about this thing? Just because we're not talking about them right now doesn't mean that they don't exist and that they don't matter.
00:46:41
Speaker
However, our relation to handling abuse rightly within the church, as we've seen like the Me Too movement and the Church Too movement just, you know, like really gained traction within the past couple of years. We need to keep in mind that you don't need a sister to be abused in the church in order for you to care or for you to have self-control. Like exercise fruit of the spirit even when it's not somebody who's in your family bloodline.
00:47:08
Speaker
You know, even if you never hear someone tell you their personal abuse story, ask yourself a really good question. Would this person, if anyone, if they were struggling with talking to someone about abuse, would they feel comfortable and safe enough to talk to me? Am I a safe space for them to confide in about what I'm going through?
00:47:35
Speaker
Also, am I doing enough research and study to speak on this topic with authority and or confidence? Because lots of times I see people in comments sections and different things of that nature who you would have thought they went to Harvard or the library up the street and got some information on some stuff. You would have thought they had like a whole book stack
00:48:00
Speaker
from christianbook.com with some information that they've digested and sifted through and prayed through, right? And I'm not trying to push an elitist perspective when it comes to education, because I know everything's not accessible for everybody. But at the very basic minimum, if you have an internet and you've got a phone, you can literally Google. There's so many resources out there. philipmonroe.com. Dr. Diane Lemberg has books on this. Wade Mullen is coming out with a book in October. You can literally go online and research these things.
00:48:28
Speaker
don't talk so heavy and deeply about something that you have not invested the time in to get to knowing about because what you can do is further re-traumatize people who have to go to sleep at night dealing with the things that you get to just scroll out of a comment section you can just scroll off a video and continue your life as usual it should never take something to hit so closely to home for us to take it seriously and with that also being said i just want to encourage you guys like
00:48:56
Speaker
As Felicia stated earlier, the goal is always to see restorative justice happen. We want justice for the victims. But we also want that person, who is the perpetrator, who has done the harming, to not be put in this vicious cycle where they're put in a situation where they can continue doing the same thing over and over again without getting the help that they need. In the O'Krisma article, one of the close friends or former close friends of John Chris mentioned that he dealt or deals with sexual addiction.
00:49:23
Speaker
In one of the stories of the victims she shared that she met him with her boyfriend present and then he summons her later to hang out and she's thinking it's on some mentorship stuff. He comes prepped with gives her water bottle with alcohol and he takes one too.
00:49:42
Speaker
When someone is struggling, when they're sexually addicted, their mind does not function like a normal person does. I know that for a fact. Research will tell you that as well. But their brain does not function normally as someone who's not dealing with that. And so boundaries and limits that you
00:50:04
Speaker
Couldn't imagine pushing, they will push. Those boundaries and limits that they push don't have any respecter to person. And so if someone is dealing with the types of things that John, Chris, or even others, when we see someone abusing,
00:50:20
Speaker
That is a key indicator that there's something deeply wrong and they need help. Again, we don't need to put them back on a stage. We don't need to, we don't care about them if all we're concerned about is being entertained and having good books published. We need to make sure that we are standing firm and saying, look,
00:50:40
Speaker
I want the victims to be taken care of, whatever that looks like it means for them. And even if I really love this person, no one's telling you to stop loving John Chris. No one's telling you to hate him. This is the most loving thing that someone can do. Right. Ask someone who has walked through sexual addiction.
00:51:00
Speaker
The worst thing someone could do is prop me back on a stage too soon when I am still processing a deeply ingrained addiction. This is not just, this is about sin, but it also is something that when you have patterns of addiction and sin, it changes how your mind works. So, you know, let's, you could look at this from a mental health standpoint and you could look at this from a spiritual and sin and repentance
Consequences of Sin and Community Accountability
00:51:28
Speaker
standpoint. Either way,
00:51:30
Speaker
repentance, awesome, support. You know, how many times do I honor, and I have to say this, but restore to position.
00:51:38
Speaker
No, because this is not a safe time, safe place for this person who has not shown over the course of many years that they're able to undo the years of the addiction issue. And this applies, this is especially with sexual abuse cases. And I wanted to give this analogy. If you know that someone in the body of Christ may be on the stage
00:52:04
Speaker
maybe not, is struggling with alcoholism, you don't hand them a six-pack eight months later and say, good luck. If you know, and this is much more serious, we don't like to do this comparison, but if you know that there's someone who has a history of child molestation in your church, you don't let them sign up for the nursery.
00:52:26
Speaker
You don't you don't do that it seems obvious but with these kinds of issues we want to say just give grace He repented it's all fine without saying okay from a big-picture church standpoint We restore you back because God has restored you in Christ. We restore you back to peace with us We love you. We want to see you grow and because we love you and we want to see you grow We will not restore your position now
00:52:52
Speaker
with people who aren't actually in the church on staff pastorally, you can't control whether or not they jump back on the public stage themselves, the online public stage. You can't do that, but what you can do is you can withhold from supporting that content. You can support the victims who have spoken out and who, by the way, their testimonies have all been confirmed. You can think through this biblically and think through repentance and restoration and the weight of sin for us personally.
00:53:21
Speaker
our sin affects other people. Our sin affects other people and especially our sexual sin. Our porn addictions, what we do with our boyfriends in the dark, how we think about other people in our minds, that affects other people and that should be so serious for us today. What we want you to come away with from this is A, understanding what repentance and restoration look like biblically, but also
00:53:47
Speaker
that sin is a serious thing that affects the body of Christ as a whole and no sin is truly isolated when you are part of that body and actually just encourage us to walk by the Spirit not by the flesh and stay in accountability with our brothers and sisters in Christ holding one another accountable welcoming that instead of saying
00:54:10
Speaker
you know, be threatened by that. Would you add anything at the end here, Ayanna? Yeah, just going along with how our sin is corporate and not just individual. Thinking back to Joshua VII, Aiken's sin, his sin impacts the community in such a way that Joshua is the leader, like why didn't we win this battle? What happened?
00:54:30
Speaker
God you said you would be with us and he off to the side was hoarding things devoted things he was not supposed to take in his tent and in that time people lived in tents together meaning that other people knew about what what he did and then situations like these other people often know but they don't say anything
00:54:51
Speaker
And so when we think to what we do in the dark, even if it's just us and no one else present, those things affect the big body, like the big B body. The scripture speaks so much to the body. We should never think that if I'm doing something over in Alaska and someone's doing something over in China, and just because no one else knows about it, it doesn't affect the body, it does. Because guess what? The moment that you step out of your bubble into community,
00:55:21
Speaker
those things are going to spill out it's like holding a glass they're shaking your hand and spilling out over the sides and so man i just i really want us even if you disagree with anything that we said today that's totally fine but one thing we just really want to drive home is that our sin impacts the entire body of christ whether you agree or disagree that is scripture and so we want to make sure that
00:55:48
Speaker
Even if we keep watching John Christ or not, let's turn the mirror internally and say, what in me is unlike Jesus? What in me am I afraid to lose to the point of lying?
00:56:02
Speaker
What in me is not a safe space for victims and survivors of abuse to come to and talk to? What in me is perpetuating something that God wants to destroy and will destroy finally one day? Well, thank you so much for joining me on this, Ayanna.
00:56:19
Speaker
This is Ayanna Mathis. She has a wonderful account. You can head over and follow her at Ayanna Z. Mathis. She is a wonderful Bible teacher and I consider a dear friend of mine. We hope this encourages you to dig deeper in scripture, to improve your Bible literacy, and to draw nearer to the Lord, to walk in freedom, and that we can all grow up together in maturity, hold each other accountable, and become more like Christ.
00:56:44
Speaker
Thanks for joining us, you guys.
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:56:46
Speaker
The audio of this will be saved to my IGTV and also pulled over to my podcast Verity with Felicia Masonheimer. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.