“Rebuke”
This is one of those old-fashioned words in the evangelical church that is not used as much as it once was. "Rebuke” in evangelical parlance means to correct wrongdoing, to call out misbehaviour of some kind. A pastor or leader somehow sees it as part of their job to rebuke people within the church. The newer version of “rebuke” is for a pastor to say, “Friends … I hate to have to say this …”, with a head shake of disappointment.
A couple of years ago I ran into a young evangelical pastor from a local church. We were in a coffee shop and asked one another how things were going. He told me that he had a potentially difficult day ahead as he had to meet with someone from his church later that same day and rebuke them over something they were doing in their life. This pastor really is a nice person (as far as I can tell) who seeks to love people and be a blessing in the community. I felt it strange and still remember that he used the word “rebuke” four times in a conversation that was less than 10 minutes.
In the large majority of cases, “rebuke” is used over matters of sexual morality. Trust me when I say that for most evangelical pastors it is not strange at all that they see themselves as responsible for making and voicing judgments on the sex lives of parishioners. In my experience as a pastor I had other leaders in the church try to convince me that I should be making such judgments. I resisted and refused this direction.
If “rebuke” is mostly about sex, then in some new churches that aim to attract large numbers of young people, there might be a lot of rebuking going on. I heard a rather cynical assessment once from someone who had been a part of such a church. He told me that there was a business model,
“These churches fashion themselves as kind of a scene. They attract lots of good looking young people who have left their parents’ churches. All of these young people gather and a good number of them start dating and become sexually active. Then the pastors rebuke such behaviour and begin to exercise control by inducing guilt and sometimes even shame.”
This is pretty cynical, but there might also be truth in it.
We may have occasion to speak with friends and others who see us as leaders about some moral issues, but it is curious that evangelical pastors, often with no training in social sciences, psychology, psychiatry, family trauma, etc. are so willing to cast judgment on matters of sexuality, sexual identity, and so on.
Yesterday the Catholic Church issued a statement with a one word answer in response to a request to bless same sex unions. The one word was “negative”. This was then followed by a statement and explanation.
Think of it for a minute. The Catholic Church is actually allowing people to see it as an authority on sexual morality. In what other part of your life would you look for expertise on a matter from someone who had demonstrated almost psychotic ineptitude on that matter? I don’t think you’d hire a roofer whose previous work had led to destroyed houses, countless deaths and generations of pain, to advise you on what you should do with your roof.
If you said “What kinds of thing does the Catholic Church get right?”, that list could well be long. If you said, “What does the Catholic Church get wrong?”, pretty much top of that list would be, “sex”. The institution’s very existence has been threatened by its own failures and actual crimes in this realm.
Apart from the obvious sorrow that people who love the Catholic Church might feel at being excluded because of sexuality, it really does seem that the Catholic Church should respond to a request for opinion on sexual morality by saying;
”Why on earth would you ask US this question? This is one area in which we can accept rebuke, but not issue rebuke or judgment.”
The statement said that the church cannot bless same sex unions because “God cannot bless sin”. So has the Catholic Church become concerned about making sure to not bless sin? Well, then, there might really be some work to do, but perhaps there are a lot of beams in a lot of eyes (Bible reference, Jesus reference).
As we are in the season of Lent I note that one of the times that Jesus “rebuked” someone was when Peter said that Jesus would not give his life. Jesus had spoken with Peter and the disciples about his impending death, and Peter said that he would never ever let that happen. At this Jesus issued a rebuke. “Get behind me, Satan! You have in mind the things of man, not the things of God.”
Jesus’ strongest rebuke was not about sex (he was often judged for perceived leniency in such matters) but rather about wrong-headed religion. Now, that’s some “rebuking” we could get behind.
Poet (and Catholic) Pádraig Ó Tuama posted a response to the statement of the Catholic Church on Instagram:
Pádraig was a guest recently on the podcast on which I am co-host.
Well said. I could not agree more. I never could understand how churches could agree to a sinner rebuking another sinner.