Captive to the Truth
In the past few weeks Donavon Riley has written two articles on how congregations abuse pastors and how pastors abuse congregations. Riley refers to himself as a husband, father, and a Lutheran pastor who writes for a number of organizations.
Articles like this catch my eye because as a pastor and psychotherapist, these two articles on pastoral and congregational abuse, plus the politics we play with each other gives voice to the issue of truth telling. About fifteen years ago we developed a website entitled Truth and Life to address what the Word of God says concerning truth.
The truth to which we are both captive is universally true for all people, at all times, and in all places. It is the truth on which a marriage is built. It is the same truth on which Christ and His church are built.
According to the Word of God, marriage between a male and a female is a covenant as is the covenant between Christ and His bride, the Holy Christian church. These covenants are defined as “the knowledge of things as they are designed to be, and as they were designed to be, and as they are designed to come to be, according to the Word of God.”
When a marriage covenant is abused, it becomes something other than what it was designed to be and affects relationships in ways they were not designed to be. The same is true when a church abuses her shepherd or when a shepherd abuses the church-the bride of Christ. It effects relationships in ways not designed to be.
Donavan Riley refers to an abusive shepherd as one “who should bend the knee to the Word of God but instead bows to his/her own appetites.
It’s the old story, Riley writes, of the king who devours his people, or the priest who becomes fat on his/her own sacrifices. The betrayal is always the same: the hand that should protect becomes the hand that destroys.
The office of the shepherd can never be a shield against judgement, Riley writes. A congregation must never mistake manipulation for gospel. When I think of manipulation, thoughts of a pastor who led His people to believe homosexuality has no place in the church, which my wife and I truly believe. That was the platform on which he became elected district president. A year into his pastoral leadership, his wife died of aids–aids she contracted from having sex with her husband with aids.
As a psychotherapist I remember the case of a congregation abusing their shepherd. A young girl in the congregation lied, saying her pastor had sexually abused her when he had not. The congregation believed the girl. Years later she admitted she lied. After his reputation had been destroyed he came to my office, a broken man.
These days we hear the expression “no one is above the law.” We all come under the condemnation of the law, a church, a pastor or a psychotherapist. The law is given to bring us to our knees.
It was Socrates who said “the unexamined life is not worth living” He believed that true happiness and a meaningful existence come from questioning one’s own motivations, principles, and goals to better understand oneself and live a more authentic life.
According to Plato’s Apology, Socrates made this statement during his trial, asserting that he would rather die than give up his philosophical inquiry and the examined life.
It is on the basis of the Word of God that we examine ourselves and come to the truth about ourselves. The Word of God through the power of the Holy Spirit examines every thought and motive within, those things being the most private part of us as human beings. And it is most certainly true that God knows our thoughts, no matter who we are. Psalm 139 begins this way: “O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.” Psalm 139:1-2 God knows the hearts and minds that are turned toward Him.
You know me, Lord; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered! Set them apart for the day of slaughter! Jeremiah 12:3
God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. Acts 15:8
As one writer says “He knows the angry thoughts, lustful thoughts, vengeful ideas, secret greed, and hidden coveting. God knows about our secret longings, hopeful desires, and private dreams.” When these are allowed to rule, rather than what God desires of us, all of our relationships suffer.
Riley writes that “when men and women sit in the pews who once trusted their pastor as they naturally breathe, their whole lives are affected.” The truth behind this is that we were created to relate fruitfully. By our very nature we yearn to relate and it is this yearning that makes us vulnerable to predators.
We are all familiar with the fate of Robert Morris, pastor and founder of Texas’s famous Gateway Church. In October 2025, he pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. He was sentenced to six months in jail and was required to register as a sex offender. Pastors can so easily use their authority to manipulate by justifying their actions with religious language.
Riley says that congregations can rise again out of the ashes of abuse. But the second time around they should have learned to not “mistake manipulation for gospel.” It is the matter of learning to recognize the abuse of power.
Riley writes, “A church abused by its pastor carries a hard cross.” In an age when we are torn apart emotionally, mentally and spiritually in our longing for the truth, it is not our intention to disturb but to assure. “Beneath it all” Riley writes, “in the confusion they will come to see the true Shepherd more clearly. Not the one who failed them, but the one who stays with them; not the one who took from them but the one who gives to them.”
God in Christ will never fail us. We comfort ourselves in this promise with Peter’s confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God and the gates of hell will not overcome it. It is upon this confession that the Christian church on earth will be built, Jesus tells Peter. And that rock is Jesus, the foundation on which marriages are built and the Christian Church exists throughout all eternity.
Riley writes, “By the grace of Christ Jesus, we are still here. By the mercy of the Son of God, we still gather. By the faithfulness of the Lamb of God, we will still be enabled to believe.”
