 |
| SynConference leaders try to scare people away from this little effort by flogging the author rather than addressing their abusive actions. |
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel has left a new comment on your post "Church Abuse Comes from Reprobate Minds":
Ichabod -
What you have described by much of your commentary is the worst type of molestation. It is spiritual molestation, often perpetrated against pastoral shepherds and their congregational sheep.
In short, I prefer to call it ecclesiastical molestation. It will not go unpunished by the good, gracious and judicious Lord.
Nathan M. Bickel
www.thechristianmessage.org
www.moralmatters.org
***
 |
| DP Werner - guilty! |
GJ - I mentioned a group of WELS missionaries going Pentecostal. The Bethany Seminary president's wife immediately said, "We are not supposed to talk about that."
When I had a skin cancer many years ago, I talked about it. I studied symptoms (described in an insurance manual), told my wife, showed her the proof, went to a doctor, and went to the surgeon. No problems have come up since then. But I have to talk about it when reviewing my medical history.
One of the worst symptoms of this abuse is "We can't talk about it." No wonder things get worse. No one can even imply that Holy Mother Synod is less than perfect. On the Net, someone brought up the status of the New NIV. Another person responded, "Why are you always criticizing WELS?" That itself is a double-question, an accusation affirming that: 1) To discuss the NNIV is to disparage WELS; and 2) To raise the issue of Biblical translation, by itself, is a symptom of always attacking Holy Mother WELS. It is really a triple accusation - not only attacking WELS but always attacking WELS.
When a sect becomes a citadel of false doctrine, any question may indeed be always attacking. But false doctrine needs attacking. The WELS leaders need to be tossed out as a group, from the top down. Funds should be returned to the congregations with profuse apologies, with just enough saved to pay for current lawsuits and the Pewaukee Universalist Towers.
ELS pastors joke that WELS can see false doctrine 100 miles away but never under their own noses.
This subtle form of abuse leads to the massive, damaging, soul-murdering abuse so common today. Most people do not see it. People drift away. They join ELCA because the dogma is the same (everyone forgiven) without the constant pouncing, eye-poking, and insulting remarks that pass for fellowship among the Pietists. It is just a softer kind of Pietism, as people pass from Good Two-Shoes into honest Universalism.
One type of abuse is obvious, because it is a crime, a felony. Those who fail to report it are felons, even if they hide under the cover of Holy Mother Church. The we can't talk about it abuse makes all the rest possible.
