In my social media circles, there is enough commentary, revelation, condemnation, accusation, pain, abuse being revealed and reported, that I really didn’t want to add to it. That was until I saw Tony Ray write, “DARVO is the Christian way“.
DARVO is the acronym for deny, attack, and reverse victim & offender.
In what Scriptural universe does DARVO equal Christian?
The answer should be none. However, as many ministries and ministers have been rightly excoriated as a part of the #metoo movement and also since the modern revelation of predatory priests it sadly does seem to be the way of far too many Christians.
I would prefer that Tony Ray would have written, “DARVO is the way of many so-called Christians.” It is more accurate, and for any Christian (including Tony Ray) to say DARVO is the Christian way should be a gut punch.
That is likely Tony Ray’s point.
The truth is that we have been trying to protect the image of “the church” and the local (or international) organization. This has actually tarnished our image. It can be reasonably argued that part of Jesus’ ministry was radical candor.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes of Jesus’ time seemed to have some issues with that, according to the Gospel accounts. The church has much of the same problem.
This really does seem to be regardless of tradition. Our Orthodox Ukrainian and Russian siblings argue over the war between Ukraine and Russia, including adding severely religious overtones. We watch the Roman Catholic Church dispute internally (yet, publically) around the words of Pope Francis and the various Cardinal groups. The Protestants with all their varieties argue over theology with some vitriol.
The church, so to speak, is not perfect. It is the bride of Christ, but that still doesn’t make it perfect. Our veneer of perfection is all too often a lie we tell ourselves. We act as if we know we have the right answers, and then shut down others.
The DARVO conversation has come up revolving around the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) and its ongoing issues with moral failures regarding leadership, sexual immorality, financial immorality, plus the reality that many of these failures are more than moral failures, they are criminal.
I will not list all of the failures that we are seeing in churches, but the reality is that there have been far too many. That there has been so little criminal prosecution is, well, criminal in and of itself.
The desire to protect the reputation of the church (from local, to regional, to global) is understandable. What we are seeing, however, is not the protection of the church’s reputation, but its destruction.
From what I have seen, people are behaving as if they are in a cult, rather than the hospital that the church is supposed to be. They are protecting leaders (disguised as protecting the church), rather than the innocent or the victim.
Leave a Reply