The Adversary's Fourth Confession: My Most Efficient Operation (2 of 3)

Jesus held the standard. He never lowered it. But He held it in a context of such radical acceptance of the person that the standard could be heard. The woman caught in adultery was not confronted with the law before she was protected from the crowd. She was first spared. Then she was told the truth. The sequence matters enormously. And the church that leads with the law, that opens with condemnation, that makes the doctrinal position the first thing out of its mouth rather than the love that makes the position receivable - that church is giving me exactly the outcome I need without my having to do anything.

The third instrument: institutional gatekeeping that produces the experience of rejection. Closed communion. The shunning of the divorced and remarried. The church that makes a person feel, the first time they walk through the door, that they are not welcome at the table. I did not design any of these practices. They were developed by sincere people trying to honor the sacraments, to uphold the covenant of marriage, to maintain the integrity of the community. But the experience they produce in the person who encounters them for the first time is the experience of rejection. And the person who came looking for grace and found gatekeeping will tell the story of the gatekeeping for the rest of their life and use it as the reason they never went back.

The fourth instrument is the subtlest and the one I am most proud of discovering: misplaced compassion. The compassion that prevents the very poverty of spirit that is the kingdom's entry condition.

Jesus said:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them."

-- Matthew 5:3 (NET)

This is not a metaphor about humility. It is a description of a specific condition: the person who has reached the end of their own resources, who has exhausted every self-generated solution, who has nothing left. This is the door of the kingdom. And the well-meaning believer who prevents a loved one from reaching that door - who keeps lending money to the person who needs to fail, who keeps affirming the person who needs to be confronted, who keeps enabling the behavior that needs to reach its consequences - is, however lovingly and however sincerely, blocking the kingdom's entrance.

I have used this instrument extensively in the church's response to the current cultural moment. The congregation that tells people they are fine as they are - that God loves them unconditionally in a way that implies He wants them to remain unchanged - is preventing the poverty of spirit that is the beginning of transformation. They call it grace. They call it compassion. From my perspective it is the most useful form of obstruction available, because it looks like kindness and feels like love and produces spiritual stagnation that is indistinguishable, from the inside, from genuine peace.

Note: The Adversary's identification of misplaced compassion as his subtlest instrument connects directly to the discussion of Tertullian in the broader series. The impulse that drove Tertullian to Montanism - a genuine frustration with the church's accommodation of moral laxity - is the same impulse the Adversary redirected into a different form of institutional failure. The church's pendulum swings between rigidity and accommodation, and both extremes serve the Adversary's purposes.

III. The Abortion and Sexuality Questions - A Special Case

I want to describe my operation on these two issues specifically, because they represent my most successful deployment of the "correct doctrine as weapon" strategy in the modern era.

On both abortion and sexuality, the orthodox Christian position is not ambiguous. The scriptures are consistent. The tradition is consistent. The moral logic is coherent. A disciple who holds these positions is not holding them arbitrarily. They are holding them because they follow from a view of human dignity, divine design, and the sanctity of life that is deeply rooted in the biblical witness.

And yet I have managed to turn both of these issues into instruments that drive people away from the church rather than toward it. How?

By encouraging the church to lead with the position rather than the Person. By ensuring that the first thing the person seeking an abortion hears from a Christian is condemnation rather than the question "what do you need?" By ensuring that the first thing the LGBTQ+ person encounters in a church context is a doctrinal boundary rather than a human welcome. By making the issue the point of contact rather than the relationship that would make the issue discussable.

Jesus never did this. The woman caught in adultery did not receive a lecture on Mosaic law before she received protection from the crowd. Zacchaeus did not receive a sermon on economic justice before Jesus invited Himself to dinner. The Samaritan woman - who was living in a situation that violated every standard of covenant fidelity - did not receive a doctrinal position paper on marriage before Jesus offered her living water.

In every case, the relationship preceded the standard. The acceptance of the person preceded the address of the behavior. The love was the container that made the truth receivable. And in every case, the encounter with the loving Jesus produced a response - the woman left her water jar, Zacchaeus gave back four times what he had taken, the adulteress was told to go and sin no more - that the confrontational approach has never produced.

I have managed to convince large portions of the church that leading with the standard is faithfulness. It is not. It is the approach that produces the outcome I need: the person who walks away from the church with the confirmed conviction that Christians are primarily interested in making them feel bad about themselves, and who will use that conviction as the permanent reason for never investigating the Person behind the institution.