The Modern Crusades

Someone sent me the following article by Major JoAnn Shade. It is powerful and asks Christians a tough question. As you know, I've written on the subject before. I believe Christians have "no choice" in the matter. I'm going to a local day conference in a month or so on the subject.

Let me know what you think about this article.

- - - - -

The headline in the local newspaper was powerful: Convicted, then evicted: Canton crusades to keep out communes of sexual predators. Canton is a Midwest Ohio city of about 70,000, but its concern over what to do with sexual predators is not unique to its location. As states enact legislation that labels and attempts to control the behaviors of those who have committed crimes of a sexual nature, these men and women are quickly becoming the lepers of the twenty-first century.

Take Neil for example. After twenty-three years in state prison, with three squares and a bed guaranteed, Neil was released into a system that has no place for him or others like him. Employers are unwilling to hire him, sympathetic landlords rent to him but are then pressured to revoke the agreement, and parole officers are most concerned with threatening a return to prison if the individual is non-compliant, homeless, or without a job. The mayor is sympathetic, but “cannot tolerate this type of activity in a neighborhood because these people made a bad choice” (Canton Repository, August 15, 2004).

Was Neil’s attack on a five-year-old girl heinous? Absolutely. Would I ask him to babysit in the church nursery? Absolutely not. (Nor would he be willing to). But as a Salvation Army officer, I must ask myself, what is my role in promoting healing and recovery? What do I truly believe about grace and forgiveness? How does William Booth’s great charge, “while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, I’ll fight,” impact how we, as The Salvation Army, address this festering problem in communities across the country. Dare we ignore it, hoping it will go away?

In my wrestling with this, I turned to the scriptures for guidance. My first thought is that Jesus clearly addressed this, but when I turn to the parallel passages in Matthew 18, Mark 9 and Luke 17, I find that Jesus put a different spin on his words than I initially thought. “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt. 18:6). I had thought that the verse had described Jesus’ reaction to anyone who hurt or injured a child, but that’s not exactly what the text says. Is it a stretch to put child sexual abusers in the stumbling block category?

For the sake of argument, let me do just that, but then follow Jesus’ words to their logical end. “It would be better for you,” says Jesus, “that you be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Although I haven’t asked him specifically, I would guess that there are days in which Neil agrees. He will forever carry the guilt, shame and sorrow of what he did to that little girl. His picture will remain on the Internet until the day he dies, and he will always wear the scarlet letters, PREDATOR, on his forehead. As William Barclay suggests, “there’s nothing in this world more terrible than to destroy someone’s innocence . . . there is nothing which will haunt (a man) more.” Was Jesus prescribing what should happen, or describing the consequences?

And what about the millstone? Might this speak to the community’s pain? This millstone was not the small one that each woman kept in her kitchen. No, this particular word describes the town’s millstone, one that required a donkey to move it. If a community’s millstone were to be thrown into the depths of the sea, there would be implications to the health of that town as far as its food supply was concerned. It would impact everyone living there. No one would be untouched.

Jesus goes on to talk about the lost sheep, and then about forgiveness, and this is where this gets messy. For isn’t Neil just as much of a lost sheep as I am – or more so, because I number myself among the ninety-nine? (18:10-14) Is he not my brother whom I am to forgive? (18:21-22) Isn’t he a person created in the image of God? As a human being, doesn’t he deserve to have a place to sleep and food to eat? And what about the log in my own eye? Surely, I too have caused a little one to stumble, if not in the same behavior, still in the same spirit.

So what do we do, Church? Crusade to keep out the communes, or work in community to find safe housing, effective treatment, appropriate accountability, and a spirit of costly grace toward those who have fallen, while still providing protection to the children of our neighborhoods? Crusades or compassion? What would Jesus do?