When the Church Harms God's People Quotes

“Victims are often told they must forgive no matter what. But God does not forgive those who do not speak truth or who demand forgiveness. He is ready to forgive—and that readiness is hard to hold back—but forgiveness is not given until we seek him out, speak truth, and ask him for it.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Oswald Chambers teaches that repentance destroys the lust of self-vindication. Wherever that lust resides, repentance is not true.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Words spoken cannot be assumed to be truth, even when they are repeated many times and are believed by many people. They are truth when we see them incarnated. God spoke, God came in the flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory. Jesus showed the Father to us by bringing his character into flesh and blood.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Shepherds serve the sheep best when they serve the Master first.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Sheep do not eat each other. Wolves eat sheep. Wolves look for isolated sheep, sheep on the fringe, sheep who are suffering. They look for someone who is not likely to speak out and someone easily overpowered.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“The church is to be a place where sheep can safely graze. To fail the sheep is to fail our Lord.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The greatest competitor ​of devotion to Jesus is service for him.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“We protect systems to protect our leaders, and we protect our leaders to protect systems. We think growth and money and fame are proof of God’s presence. We are faithless to our Lord, whose name we bear and whose life abides in us. That faithlessness damages his name and results in a growing malignancy in the body of Christ, growing unseen, subject to our own tendency to ignore it, cover it up, and deny it. So it continues to spread. Truth and healing may actually appear destructive to what we hold dear. There is another way. Our Lord gave us a stunning in-the-flesh example of what it truly means to love and obey God no matter the cost. And in the giving of that example, he fleshed out who ​we are to be. He said we should do as he did for us. He gave us a new commandment, one he embodied. We are to love one another even as he has loved us.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Our Lord goes on to say in Matthew 18:7, “Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! . . . Woe to the person through whom they come.” Think of that when you think about abuse, your own or another’s. Christ goes on. If your hand or foot leads to stumbling, he says, cut them off. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. Do we think that hands and feet and eyes are not part of how abuse is carried out? How is it many read these words straight from the mouth of the one we call Lord and protect those in power who crush the little ones? We destroy a precious life and claim we are protecting the church. We are not. We are protecting a human system and those with the power, riches, and fame. Many of you who are victims can clearly describe how hands and feet and eyes were used in the abuse you suffered. Our Lord has spoken loudly and clearly against abuse. The voices of victims are calling us back to him. When we silence them, we silence him.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Forgiving a debt first requires accounting for what is owed. Forgiveness begins with the truth about the sin and its consequences. God’s forgiveness began with an accounting of what we owed.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Repentance is hard and deep work, and we shortchange the offender when we do not understand this and fail to do everything we can to help them repent.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“We fail to love both victim and perpetrator when we think repentance involves a few words of apology, which checks the box of contriteness on the part of the perpetrator and serves as a ticket back to wherever they want to go.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.” At the heart of this law is the following principle: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals that the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.”2”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“We will never meet another human, no matter how wounded, disordered, or evil they are, no matter their theology, style of worship, or way of thinking, who is not ​created by the God we love. Any culture that leads us to think otherwise is seducing us to behave in ways that break the heart of God—the very God who never dismissed those unlike himself but interacted with people who were nothing like him with dignity and compassion: male to female, Jew to Gentile, holy to demon-possessed.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“have known many people whose response in this area is something like “I’m just a hugger!” In other words, “It’s what I do. It’s how I convey warmth and concern.” This is a high-power response. It dismisses the impact of the action. Suppose you are a tall and powerful man, and you, with good motives, hug a woman who you later find out was a victim of abuse. How do you think she might have experienced that hug? You would likely think, I meant well. I meant it as comfort. You would likely judge your action by your own intention and dismiss the impact it had on her. Where does that leave her?”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“consider this from theologian Fleming Rutledge in her book The Crucifixion: “Trying to understand someone else’s predicament lies at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian.”8”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“false prophet looks like a sheep but behaves like a wolf. Jesus is not warning us about someone who does not teach the truth exactly the way we prefer; rather, he is warning us about the teacher, the spokesperson for God, who speaks orthodoxy but whose life is false. This one talks like a sheep but lives like a wolf. Their words may be accurate or orthodox—that’s the sheep’s clothing. But their heart is wolfish, looking to exploit the vulnerable. They attempt to look like sheep, but inwardly, where we cannot see, they are an exploiter, a predator.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded

“want to remind us of our true calling, which is to bear the character of Jesus Christ in our own flesh and blood, to call human beings to his light, truth, and abounding love.”
― Diane Langberg, When the Church Harms God's People: Becoming Faith Communities That Resist Abuse, Pursue Truth, and Care for the Wounded