Brace yourselves... It's taken me 3 days to get to the point where I can speak of #ShinyHappyPeople without developing hives. As @BethMooreLPM suggests, I'll try to use "ladylike" words, but here are the 4 excerpts sitting heavy in the gut of this spiritual/sexual abuse survivor.

Note: I’m not trying to attack people who embrace these stances. I'm attempting to explain how these 4 points can be bludgeons in the hands of believers and not yield the blessings vaunted by IBLP ideology.

Picture #1 – “Why does God allow sexual abuse?”

Let me be really clear, because I’ve heard and lived this a thousand different ways: framing sexual assault in terms of God “allowing it,” evokes images of Jesus standing next to the woman or man being brutalized, violated, humiliated—and saying “I’m okay with this.”

Now imagine that it’s you. You’re the girl or woman or man who has been dehumanized & left literally and metaphorically bleeding from your assault, and a leader tells you, “Jesus is allowing this because he loves you, & because it’ll grow your faith or make your spirit stronger.”

And then the same leader tells you to run to Jesus for comfort—to run into the arms of the same being who stood there and shrugged at what you endured.

We MUST frame our conversations about sexual assault in terms that accurately represent God’s heart and not our desired spiritual outcomes, a loving God who roars in fury when his children are assaulted.

In French law, there’s crime called “Non-assistance à personne en danger.” Failing to assist a person in danger is considered complicity in the harm being inflicted. Terms like “allow” imply consent. And this is not God. He is able to bring beauty from ashes—

he is faithful and he will. But can we please stop implying that’s he’s “okay with it” through our uncareful words? Can we please show victims a version of Jesus that grieves and groans and vows justice for them first? (There’s an eerie parallel here to Image #4.)

The second issue with Picture #1 reflects one of the reasons sexual assault has been so horrifically minimized in some Christian circles for so long.

The teaching here is that the most important parts of your personhood are your spirit, followed by your soul, and lastly (as clearly indicated in the graphic) your body.

“Least important.” Oof. This one knocks the breath out of me. I want names. Who is the faith leader who first decreed that the body of a child, woman, or man is disconnected from his/her personhood, and that one’s only real value is the spirit and soul?

This is the type of abominable thinking that allows for criminal acts to go unreported and criminal actors to go unscathed.

It minimizes in their minds and the minds of their followers the impact of molestation and rape, because it “only” happened to their bodies, and if they just pray and/or submit, they’ll understand that it need not have an impact on their spirits or souls.

Our bodies are sacred. They are fragile and priceless. They hold what our souls experience, and our spirits are bound by what our bodies suffer.

Body, soul, and spirit are intertwined in God’s design because they need each other to make sense of our existence and when even one is ground under the heel of an abuser’s boot, ALL become maimed.

Picture #2 – “The law of crying out.”

It is not hyperbole to state that this one made me nauseous. If a victim doesn’t cry out, he or she is “equally guilty with the attacker.” This is further abusing the abused.

It is telling the victim of unspeakable crimes that because she was stunned or terrorized or threatened into muteness during the attack—because he dissociated from his own body in order to survive the rape—she and he are just as guilty as the criminal who violated them.

Before you cry, “But you’re talking about historic points of view—we’ve evolved on this topic,” let me remind you that these were values still preached in IBLP circles in the 80s and 90s.

People who embrace this understanding of personhood are alive and well in our Christian environments today.

And the Joshua Generation (that followed the original IBLP movement) is made up of even younger members whose stated goal is to achieve positions of authority and influence in the church and in society.

As antiquated as these teachings may seem to some of us, they are still current and finding new footing in our too-often dehumanizing spiritual culture.

Picture #3 – This is the sermon Bill Gothard preached after credible allegations of multiple sexual assaults were brought against him. It’s a multi-point reflection on how hard it was on him to be accused.

That he responded in this way has got to be either clueless or nefarious—or using the illusion of the former to mask the latter.

The cynicism and heartlessness of this approach is further aggravated by his use of “criticized” in this slide to describe the plentiful, corroborated allegations against him of sexual grooming, molestation, and rape.

He wasn’t criticized for some minor faux-pas, he was accused of sexual violence. The wording here is a slap in the face of the still-terrified women who dared, at great cost, to drag their trauma into the light.

A spiritual leader who follows revelations of harm he has inflicted on his followers—whatever it may be—with sermons centering his hurt feelings, referring to it as a spiritual lesson rather than a legitimate investigation, is worthy of neither the pulpit nor your trust. Run.

Picture #4 – I am NOT going to wade into the debate over spanking, but I will without hesitation jump into the deep end of Bill Gothard’s instructions to spank the child “until you break his spirit,” then tell the child to hug the person who spanked him until it’s a believable.

The word “grooming” has been thrown around so casually in political spheres that its meaning may no longer be understood. Here's what it means: it's the long-term manipulation and desensitization process used by predators to make children (and adults) more vulnerable to abuse.

It normalizes secrecy, minimizes sexual intimacy, and uses love as an excuse and a lever to manipulate, exploit, and abuse the subject of the grooming. By this definition, the form of discipline encouraged in IBLP and embraced by his followers is exactly that.

Let me break down the messaging:

· "We love you more than anyone in the world:
· "We want the best for you"
· "Because of that, we’re going to spank you" (cont'd)

· "But because we love you so much, we’re not just going to smack your bum a couple times so you remember that this behavior isn’t acceptable, we’re going to keep spanking you until we see that your spirit is completely broken—distress or limpness will suffice" (cont'd)

· "If we still see signs of strong will in your eyes, we’ll keep going"
· "And now you need to hug us and tell us you love us too"
· "No, that’s not convincing—hug us harder and tell us you really love us"
· "See? This is what love is"

The child who has had her spirit broken by those most urgently charged with protecting her—the child who was told it’s an act of love—the child who was instructed to reciprocate with love—that child is fertile soil into which future abusers and rapists can dig their claws.

How often have we heard this from victims?

· But he told me he loved me.
· People who love you will sometimes hurt you for your own good.
· I should be grateful that he loved me enough to want to teach me.
· I didn’t run because his “discipline” proves his love.

You may think, “Come on, Michèle, you’re overthinking all of this.”

I preach of what I know:

I have been a victim of some of the ideology represented in these four slides.

I serve people who has been victimized—wounded/destroyed—by that ideology masquerading as spirituality.

I can attest that that ideology has too often caused a “God dysphoria” that has either crippled or annihilated faith (because the dehumanization and torture are done in his name).

Variations on the teachings highlighted in Shiny Happy People persist in Christian circles to this day—enshrined in our consciousness by decades of normalizing, and far too often unrecognized as dangerous and damaging.

There’s so much more I’d like to say, but the contents of these screenshots have been robbing me of sleep, so I needed to start with them.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations. Let's do better—for God's sake.

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out” (Matthew 12:20)