Todd Bentley. I've been watching him and the Lakeland Revival on the GOD Channel and YouTube for a few months now. Headbutting the groins of cancer sufferers for whom you're praying whilst shouing "wham-bam!" isn't my understanding of how God generally works (see clip below) but it held my fascination in wondering what it was about him that drew people to his ministry, godly or otherwise. I think it was all his talk of the transsexual angel named Emma which endeared me to him. As one also prone to conversing with supernatural apparitions with a questionable connection to reality, I felt some kinship with a 32 year old man still so firmly and childishly attached to his imaginary friend.
During the past week, it has emerged that Todd Bentley has been having an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff, and hadn't been honest about it. The Christian press, and the charismatics in particular, are extremely angry and are using the revelation as evidence that Bentley was, all along, an unsavoury character, a snake-oiled charlatan and a possible agent of Satan.
All I can feel, though, is really, really sorry for Todd Bentley*. I'm not condoning his sexual misdeeds, nor suggesting that his offbeat antics have been innocuous or harmless to those his ministy has confused and hurt. I think it's entirely necessary that Bentley steps down from his position, I would hope to see a public repentance appear on YouTube soon and I would be very annoyed to see him back on stage any time soon. But haven't we all of us, under the pressure of overwork, stress or heightened emotion, committed acts that were shockingly immoral, destructive, thoughtless, dishonest, abusive or stupid?
Despite all that has happened, I cannot believe that there was nothing of God in Todd Bentley's ministry. And so, I find it oddly reassuring that God is willing and able to use someone as odd and misguided and sinful as the rest of us...
But what do others out there think?
*Of course, I really feel sorry for his wife Shonnah and their kids, too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
I don't think I'm going to watch the clip. But I agree that God can turn almost anything to his good. One of my brothers used to abuse me--not sexually and not in a way that left physical scars, but in a way that left lasting emotional damage I had to deal with later. I truly believe that abuse was one of the main reasons I distrusted my family system and held myself always a little apart from it. Without the abuse, I might not have broken away from the unhealthy symbiosis as much as I did. And so God was able to use it for good.
I always feel sad to hear so such a damaged situation as you describe.
I'm sorry that, really sorry, that you've had to go through all that. You're not missing much with the clip...
I haven't watched the clip yet, and won't get to tonight. What I think is that you kick ass, Grace, and I've given you the award -- you have to go look at the Chronicles to see what to do next. I picked you because you do have Grace under pressure.
I have no idea who Todd Bentley is, but I do detest public stonings.
There is good reason that Jesus was against them. They are psychologically damaging for everyone involved.
What Todd Bentley has done or not done has to be worked through within the confines of those who employed him and those directly affected by what happened.
His wife and family cannot benefit from having their deepest emotions used as public weapons, even if dressed up as sympathy.
The public stoners end up getting swept away not in mob violence but in mob self-righteiousness, to coin a phrase, that is just as unappealing and damaging to their souls. It's hard to love the sinner, but we should at least not stone him in public.
Repentance can only mean anything if it's genuine and between Tood and God. Whether it is then expressed publicly or not is almost irrelevant, although it will have to have some meaningful expression for those actually affected by what happened.
And of course God can use flawed people... are there any others?
I've got an award!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, Kate :-)
"What Todd Bentley has done or not done has to be worked through within the confines of those who employed him and those directly affected by what happened."
Starting with his wife and kids, definately.
But I think that, given Bentley's style of Pentecostalism and given the intensity of the media coverage of his ministry, those directly affected will include people who used their life savings to travel to Florida to see him, and those who sat up all night every night for months glued to the GOD Channel. For some people, he'll have been built up as the greatest messenger of the Holy Spirit since Jesus himself. And I think that, to those people, either Bentley himself, or his employers, or someone in some sort of authority, an apology is also due... as well as some explanation of how/why Bentley never was quite the figure to be idolised he was purported by some to be.
Within ancient Celtic Christianity, I once heard, any priest or monk or lay person gaining too much of a popular of charismatic following was required to spend a year alone on Iona to regain his humility and humanity and ordinariness before God. Some real wisdom there, I think.
Very thought provoking post.
It is remarkably similar to this post. Having read them just moments apart, I get the feeling someone is trying to tell me something.
I posted a comment on the other post and I will say it here... I would like be among the mockers, but reading these words causes me to confront that.
Thank you for this.
Thanks for the link!
"If it’s a spiritual virtue to value the person more than the sins they commit, perhaps it’s also prioritising mercy before sacrifice to look to the human being amidst religious hype, to remember them personally and charitably in our prayers, and to recall that in the end we’re all in the same boat."
That's so well put...
Grace
I've been thinking about your comment to me and I agree that making amends has to include ALL those who have been hurt.
The question is whether anyone, especially those who have not been diretly affected, have a right to clamour for it.
The woman taken in adultery story continues to fascinate me because most people reading it identify with Jesus. And so they place of the one who has a right to make judgements.
In reality, all but the sinner herself were asked to consider their own status before God first. The appropriate thing would be to identify with those who see clearly that wrong has been done, but who refuse to cast the first stone.
The story of the woman caught in adultery is one I've never managed to grasp... all I can sense is that it's trying to convey something about forgivess that's still beyond me.
So thanks for that. And in light of that, it's interesting to read the selection of reader's emails published on the GOD Channel website.
I just hope that Bentley and his family will now be given some privacy...
I am fascinated by the story of the woman taken in adultery.
We don't really know what she's done. Going by the custom of the time, she could even have been raped, yet she would have been considered to have been at fault because she was now tainted property.
But because Jesus says "sin no more" I assume that she did actually do wrong.
What fascinates me is that her case is the only one in the NT where Jesus' forgiveness is followed by the words "go and sin no more". Everywhere else he just forgives.
And it fascinates me that THIS is the example of forgiveness so beloved by most moralistically inclined Christians.
The astonishing thing is that it is also the one example where the forgiveness is granted without having been requested. There is no repenting, no asking for pardon, no sign that the woman felt she had done wrong. She doesn't utter a single word in the story, her views and feelings are not mentioned.
And yet, Jesus says he does not condemn her.
It's so wide, so open, so deep - and it's so sad that we have turned it into a small minded moralistic story with which to club everyone we consider to be a sinner over the head.
The other fascinating thing about the woman taken in adultery is that we are so gripped by it because it deals with sexual immorality, THE crime of our modern churchthink.
And yet, in actually says nothing about sex at all.
Göran Koch-Swahne, a Swedish priests who posts on Thinking Anglicans, who knows a LOT about the development of biblical writing, even more of the translations of biblical writing and who reads Hebrew, Greek and Latin writes:
The woman had broken Civil law not the 6th/7th Commandment, which was not yet about "marriage breaking". Moixeía didn't become Modern "Adultery" before well into the 2nd Millennium. It means “disloyalty”, not “sex”.
The Civil offence was Disloyalty towards the Head of the House / Group. Nothing in the story says she was one of the wives of the Husband, or even married.
Ou moixeúeis! does not mean "Thou shalt not commit adultery", it means Don’t be disloyal (to your House)!
The word has nothing to do with “sex” or sexual morality, but everything with the House (think Count Almaviva, the disloyal Husbander, who does nothing to promote the fortunes of his House, but only thinks of his little pleasures).
Talking of disloyalty or falsehood, the word may in Koine be applied to a wrongful judge, judging wrongfully – but there are no instances of this in the holy scriptures of the Bible.
The Latin translation “adultera” talks of deceit, and in Carolingian times of a second, exogamous, wife, “adaltrach” in 1st Millennium judicial lingo (at least in Ireland).
It is the 10th Commandment epithumía, which "touches" on things "adulterous" (though not "sexual" desire, but m a t e r i a l for the relations and dowry of neighbour's wife's), but only the Roman Catechism seems to remember that these days...
Wow! I'll have to read that several more times and do a lot more thinking... but that's such an eye-opener. As a Church, as people, we've all got ourselves all into such a muddle with all things sexual. And so my sypathy for Bentley and his family can only increase...
The Todd Bentley thing has interested me, but mainly in a very detatched way, as I'm just not in any way a charismatic anymore, and find it hard to find God in any of that. Which is not to say that God isn't/wasn't there, of course. Just that I have been so hurt by such things that I can't connect with that of God which is there. I should be able to do better, but what can you do? I'm more interested in the theology of healing, and why we are so desperate for the Prosperity Gospel (which Tood and co's preaching clearly is/was) in modern/postmodern times. That's something I would like to explore in detail, possibly academically. (This week at Greenbelt, I think God might have told me to go and do exactly that. I'm still working on figuring out what on earth She meant, and whether I was really hearing Her or just enjoying my own semi-delusional brain far too much. We shall see.) But anyway. Your thoughts on the theology of healing? Or have you written them somewhere in this blog, and I've missed them? Do let me know...
Post a Comment