The Evil That Men Do

I came across a quote from Canon Andrew White - the 'vicar of Baghdad' - recently. He had been asked why IS hates Christians and other minorities so much, and he replied:

They hate because they hate. They hate because they are evil. It is not an issue of 'these are Muslims and they're radicals and that's what they're like'. They're like this because they're evil ... They don't know God at all.

Every now and again it seems people get an excuse and an opportunity to cast off the restraints of 'civilized behaviour' and some of them do things which can only be described as incredibly evil. We saw it in Ruanda, we saw it in Bosnia, now we see it in Iraq: people who had lived together comfortably enough as neighbours suddenly descend into anarchy and chaos. It is tied to dehumanising others - the Ruandan Hutus famously described the Tutsis as 'cockroaches' before going on the rampage - rather than religion (Orthodox Christians in Bosnia, Sunni Muslims in Iraq, and no real religious element in Ruanda) or race/geographic region (Africa, Europe and Middle East in these three examples).

That is 'chaotic' evil - where people seemingly just lose the plot and wildly act out the darkness within them. There is also a cold systematic evil, such as the Israelis deliberately killing civilians in neighbouring countries every few years. They dehumanise with terms like 'terrorist', yet their aim is to cause terror and to destroy - in the latest attacks on Gaza, hospitals and those who managed hospitals were targetted, to teach them a lesson.

I've also been reading (again) Steig Larsson's wonderful book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The four parts to the book are each introduced by a statistic about violence to women in Sweden:

"18% of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man."

"48% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man." 

"13% of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship." 

"92% of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police."

Currently in Britain various child sexual abuse scandals roll on. Last night Channel 4 news quoted a child support worker as saying:

"Rotherham is not the exception, it is more likely to be the norm."

Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. According to NSPCC research the vast majority of child abuse happens in the home: their figures suggest that one in twelve children (around 8%) is sexually abused during their childhood, the vast majority by either family members or family friends.

It's about power and accountability. Where people have power but do not have to answer for it then some abuse it. Where they can shield their activity in darkness, anonymity and secrecy then some give way to the evil within. And some don't.

Maybe that is a working definition of that horribly degraded term 'sin': when we have a choice between what is evil and what is good, which do we choose?

Most religions, I think, follow most people in condemning those who choose such evil, who sin in this way. A distinctive about Christianity is that it also offers a way back.

When you have made the wrong choices, when you have sold your soul to evil, Jesus offers hope - light in the terrible darkness. Churches still struggle with what on earth that means in practice, and lots of churchgoers are really not keen on this idea at all, but following Jesus means little without it.

For someone who has sold their soul, Jesus has paid the price to redeem it. The Bible calls this 'Grace'. We all need grace ... maybe some more than others.

Rob Beardsley Leaves Caversham Baptist Church

After two and a half years as pastor, Rob Beardsley is leaving Caversham Baptist Church. As I understand it, the termination agreement includes some sort of 'gagging clause', so church members are tight-lipped. In fact their church website, in its news section, doesn't even mention that he has gone ... there is just a gap in the Meet The Team page.

I'm not a fan of secrecy myself: when authorities use 'confidentiality' as a justification for being secretive, then I tend to assume they are avoiding accountability. Typically secrecy has the exact opposite effect from confidentiality: the information vacuum creates gossip and speculation to fill it.

We never did find out what had gone wrong at Rob Beardsley's previous church, Oakham Baptist Church, just that there was not a single person from Oakham who came to his induction at CBC - unheard of in my experience.

My take on what has happened at Caversham Baptist over the last two and a half years is as follows:

• The church has been haemorrhaging members;
• The church has been haemorrhaging money;
• Their outreach worker was moved to internal work and later laid off;
• Disciplinary action was taken against Rob Beardsley;
• The church has become deeply divided;
• It was clear that the situation was unsustainable so the parties agreed to Rob Beardsley leaving.

A year into this process I left the church, so I am not a neutral observer, but I hope the above is suitably objective anyway.

There is a less-obvious issue in all this: that of listening to God as a church.

Baptist churches, when recruiting pastors, don't seem to do the things that would normally be considered 'due diligence', like taking references. They just say that pastors are 'called' by God, so that sort of thing is inappropriate. Actually, my reading of the Bible is that things heard from God should always be checked out ('tested').

Nevertheless, the basic point stands that pastors are called under God's guidance, and a church knows who to call because they listen to God:

"[Jesus] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice." (John 10:3b-4)

In Caversham Baptist's case, we clearly did not listen to Jesus. That, in my view, should be their priority now as they attempt to move on from this traumatic time: focusing on Jesus and following him.

Meanwhile all should acknowledge that, whoever might have been at fault for the things that happened whilst Rob Beardsley was pastor, the basic problem lay further back, with the church as a whole. We all messed up, so playing the blame game would be a singularly futile exercise.

It is time for Caversham Baptist Church to learn from the past, constructively; but, more importantly, to step out into the future: doing what is right, always showing compassion, and - most importantly - walking humbly with their God.

EDIT 26/07/14

It strikes me that the bullet point list above is solidly negative. This is simply because I wanted to only list changes which were objective and demonstrable, and the list of such things that I am aware of is solidly negative. However, it does seem implausible that there was nothing objectively positive happened at CBC during that thirty month period. If you are aware of any such, please use the comments section to share it.

One thing I would add is that I am aware of individuals who went above and beyond the call of duty just to keep things going in particular areas of the church's ministry. 'Keeping things going' doesn't really fit into 'objective and demonstrable' changes, but it does represent a significant and costly contribution to God's Kingdom, I think.

EDIT 29/10/14

I've had a letter claiming the above is defamatory: I've taken legal advice and it is clearly not (see the Defamation Act 2013). Nevertheless, for the avoidance of doubt, I wish to explicitly state that there is nothing in the above attempting to suggest that Rob Beardsley was in some way personally responsible for the heavy financial losses suffered by CBC during that period. This was a whole-church problem and CBC is a church with congregational government: all church members are responsible for decisions made, and Rob Beardsley was just one amongst many such members.

Sadly, in the kerfuffle I have disconnected the original comments on this post. I am recreating them below, but the links to commenters are lost. Sorry.