“Losing My Religion”

At this link, you can read a poignant LA Times story from a few years ago entitled “Losing My Religion” of how William Lobdell, a journalist, thought that covering the “religion beat” would help his faith grow steadier and deeper. Instead, he found himself losing faith in God as well as Christianity, as he covered things like church cover ups of molestation.

Every denomination has issues with abuse, not just the Catholic church—even my own. And the writer also had issues with faith healing and the “prosperity gospel.” I googled an author whose work I resonated with recently, and found that he had been stripped of his ministerial credentials after being convicted of child molestation.

So I started to think about this question of abuse and cover-ups, and about how legitimate is a person’s spiritual work if they are creating harm in such a way? Is their faith inauthentic? Is their work no longer of value because how could someone be inspired by God with theology on one hand, and molest a child? On the other hand, I’m not perfect either. Is my spiritual work fraudulent because I get angry in traffic, or because I lied about something, or I have difficulty forgiving someone?

I asked the angels about this difficult topic:

We are pleased to see that you don’t find it necessary to lose faith in either God, or in the structure of your religion, because of the shortcomings of either people who do things such as molestation, and those who have “kept up appearances” over such things. God’s grace is not only evident in the forgiveness of sin—God’s grace is evident when one is not tempted.

You are fortunate not to have any attraction at all to young people sexually. It is the norm in your society that people do not. In fact, there is great harm done on all levels to all children subjected to molestation, but particularly when there is the element of religion…. How many people have been turned off of God by the appearance that God somehow sanctioned, or at least allowed, an unholy violation?

Yet there are things you ARE tempted to do. They seem more minor, and yes it harms others less if you don’t murder them, or molest them. Yet you hurt other people, and other people hurt you—it’s part of your human life, part of having an ego, part of listening to that little voice of ego rather than that little voice of the divine. You’re not better than a child molester for not molesting someone—you haven’t been tempted.

We do not in any way condone the clergy molesting children—in fact we deplore it. Yet we say that many of these individuals have likely RESISTED temptation more than they have succumbed. They have prayed. They have felt terrible about their desires. And because they are supposed to be “holy,” they felt they could not confide their inner desires to anyone, so they kept everything secret until they succumbed to temptation.

If you had a wonderful minister who inspired you with their talks who molested children who was never found out, would you be less inspired by their words? You would not know, would you? So it is that you need to value what you value in the message, and have compassion for the humanity of the messenger. Humans are fallible. We can help guide you to stay away from temptation—to resist temptation. You are not powerless against temptation by any means. But you are human, and you can do things that harm others. Feel fortunate that your temptations have not been homicidal or abusive to children. But don’t think of yourself as any better or worse than any other people—you are all human, and you have done harm to others, even if inadvertently. It’s a matter of scale, a matter of degree.

So please pray for those who have been abused and pray for the abusers. It is appropriate to remove people from the ability to harm others and to punish them in your society’s way, but there is no reason to reject someone’s inspired words from God because in other moments they have succumbed to weakness and temptation. Evaluate and discern based on the message, not the messenger.

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