Victor Chininin Buele

There is a temptation, and one that I know very well, to submit to ungodly authority. To wolves.

And to not give in to that temptation ends up costing you a lot.

To call them wolves is a dangerous business. “Christians don’t talk like that. Christians aren’t supposed to talk like that.” It gives us a chill in the bones to call the very nice guy with the glasses that make him look smart, with the trimmed beard and Jordans a wolf. And when they turn on the tears of fruitless repentance, it is even harder because, how could I possibly not show grace when I am a debtor to mercy alone? How can I judge a man in his moment of weakness when I am the biggest sinner that I know?

“Excommunication was not a judgment on the underlying charges, but a result of the former members’ willful refusal to submit to the Session’s authority.”

Well, Mr. You-Are-Writing-A-Ph.D.-Dissertation-on-Ecclesiology, Mr. You-Who-May-Have-Received-a-Letter-Just-Like-that-One, let me ask you three questions:

1. When you read a letter from a session of elders, like the one that has been circulating in social media, don’t they just sound so sound and theologically precise and gracious and merciful and right?
2. When you see a video leaked online of one of the smartest theologians out there humiliating himself trying to bring light to something, isn’t that like totally a violation of 1 Cor 6 and a dishonor to the church of Christ?
3. Why is it that a Christian becomes what is adjudicated as contumacious or intransigent?

On the Authority of the Church

There is such a thing as the legitimate authority of the Church. She is the embassy of God’s kingdom on earth. She holds the keys. And since we can’t humanly see the Church entirely, since it’s made up of all true, regenerate believers, even those already in victory, the local church always is a mixture of believers and not-yet-believers. Some of these not-yet-believers can be, quite simply, a brood of vipers, with all the challenges that that presents. The local church cannot affirm a person’s profession of faith without true fruit of repentance. And since we are people, we are vulnerable to deceit and manipulation, error and wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance and the fear of man. The call to imitate the Savior’s humility cannot be louder and more critical than what it is. We are going to make mistakes. We need humility.

This type of letter comes with/from the authority of an eldership. It seems so correct and accurate and careful. We read it with the eyes of respect and admiration for our leaders. When we read it, we try to see the best in the situation. They pour their hearts out on how hard they tried to help the person see their sin. Yet, unfortunately, now we are dealing with contumacy/intransigence. The elders have nothing more they can do for this lost soul, please pray for them, and be ready to receive them whenever they are ready to repent. Until then, well, we wash our hands like sweet Pontius Pilates.

I rarely see the church behind the session or the eldership that produced the letter.

I will answer question one, then, as this: We are very willing, like sheep, to be led astray, and we turn off discernment and responsibility when a session or an eldership speaks. We turn on our reflex submission and follow. We read with the filter of “grace,” to see the best in the writers. And if there are Bible quotations, even better, even if we haven’t struggled with those passages in prayer, fasting, and study, even if we haven’t confronted the contumacious/intransigent with them. We don’t realize that we are not reading critically, even if we say we are, and we do not accept all the presuppositions that have been written into the process/letter and our very own presuppositions. We discount the years of training we have gone through to default to obedience. And this is especially harder when our livelihood is on the line, when our social circle is on the line, when our kids’ friends are on the line, when “peace” is on the line. We ignore the red flags and convince ourselves that we are rightly submitting to God-appointed, just authority. Even if we are not. It is more comfortable to stay with how things were/are than to jump into the abyss. And it will feel like an abyss.

On the Dishonor of the Bride of Christ

I particularly abhor this one. There is a presupposition that to bring sin into the light will bring disrepute to the church. People act more on fear of man than on fear of God. Especially when it comes to the leadership.

Here is what’s most interesting: wolves are always telling you about their sin, partly because they are training you to follow them, partly because they are desensitizing you to their sin, partly because they can’t help themselves but to brag of the “grace of God” that lets them get away with it. Wolves, like Yago Martins teaches of the false moralist, “call sin what God allows, forbid the things that they don’t like, and call maturity in the faith what their own personal preferences are.” Wolves are always doing that, they are condemning people for doing what God allows, they are ultra rigid and ironically, intransigent, about forbidding the things they don’t like, and they brag of their sin. Go to Instagram, and you’ll see the pictures of the decades-old scotch and the cigar next to the Bible because… Christian freedom… And then when the wolf says he was flirting with a woman there who was not his wife, and you call him out on it, well, you are just weaponizing their repentance. See how it goes?

Jesus Christ came with a sword. He reveals division. It is quite common to say to someone who is trying to subject himself to the difficult path of shining light on sin that he is being divisive. It is quite easy to say this and for the hearers to affirm it because clearly that person is highlighting division. Not everybody wants this to be exposed.

But he didn’t create division. The division was there. The division was not created by the one that is trying to report it, it was created by the one who chose his own pleasure over the health of the souls entrusted to his care.

The pastor is not an authoritarian. The pastor cannot be an authoritarian. Like even Jonathan Leeman would happily concede, the pastor does not have the authority of the sword. The pastor can’t make anybody do anything. The conviction has to come from God. What the pastor can and must do is seek to persuade with the Word, entreat with the Word, convict with the Word, judge with the Word, plead with the Word, pray and fast with the Word, meet under the Word.

Why did this man go to law enforcement? He had to. There are statutes in the land that are not unrighteous related to subjects of sexual abuse. And sadly, they cannot possibly cover every scenario. When somebody who has been abused falls into the cracks of the law, there are technicalities that arise: the county prosecutor can’t bring a case, there is not sufficient evidence, too much time has passed, there are contradicting accounts, there are no witnesses, they were too young, they don’t want to accuse their abuser and every abuser has a right under the law to face his accuser.

I hate it when a wife gets disciplined because of the sin that arose in her life as a result of the sin of the husband. There is a point at which a wife becomes impotent at beholding the hardening of the heart of the person she loves and to whom she covenanted in marriage. It is super easy, trust me, to point out all her sins. But going to the root of those, in situations like these ones, inevitably leads us to the one truly responsible for this mess, but it is way simpler to stay on the branches and not look at the root.

I will answer question two like this: desperate people do desperate things, and desperate believers do desperate things. We have exalted this “Let Go and Let God” cop-out as Christian virtue, and we enforce it above all. Believers, when we see a brother doing something desperate, please, let’s run to his aid and sort out why he is doing something desperate, and let’s do that by his side, as fellow co-heirs of the grace of God. Let’s not abandon him there, whatever it may cost us personally. Christ did not die for a sheep for her to be crushed by the flock. Even if the sheep is grossly in error, aren’t the spiritual brothers and sisters the ones who can help her? Stop freaking out when people do weird things. Stop acting like Julie Roys is the cousin of Satan. Remember, Julie Roys’ site exists because corrupt church leadership is contumacious and intransigent. There is a certain feeling of impotence that you reach when nobody cares about something that nobody likes to talk about. Yet, Jesus talked about it. A lot.

I once met a man foolish enough to think he could pastor over six-hundred people. In reality, I think they were three-hundred, but maybe there were if he counted visitors as well. Numbers are like that, they are prone to exaggeration and manipulation. This man did not disciple his flock. When confronted about it, he outwardly denied it, but then he went and hired a discipleship pastor. This man oversaw this church while dozens of people left, in reality because of this very problem, though not everyone could verbalize it like that. The answer given always was that these were normal patterns of being at a different stage of the life of the church, when the old guard becomes dissatisfied and leaves. Imagine that, dozens of people warning you about something and you still stand resolute, continuing to harden your heart, very much like the bitter root of Deuteronomy 29, thinking all will be well with you even though you walk in deceitfulness and pride. He ultimately resigned, well after being disqualified to serve. Can you possibly quantify in your head all the pain that this man caused?

I am not without fault. I am certain that there are different ways to do things. I am certain I have brought pain to people. But wrong is wrong, and exposing it does not bring dishonor to the church. The dishonor was there already. Stop blaming the poor guy that got stuck with the short end of the stick. Go after the big fish, the one that got big with the food he took from the sheep, like in 1 Samuel 2:12-17 in the times of old, stealing the weight of glory of the Lord God Almighty.

On Contumacy and Intransigence

Now, these are words that, if you made it this far into this, likely left you scratching your head. What did you just say?

Those are the words from these letters. These words represent the sin being disciplined. And hardly anybody understands them.

Our friends at Merriam-Webster define contumacy as the “stubborn resistance to authority,” specifically “a willful contempt of court.” Its synonyms are rebellion, disobedience, defiance, rebelliousness, willfulness, and disrespect. The dictionary defines intransigent as someone “characterized by refusal to compromise or to abandon an often extreme position or attitude.” Its synonym is uncompromising.

Did you catch what was done? I get it. There was not sufficient evidence to prove or convict that a man had sexually abused a young woman. The reason there was not sufficient evidence is because the young woman refuses to testify. The man who is stuck in the middle watching this happen becomes a subject of church discipline for being uncompromising, stubborn, rebellious, disobedient, disrespectful.

Do not miss the point: it is being said loudly and clearly every time that what matters most is obedience, submission, compromise, and respect. And we are asked to respect that which is not worthy of respect.

I have thought for a long time about these two words since they don’t actually appear in the Bible. I was once asked by somebody to provide an explanation for my intransigence, and I was too weak to be able to articulate it. People often ignore the weight of the matter on a person, and being sinners, we bend under the pressure, under the prospect of losing people we love, under the fear of what might come as a result of this.

I believe that the closest thing to contumacy/intransigence that I can find in the Bible can be seen in two verses: First, in Psalm 14:1, we read that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good.” And in Romans 8:7, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” In both of these cases we see a rebellion against God. This hostility comes from a heart/mind unable to submit to God. They cannot do what is right because their orientation is against God, not towards/with Him. There is a resistance to God and His authority.

To see the former president of a Bible College disciplined for this very thing is very hard to watch. When the local church states that he is contumacious, I don’t see Psalm 14:1 or Romans 8:7. There is a big gap here, and we need to stop acting as if this sort of determination is acceptable for children of the King. It is not.

Why is there no discussion about whether the leadership is being contumacious? About the ones enacting the discipline being holy and godly? We get distracted by the educational credentials of leaders, or by what we have experienced to be their kind and good behavior, or by how long they have been in the ministry. Are these leaders qualified to enact this discipline? These guys are the successors of the late R. C. Sproul. This can happen to anyone. It matters.

I answer the last question as this: Why are we asking this question? If we all prize the unity of the church in the bond of peace, are we not all to be conformed to the image of our Maker? What is that we are asking the “contumacious” to give up? Is it a righteous and rightful claim? And if it is not, aren’t we to persevere to help him see? Our minds are easily clouded to hide our own contumacy.

Let’s not call it contumacy. Let’s call it what it is: hardness of heart. We must fight against the hardness of heart, Christians, we must. It is what is tied to unbelief; go see in Mark, it’s true. Now, how can someone with a hard heart discipline someone for hardness of heart? And we are in Matthew 7 and we have clear directives from the Lord. We need to go repent of our hardness of heart so that we can go help the one with the hard heart. We need to measure with the right measure.

And can you for a moment try to get into this man’s situation? Can you imagine the impotence at being unable to find a way for truth to be found and exposed and dealt with justly?

The Submission that Matters

For the mind that is not set on the flesh, there cannot be hostility to God, per Romans 8:7. It submits willingly to God’s law. And it is able to do so, for it is the gift of the Father who delights to give His children good things.

When we talk about submission, let’s make sure we are talking about the submission that matters the most, and from which all other submission is to flow: submission to God. The moment we stop submitting ourselves to God, we lose our grounding. We lose it all.

And dear leaders, it is essential to be above reproach. It is far better to step down, to go sit down among the flock, to display Christ’s character in the midst of the sin of the world, than to keep up a facade of godliness, to keep something standing that was demolished long ago and that requires rebuilding.

Rebuilding is essential. And it requires our submission to God.