Paul's Passing Thoughts

The church as a protected child rape zone is the result of Protestant orthodoxy crossing with behavior found in historical Western tradition.  

TANC finds its humble beginnings in a familiar story circa 2007. This author who was not an author at the time was so blown away by the behavior of church elders that I had to know why they did what they did, and why everyone else in the same fellowship of churches would not confront them about it. Hence, the beginning of a relentless and tenacious journey.

Research concerning the truth and history about the institutional church can only match the 1963 “shockumentary [‘Mondo Pazzo’], presenting…bizarre behavior from around the world, including cruelty, graphic gore, and strange rituals” x 10. Hence, after ten years of research, one must pick and choose topics to focus on because this reality we live in is constrained by a thing called “time.” Should this post address Puritan urineology, or child rape as a church tradition?

Let’s talk about rape because of the four-hour phone conversation I had with a mother last night. This is indicative of the energy projected by those on the journey. The new birth does not do away with something that all humans are born with; a conscience, but it does turbo-charge it. Before the new birth, our conscience condemned us or excused us from guilt, but the new birth turns the conscience into an entity that loves justice and truth.

When you are born again, though weak in mortality awaiting the redemption of the body, you have been given God’s mind. In the home fellowship movement, we seek to bring that one mind into focus and practice among the family members. And in this new heart, we share God’s love for children. Among proponents of Protestant orthodoxy, not so much. Children in that venue are “little vipers in sanctified diapers.” The renowned Protestant Voddie Baukman once said that God makes children small so they can’t murder their parents. Really? I missed that tidbit of wisdom in the Scriptures somehow.

And in the church, this ideology of the total depravity of mankind by no means excludes children, or even newborn babies. In case you haven’t heard, newborn babies are little bundles of screaming selfishness that only have a self-concept of need. Yes indeed, their limited knowledge of existence with hunger being on the shortlist equals total depravity expressed in steroidal selfism. Who knew?

So, the rampant acceptance and cover-up of child rape in the Protestant church is somehow a big surprise to many. However, this ministry focuses on the WHY, not the WHAT. The WHAT is well documented on the many blogs that seek to save the institutional church that is well beyond saving. Even if the post American Revolution church was confused enough in regard to Enlightenment Era ideology to have some virtue, God’s family was never meant to be an institution of any sort, but rather a literal family functioning like any other family does by utilizing roles, gifts, and organization towards a common goal of love and support.

Institutions are about authority, not love. This isn’t complicated: authority has no need for leadership which persuades people regarding the truth. Authority compels by force and law; authority and leadership are mutually exclusive. The church is about authority just like any other institution, but family is about leadership.

What do we have thus far in this post? Authority, and mankind that doesn’t deserve justice due to its total depravity. In reality, by virtue of those two alone, what is that going to get you in the institutional church? See, the thousands of spiritual abuse blogs of your choice. The WHAT is firmly established and documented by gargantuan redundancy of a myriad of different cases all over the world.

And so it goes…your child was raped in the church during a church event? So what? After all, “We are all just sinners saved by grace.” Not only that, church is the only bus going to heaven, and therefore, it must be protected at all cost. No church is perfect, but the institutional church is the only means of “obtaining ongoing grace.” This is why you can’t call the police if your child is raped in the church: it will ruin the reputation of the church resulting in people not coming to said church resulting in them going to hell for eternity. Yes, what happened to your child is awful…but…you surely don’t want to be the cause of people spending eternity in hell, do you?

Besides, God is “sovereign” and this obviously happened for a reason. In all of these “unfortunate” events, they are “opportunities” to “show forth God’s forgiveness.” By not forgiving your child’s rapist, you are acting like your sins are of a lesser sort when we are all “totally depraved.” Hence you are “just like the Pharisees” that Jesus fustigated.

Does any of this sound familiar? Sure it does, unless you have been vacationing on the moon.

And why is the church full of good Germans who look the other way? Again, and again, the institutional church is supposedly the only bus going to heaven.

The church as a protected child rape zone is the result of Protestant orthodoxy crossing with behavior found in historical Western tradition. This post is not about the individual historical-grammatical interpretation of reality versus the Protestant historical-redemptive interpretation of reality which this ministry has written about extensively, but it is about the New Testament mirroring the exact same societal elements taking place in our contemporary culture.

Man-boy-love is a longstanding Western tradition intrinsically connected with religion. Knowledge empowers the individual, and it is not in the best interest of religion to have educated subjects save the indoctrination of orthodoxy with its you can’t get to heaven without us moniker. Institutional paganism and religion have always had this in common: authoritative coregency regarding eternal salvation. What could be more lucrative in a quest for power and money? In the same way that faith married with authority will always lead to cultism, Protestant orthodoxy crossing paths with a certain longstanding Western ideology will result in a child rape zone and the subsequent cover-up by the good German Protestants.

This is where we discuss the New Testament as a Western historical prototype. Basically, God’s family turned the Western world upside down through persuasion, not authority. I understand the setting is Israel, but also understand that Greco-Roman culture was the dominate world persuasion during that time. During that time, Western thought dominated the world and was defined by the great Western thinkers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This is very much the case in our day as well. Therefore, the New Testament is going to be a historical mirror for interpreting what is going on in our day generally, and technically defined by a literal/grammatical interpretation without excluding genre in context. This follows God’s plan for individual interpretation because He holds man accountable individually. God does not hold the individual accountable while writing the Bible in a way that excludes individual interpretation and leaving the individual to sort out vast claims of authority by men. This is where “there is no mediator between God and man other than Christ” is a bit too simple for those of us that outsmart ourselves. Perhaps “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me” is also too simple. It would seem that the meaning of the word “all” would be evident.

Building on the theme of this post, part and parcel with the founding principles of Western logic established in the 5^th century by the big three, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was the practice of pederasty.

Pederasty in ancient Greece was a socially acknowledged erotic relationship between an adult male (the erastes) and a younger male (the eromenos) usually in his teens.[2] It was characteristic of the Archaic and Classical periods.[3] The influence of pederasty on Greek culture of these periods was so pervasive that it has been called “the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens.”[4]

Some scholars locate its origin in initiation ritual, particularly rites of passage on Crete, where it was associated with entrance into military life and the religion of Zeus.[5] It has no formal existence in the Homeric epics, and seems to have developed in the late 7th century BC as an aspect of Greek homosocial culture,[6] which was characterized also by athletic and artistic nudity, delayed marriage for aristocrats, symposia, and the social seclusion of women.[7] Pederasty was both idealized and criticized in ancient literature and philosophy.[8] The argument has recently been made that idealization was universal in the Archaic period; criticism began in Athens as part of the general Classical Athenian reassessment of Archaic culture.[9]

Scholars have debated the role or extent of pederasty, which is likely to have varied according to local custom and individual inclination.[10] The English word “pederasty” in present-day usage might imply the abuse of minors in certain jurisdictions, but Athenian law, for instance, recognized consent but not age as a factor in regulating sexual behavior.[11] As classical historian Robin Osborne has pointed out, historical discussion of paiderastia is complicated by 21st-century moral standards…

…The Greek practice of pederasty came suddenly into prominence at the end of the Archaic period of Greek history; there is a brass plaque from Crete, about 650-625 BC, which is the oldest surviving representation of pederastic custom. Such representations appear from all over Greece in the next century; literary sources show it as being established custom in many cities by the 5th century BC.[30]…

…The erastes-eromenos relationship played a role in the Classical Greek social and educational system, had its own complex social-sexual etiquette and was an important social institution among the upper classes.[32] Pederasty has been understood as educative,[33] and Greek authors from Aristophanes to Pindar felt it naturally present in the context of aristocratic education (paideia).[34] In general, pederasty as described in the Greek literary sources is an institution reserved for free citizens, perhaps to be regarded as a dyadic mentorship: “pederasty was widely accepted in Greece as part of a male’s coming-of-age, even if its function is still widely debated.”[35]…

…In Crete, in order for the suitor to carry out the ritual abduction, the father had to approve him as worthy of the honor. Among the Athenians, as Socrates claims in Xenophon’s Symposium, “Nothing [of what concerns the boy] is kept hidden from the father, by an ideal[36] lover.”[37] In order to protect their sons from inappropriate attempts at seduction, fathers appointed slaves called pedagogues to watch over their sons. However, according to Aeschines, Athenian fathers would pray that their sons would be handsome and attractive, with the full knowledge that they would then attract the attention of men and “be the objects of fights because of erotic passions.”[38]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece

Note my bold underlined emphasis above. How prevalent was this culturally during the time of Christ and the apostles? The apostle Paul used it as an example of the law’s role in justification. I am not going to use space here to articulate Paul’s usage of the word “guardian” in Galatians chapter 3 as Andy Young has already dealt with it here, but suffice to say that the word translated “guardian” is the very word “pedagogues” in that chapter. That’s how prevalent the practice of pederasty was during New Testament times. It is also behind the apostle Paul’s disdain for the Cretans during the same time. Paul also addressed this issue in the books of first and second Corinthians.

The American Revolution drove the reality of this practice that has never left Western reality underground because Americanism emphasized the freedom, ability, and dignity of the individual, but as Americanism and Enlightenment ideals dissipate, these practices will become more prevalent and even socially accepted. Of course, the biblical ideal of objective love defined by God’s law takes the idea of freedom of conscience much further, but that’s not the specific topic here.

Here is the point of this post: when these traditions come walking into the church, the tradition is covertly married with orthodoxy for the aforementioned reasons. Certainly, the epic example of the Catholic Church makes this point entirely. Add to this the fact that despite theological and warring spats between Catholics and Protestants, they openly share the same spiritual father: Saint Augustine who was an avowed Platonist which is also not happenstance. Fact is, Martin Luther and John Calvin NEVER left the Catholic Church. And, the institutional church spawned by Augustine in the 4^th century may claim that it picked Platonist goodies off the metaphysical shelf and left the rest on the shelf, things like pederasty, but that is doubtful when one considers the true history of the Church. Augustine believed that Plato was a pre-Christianity Christian, and the Bible makes no sense without Platonism (See Susan Dohse’s conference series on Plato); are we to assume then that Plato’s societal ideals have been scrubbed from the metaphysical roundtable? Very doubtful. In fact, read the newspapers. Impossible.

Why? Why did it really happened? In one case where a mother went to the police and was brought up on church discipline accordingly, a pastor walked into court and demanded that the judge dismiss the case and turn the member-rapist over to the care of the church. While the judge was astonished and perplexed, we must understand that people ALWAYS do what they do for a reason. What is the logic that led this pastor to act in this outrageous way? Again, connect the dots of the aforementioned.

And what is at least one solution? Answer: utterly reject the idea that authority over salvation has been granted to the church. No, no, “all” means “all.” With all the pontificating in the institutional church about “the glory of God alone,” these men complicit in child-rape and drunk with control lust claim to have authority granted to Christ alone.

And in regard to this authority, what is the difference between churchianity and the worship of Moloch who demanded the sacrifice of our children? Why then did “believers” sacrifice their children to Moloch? Because Moloch had authority over faith and truth and Moloch said so. Likewise, the Pope says you can buy your loved ones out of purgatory and educated people deem it such. Jim Jones told his followers to drink poison and instructed them to feed the children first, and consequently, 900 fell in one day while hugging the children they sacrificed.

But in a twisted way these sacrifices are more humane than the church’s rape zone where the victims are blamed and relegated to torment on the installment plan.

May God give His family free revelation of His mind in facilitating the healing of those victimized by the church rape zone, and may we all come home to family and deprive the Platonist institutional church of its claim on salvation. We will no longer sacrifice our children in the present for a future pseudo-salvation. We will no longer fellowship with the good Germans of Protestantism. Nazism was not the only valid nationalism then, and the church is not the only valid way to salvation in the present. In fact, it is the wide road that leads to eternal destruction.

Come home to family in a family setting. Come home to leadership and not authority. Let us wrap our arms around your victims of tyranny and weep with them. Let us rejoice together in the one mind of Christ and his coming kingdom. Let us have the freedom to be persuaded in our own minds. Let condemnation vanish and let it give way to the law of love.

Let our appeal be to Christ alone who shares His glory and authority with no man. Let God be our Father, and Christ our brother who is not ashamed of us, but will return in His glory and slay the totally depraved and those who proudly call themselves, “sinners.”

paul