Reformed Circling?

[C. M. Sheffield]

It's a sad story: she really wasn't treated right. And her being a woman definitely had something to do with her treatment. Being an attractive woman didn't help. That can be threatening to men. Especially nerdy, theological ones.

I don't doubt that's true in certain instances. But Byrd has a habit accusing or insinuating that men are sexist simply for offering a critique of her actual writings. You can't say you want to be treated equally in the arena of ideas and then cry "Misogyny!" when your ideas are subjected to scrutiny and critique.

 

[SolaScriptura]

I don't doubt that's true in certain instances. But Byrd has a habit accusing or insinuating that men are sexist simply for offering a critique of her actual writings. You can't say you want to be treated equally in the arena of ideas and then cry "Misogyny!" when your ideas are subjected to scrutiny and critique.

Exactly.

 

[alexandermsmith]

It's a sad story: she really wasn't treated right. And her being a woman definitely had something to do with her treatment. Being an attractive woman didn't help. That can be threatening to men. Especially nerdy, theological ones.

But my impression: she was simply too invested in the movement she wanted to start to pull back and just be an "ordinary" congregant. And that's taking her in a weird trajectory with some strange friends.

I think the only thing her opponents felt "threatened" by was her espousal of heresy and egalitarianism and the platform she was given by purported conservatives from which to run her mouth. She should never have been on the Mortification of Spin podcast in the first place and she shouldn't have been defended when she started promoting heresy. If people still can't see what her agenda is and the danger she poses then it is due to wilful blindness and a very distorted notion of Christian gallantry towards the female sex.

On her blog she was ranting about the OPCGA not approving the organisation G.R.A.C.E. as a third-party "trauma counsellor". Well good thing the GA did decide it was best to wait as Boz Tchividjian, Founder and until recently the Executive Director of this organisation, amongst his promotion of many questionable content, just the other day gave his approval to the sodomite Pete Buttigieg becoming a "father" to two children who will now be subjected to his abominable lifestyle. "Who...not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." (Romans 1:32b) This is the organisation Aimee Byrd wants auditing the OPC. Just one example of what she's up to. A wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf whether male or female.

 

[A.Joseph]

But my impression: she was simply too invested in the movement she wanted to start to pull back and just be an "ordinary" congregant. And that's taking her in a weird trajectory with some strange friends.

Yeah, I think you nailed it. Not just anyone has aspirations to write a book. And I think her motives were probably a pure zeal for Reformed theology and doctrine. (I can't say for sure as I have not read her works, including her first one, nor do I know her background). But then maybe some decisions were made (and maybe Dr./Pastor Trueman may want to evaluate his part that kinda got the train rolling very fast in an unknown direction). The end result is that even though the OPC specifically is not her main target. The OPC will continue to distance itself. Im not saying Pastor Trueman or any other pastor should not be encouraging to a female member's embrace of the reformed faith. But I do believe there are some male aspirations and intentions that when taken on by a female, and I hope this is not too controversial, but I wonder if female leadership in all areas can create problems because the female may take on duties, attitudes, attributes and agendas that are unnatural from an ordained/God-intended (and ultimately proper) perspective. I'm not sure female leadership or dominance was ever presented in the bible as a good standard. Im not saying Ms. Byrd is attempting to be dominant but there may be shades of such a phenomenon brewing (despite some of her legitimate concerns). I also think some of the concerns of her critics had good merit but it got a bit hysterical. We can shoot down bad ideas and unqualified teachers without losing our hearts and our heads.

 

[Deleted member 11889]

I don't doubt that's true in certain instances. But Byrd has a habit accusing or insinuating that men are sexist simply for offering a critique of her actual writings. You can't say you want to be treated equally in the arena of ideas and then cry "Misogyny!" when your ideas are subjected to scrutiny and critique.

This is true. She has taken offense at the very notion that she is open to critique - this goes back to her inward turn referenced in my above post. It doesn't mean that there was some genuinely questionable behavior directed at her. But, whatever hints of a problem there may have been in her earlier writings, she has really doubled down on the wrong things. All of us have hints of a problem - the difference is between those who stay the course and those who decide to take a stand on precisely the areas where they are dead wrong. Whatever wrongs may have been done to Aimee Byrd, she is not an innocent bystander, and her posts make it clear that she is dabbling in all manner of increasingly questionable things. I'm all for reading and utilizing Catholic and secular sources, but there's a fine line between a Biblically sound utilization of such materials, and the wholesale absorption of non-Biblical doctrines as part of one's quest for self-generated healing. Byrd is now clearly on the other side of this fine line, reaching and grasping for anything that fits her preconceived agenda.

How I wish that people would look inward when it comes to identifying sin and outward (to Christ and to the manifestations of the work of the Spirit) when it comes to identifying righteousness. That kind of Biblical double standard would save everyone a whole lot of grief. Instead we have people looking outwardly for sin and inwardly for righteousness.

 

[lynnie]

I think the only thing her opponents felt "threatened" by was her espousal of heresy and egalitarianism and the platform she was given by purported conservatives from which to run her mouth. She should never have been on the Mortification of Spin podcast in the first place and she shouldn't have been defended when she started promoting heresy. If people still can't see what her agenda is and the danger she poses then it is due to wilful blindness and a very distorted notion of Christian gallantry towards the female sex.

On her blog she was ranting about the OPCGA not approving the organisation G.R.A.C.E. as a third-party "trauma counsellor". Well good thing the GA did decide it was best to wait as Boz Tchividjian, Founder and until recently the Executive Director of this organisation, amongst his promotion of many questionable content, just the other day gave his approval to the sodomite Pete Buttigieg becoming a "father" to two children who will now be subjected to his abominable lifestyle. "Who...not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." (Romans 1:32b) This is the organisation Aimee Byrd wants auditing the OPC. Just one example of what she's up to. A wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf whether male or female.

Do you have a link to your comment about Boz? Thanks. I hope you are mistaken.....but will check it out if you post a link.

 

[Andrew35]

Do you have a link to your comment about Boz? Thanks. I hope you are mistaken.....but will check it out if you post a link.

He's right. I've seen the evidence shared about my Facebook feed, with multiple parties who followed him confirming it was legit. You have to have a Twitter account to confirm, though. (Sorry for this share.)

*UPDATE: Removed share through inability to personally confirm, although confirmed to me by multiple parties.*

 

[Deleted member 11889]

He's right. I've seen the evidence shared about my Facebook feed, with multiple parties who followed him confirming it was legit. You have to have a Twitter account to confirm, though. (Sorry for this share.)

View attachment 8341

I have Twitter and wasn't able to find this. Also, I think we should as a general rule be careful in rushing to conclusions based on a "like". Granted, the pattern of Boz's likes is very... interesting... but I need something more substantive to do anything other than just raise a mild question mark.

 

[Andrew35]

I have Twitter and wasn't able to find this. Also, I think we should as a general rule be careful in rushing to conclusions based on a "like". Granted, the pattern of Boz's likes is very... interesting... but I need something more substantive to do anything other than just raise a mild question mark.

True. It may have been pulled? But it would have been odd to me, seeing my friend who follows him and multiple other people confirming (I don't have Twitter so couldn't confirm myself.) So I took it as legit. Maybe wrong, though. I don't want to spread disinformation, so will remove.

 

[lynnie]

Our society has been conditioning people to be "fragile" for a long time. The notion that if one suffers any kind of abuse, or even just grew up with a father who was not as emotionally available as one might have wanted (like 99.997% of humanity), this becomes the defining aspect of one's identity. You are a victim. And the damage is automatically assumed to be irreparable. Getting past such things is thought impossible. And telling someone to try and get past it is one and the same as denying their identity. So we have a society that has had the least amount of suffering of any generation in world history constantly imagining themselves to have suffered more than any other. It's really something to behold.

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

…and love doesn’t seem to be able to cover anything regardless of the degree of offense or time elapsed since the event(s).

That is probably true.....the horror of the trauma is as real decades later as when it happens. It isn't that they don't want to get past it and stop being controlled by the memories, but even the nightmares never fully go away, unless what I would term a divine miracle takes place in the mind/heart.

The same stuff I see in schools. It's very vague. Trauma is anything that one doesn't agree with that one has encountered.

I hope you can change your outlook on this. Trauma is years of sexual molestation or beatings or even torture. You can't imagine what's out there.

We know a guy (related by marriage) who spent years in the 9 and under pedophile unit working as a detective for the State Attorney General. Most of the really yuck work online was done by women in the unit....he led a lot of the swat team type arrests, but didn't have to see all the footage.

He'd sit and drink beer after beer telling me stuff with a haunted traumatized face, it was all so unbearable. There was the two year old and they traced her but never caught the guy. She died from the penetration. These films of little kids screaming while being raped get sold and are huge business. People, most horribly A LOT of teens, are so hooked that every night they have to watch it before they go to bed. They are addicted to the sickest and filthiest darkness you can imagine. Its one thing to watch adults doing it together acting like they are enjoying themselves. It is another to be glued to screaming four and five year old girls being raped. Every day, every night. That's what's out there and it is widespread.

You want to tell that girl to just get over it??? Really??? I believe the power of God and His word can deliver and transform. But it can take years and so much work and needs so much help and support. Even then, there are scars. What I've read by Diane Langberg was really excellent ( WTS Grad); that's a possible resource.

The guys making this filth and selling it online and running the show are often professionals. They put at least 300 men a year behind bars ( maybe 1 or 2 % women criminals too) in the state where my relative worked. That's one state out of 50 and they miss so many. He said they had doctors, lawyers, church staff, teachers, all kinds of professionals arrested. So many church goers. The guy said to me he can't trust anybody anymore. Its just horrible.

Where Amy cares about deeply traumatized women, well, may the Lord bless her and steer her into biblical ways to help. It sounds like this latest circle gig isn't good. But don't provoke her or any other trauma victim into seeking garbage with quick trite answers like "get over it" that turns them off to your pastoral imput. Try reading some books on the subject. I liked Dan Allender years ago, not sure where he is at now. Harvest Ministries in Philly had great stuff for guys who were raped as boys and ended up in sodomy. Langberg. Even some of the secular evolutionists ( Bruce Perry) are extremely helpful in understanding the way Trauma imprints on the brain. You do a thousand things automatically from years of repetition. Well, its the same with the internal workings of a person who had years of childhood nighttime horror.

 

[Andrew35]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

That is probably true.....the horror of the trauma is as real decades later as when it happens. It isn't that they don't want to get past it and stop being controlled by the memories, but even the nightmares never fully go away, unless what I would term a divine miracle takes place in the mind/heart.


I hope you can change your outlook on this. Trauma is years of sexual molestation or beatings or even torture. You can't imagine what's out there.

We know a guy (related by marriage) who spent years in the 9 and under pedophile unit working as a detective for the State Attorney General. Most of the really yuck work online was done by women in the unit....he led a lot of the swat team type arrests, but didn't have to see all the footage.

He'd sit and drink beer after beer telling me stuff with a haunted traumatized face, it was all so unbearable. There was the two year old and they traced her but never caught the guy. She died from the penetration. These films of little kids screaming while being raped get sold and are huge business. People, most horribly A LOT of teens, are so hooked that every night they have to watch it before they go to bed. They are addicted to the sickest and filthiest darkness you can imagine. Its one thing to watch adults doing it together acting like they are enjoying themselves. It is another to be glued to screaming four and five year old girls being raped. Every day, every night. That's what's out there and it is widespread.

You want to tell that girl to just get over it??? Really??? I believe the power of God and His word can deliver and transform. But it can take years and so much work and needs so much help and support. Even then, there are scars. What I've read by Diane Langberg was really excellent ( WTS Grad); that's a possible resource.

The guys making this filth and selling it online and running the show are often professionals. They put at least 300 men a year behind bars ( maybe 1 or 2 % women criminals too) in the state where my relative worked. That's one state out of 50 and they miss so many. He said they had doctors, lawyers, church staff, teachers, all kinds of professionals arrested. So many church goers. The guy said to me he can't trust anybody anymore. Its just horrible.

Where Amy cares about deeply traumatized women, well, may the Lord bless her and steer her into biblical ways to help. It sounds like this latest circle gig isn't good. But don't provoke her or any other trauma victim into seeking garbage with quick trite answers like "get over it" that turns them off to your pastoral imput. Try reading some books on the subject. I liked Dan Allender years ago, not sure where he is at now. Harvest Ministries in Philly had great stuff for guys who were raped as boys and ended up in sodomy. Langberg. Even some of the secular evolutionists ( Bruce Perry) are extremely helpful in understanding the way Trauma imprints on the brain. You do a thousand things automatically from years of repetition. Well, its the same with the internal workings of a person who had years of childhood nighttime horror.

I appreciate what you say here, lynnie, and agree with you. And what you've written absolutely horrifies me.

At the same time, I have read some interesting things about trauma and trauma victims myself from psychiatrists, suggesting, among other things, that labelling and focusing on trauma can make it much more... traumatic. There are apparently numerous stories of people who have been abused as children, for example, going into horrible depressing and even blaming the very people who identified their trauma as such. Maybe there are cases where the most healing thing to do is to occasionally tell people to "get over it," in kinder words? While not, of course, minimizing the heinousness of the sin.

In other words, in keeping with the thread, is bringing everything out in the open always the best solution for the victim in these matters? Maybe that question needs more consideration than it's generally given.

I don't know. But there's definitely a lot here about the human mind that we don't understand.

 

[arapahoepark]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

That is probably true.....the horror of the trauma is as real decades later as when it happens. It isn't that they don't want to get past it and stop being controlled by the memories, but even the nightmares never fully go away, unless what I would term a divine miracle takes place in the mind/heart.


I hope you can change your outlook on this. Trauma is years of sexual molestation or beatings or even torture. You can't imagine what's out there.

We know a guy (related by marriage) who spent years in the 9 and under pedophile unit working as a detective for the State Attorney General. Most of the really yuck work online was done by women in the unit....he led a lot of the swat team type arrests, but didn't have to see all the footage.

He'd sit and drink beer after beer telling me stuff with a haunted traumatized face, it was all so unbearable. There was the two year old and they traced her but never caught the guy. She died from the penetration. These films of little kids screaming while being raped get sold and are huge business. People, most horribly A LOT of teens, are so hooked that every night they have to watch it before they go to bed. They are addicted to the sickest and filthiest darkness you can imagine. Its one thing to watch adults doing it together acting like they are enjoying themselves. It is another to be glued to screaming four and five year old girls being raped. Every day, every night. That's what's out there and it is widespread.

You want to tell that girl to just get over it??? Really??? I believe the power of God and His word can deliver and transform. But it can take years and so much work and needs so much help and support. Even then, there are scars. What I've read by Diane Langberg was really excellent ( WTS Grad); that's a possible resource.

The guys making this filth and selling it online and running the show are often professionals. They put at least 300 men a year behind bars ( maybe 1 or 2 % women criminals too) in the state where my relative worked. That's one state out of 50 and they miss so many. He said they had doctors, lawyers, church staff, teachers, all kinds of professionals arrested. So many church goers. The guy said to me he can't trust anybody anymore. Its just horrible.

Where Amy cares about deeply traumatized women, well, may the Lord bless her and steer her into biblical ways to help. It sounds like this latest circle gig isn't good. But don't provoke her or any other trauma victim into seeking garbage with quick trite answers like "get over it" that turns them off to your pastoral imput. Try reading some books on the subject. I liked Dan Allender years ago, not sure where he is at now. Harvest Ministries in Philly had great stuff for guys who were raped as boys and ended up in sodomy. Langberg. Even some of the secular evolutionists ( Bruce Perry) are extremely helpful in understanding the way Trauma imprints on the brain. You do a thousand things automatically from years of repetition. Well, its the same with the internal workings of a person who had years of childhood nighttime horror.

Lynnie,
I don't disagree with you. My problem is that 'trauma' is being enlarged to become virtually meaningless. And that really hampers the truly traumatized.

 

[Taylor]

I think bringing prepubescent rape into this thread is an astronomical escalation. It is really entirely irrelevant to this topic. As far as I know, Aimee Byrd was never raped. As traumatic as being criticized by men might be for her, it does not begin to rise to the level of sexual abuse—not even in the same galaxy.

And that is the very point. “Trauma” and “abuse” are being defined in such a way as to include any and every unpleasant experience. This is wicked, and ought to be labeled as such.

 

[ZackF]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

That is probably true.....the horror of the trauma is as real decades later as when it happens. It isn't that they don't want to get past it and stop being controlled by the memories, but even the nightmares never fully go away, unless what I would term a divine miracle takes place in the mind/heart.


I hope you can change your outlook on this. Trauma is years of sexual molestation or beatings or even torture. You can't imagine what's out there.

We know a guy (related by marriage) who spent years in the 9 and under pedophile unit working as a detective for the State Attorney General. Most of the really yuck work online was done by women in the unit....he led a lot of the swat team type arrests, but didn't have to see all the footage.

He'd sit and drink beer after beer telling me stuff with a haunted traumatized face, it was all so unbearable. There was the two year old and they traced her but never caught the guy. She died from the penetration. These films of little kids screaming while being raped get sold and are huge business. People, most horribly A LOT of teens, are so hooked that every night they have to watch it before they go to bed. They are addicted to the sickest and filthiest darkness you can imagine. Its one thing to watch adults doing it together acting like they are enjoying themselves. It is another to be glued to screaming four and five year old girls being raped. Every day, every night. That's what's out there and it is widespread.

You want to tell that girl to just get over it??? Really??? I believe the power of God and His word can deliver and transform. But it can take years and so much work and needs so much help and support. Even then, there are scars. What I've read by Diane Langberg was really excellent ( WTS Grad); that's a possible resource.

The guys making this filth and selling it online and running the show are often professionals. They put at least 300 men a year behind bars ( maybe 1 or 2 % women criminals too) in the state where my relative worked. That's one state out of 50 and they miss so many. He said they had doctors, lawyers, church staff, teachers, all kinds of professionals arrested. So many church goers. The guy said to me he can't trust anybody anymore. Its just horrible.

Where Amy cares about deeply traumatized women, well, may the Lord bless her and steer her into biblical ways to help. It sounds like this latest circle gig isn't good. But don't provoke her or any other trauma victim into seeking garbage with quick trite answers like "get over it" that turns them off to your pastoral imput. Try reading some books on the subject. I liked Dan Allender years ago, not sure where he is at now. Harvest Ministries in Philly had great stuff for guys who were raped as boys and ended up in sodomy. Langberg. Even some of the secular evolutionists ( Bruce Perry) are extremely helpful in understanding the way Trauma imprints on the brain. You do a thousand things automatically from years of repetition. Well, its the same with the internal workings of a person who had years of childhood nighttime horror.

My point had nothing to do with the examples you provided.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

Ma'am, your comment is cringe-worthy. It conflates minor forms of abuse with things like "rape." Get a hold of yourself.

 

[Deleted member 11889]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

@lynnie, with all due respect for the scenarios you described, your entire reply is a straw man fallacy, compounded by an emotionalistic appeal. It's unfortunate, because you are right that REAL trauma needs to be handled with great care.

But in making that point, you missed a point being made not by one or two but by three people about the evils of our victim-obsessed trauma-generating culture. Further, you missed the way in which a faux-trauma culture cheapens and denigrates real trauma. When you have people running around getting triggered because someone mansplained, micro-aggressed, wasn't sufficiently body-positive or trans-affirming or inclusive of gender-queer-fluid-libera-demi-penguin-folk... OR, building an aberrant theology around the trauma of being critiqued by men... that kind of narcissistic pablum has a devastating effect on actual trauma victims. Nothing could be more dehumanizing to real victims, and the great irony of our society is that its quest for "authentic self-expression" has led to dehumanization on a massive scale. Millions of Americans are not much more "human" than the victims of fascist or communist regimes in the 20th century, the key difference being that we're gleefully voting it in ourselves as part of a nationwide mission to live out the principles laid out in the latter part of Romans 1.

For the sake of actual trauma victims like the ones you described, it would be nice if our society had the spiritual fortitude to deal with the faux trauma square on so that the word can begin to have some actual meaning again and so the victims can find some actual solace in this life if not in the next.

 

[danekristjan]

This comment is cringeworthy. Have you ever known somebody who as a prepubescent was raped by a pedophile for years? I have. Her own father no less. Saying " just get over it" is about as far from the biblical admonition to weep with those who weep as one can get.

That is probably true.....the horror of the trauma is as real decades later as when it happens. It isn't that they don't want to get past it and stop being controlled by the memories, but even the nightmares never fully go away, unless what I would term a divine miracle takes place in the mind/heart.


I hope you can change your outlook on this. Trauma is years of sexual molestation or beatings or even torture. You can't imagine what's out there.

We know a guy (related by marriage) who spent years in the 9 and under pedophile unit working as a detective for the State Attorney General. Most of the really yuck work online was done by women in the unit....he led a lot of the swat team type arrests, but didn't have to see all the footage.

He'd sit and drink beer after beer telling me stuff with a haunted traumatized face, it was all so unbearable. There was the two year old and they traced her but never caught the guy. She died from the penetration. These films of little kids screaming while being raped get sold and are huge business. People, most horribly A LOT of teens, are so hooked that every night they have to watch it before they go to bed. They are addicted to the sickest and filthiest darkness you can imagine. Its one thing to watch adults doing it together acting like they are enjoying themselves. It is another to be glued to screaming four and five year old girls being raped. Every day, every night. That's what's out there and it is widespread.

You want to tell that girl to just get over it??? Really??? I believe the power of God and His word can deliver and transform. But it can take years and so much work and needs so much help and support. Even then, there are scars. What I've read by Diane Langberg was really excellent ( WTS Grad); that's a possible resource.

The guys making this filth and selling it online and running the show are often professionals. They put at least 300 men a year behind bars ( maybe 1 or 2 % women criminals too) in the state where my relative worked. That's one state out of 50 and they miss so many. He said they had doctors, lawyers, church staff, teachers, all kinds of professionals arrested. So many church goers. The guy said to me he can't trust anybody anymore. Its just horrible.

Where Amy cares about deeply traumatized women, well, may the Lord bless her and steer her into biblical ways to help. It sounds like this latest circle gig isn't good. But don't provoke her or any other trauma victim into seeking garbage with quick trite answers like "get over it" that turns them off to your pastoral imput. Try reading some books on the subject. I liked Dan Allender years ago, not sure where he is at now. Harvest Ministries in Philly had great stuff for guys who were raped as boys and ended up in sodomy. Langberg. Even some of the secular evolutionists ( Bruce Perry) are extremely helpful in understanding the way Trauma imprints on the brain. You do a thousand things automatically from years of repetition. Well, its the same with the internal workings of a person who had years of childhood nighttime horror.

I think you made some good points, but what you laid out is real, indescribable, trauma. What Byrd is referring to as "trauma" is people on the internet "being mean" (whether valid or not). That is something that one really should and can "get over" as a Christian.

 

[alexandermsmith]

Do you have a link to your comment about Boz? Thanks. I hope you are mistaken.....but will check it out if you post a link.

Here is a screenshot of his likes taken from his twitter feed (still there at time of posting this comment). To me the word "like" means to like something, to approve of it. Some people have used the reasoning that "liking" a tweet can merely be a form of bookmarking it when one first sees it in order to go back to it later to respond to it. Well has he responded to it? Has he condemned this? If not I take him at his word, that he "liked" it.

 

[alexandermsmith]

@lynnie, with all due respect for the scenarios you described, your entire reply is a straw man fallacy, compounded by an emotionalistic appeal. It's unfortunate, because you are right that REAL trauma needs to be handled with great care.

But in making that point, you missed a point being made not by one or two but by three people about the evils of our victim-obsessed trauma-generating culture. Further, you missed the way in which a faux-trauma culture cheapens and denigrates real trauma. When you have people running around getting triggered because someone mansplained, micro-aggressed, wasn't sufficiently body-positive or trans-affirming or inclusive of gender-queer-fluid-libera-demi-penguin-folk... OR, building an aberrant theology around the trauma of being critiqued by men... that kind of narcissistic pablum has a devastating effect on actual trauma victims. Nothing could be more dehumanizing to real victims, and the great irony of our society is that its quest for "authentic self-expression" has led to dehumanization on a massive scale. Millions of Americans are not much more "human" than the victims of fascist or communist regimes in the 20th century, the key difference being that we're gleefully voting it in ourselves as part of a nationwide mission to live out the principles laid out in the latter part of Romans 1.

For the sake of actual trauma victims like the ones you described, it would be nice if our society had the spiritual fortitude to deal with the faux trauma square on so that the word can begin to have some actual meaning again and so the victims can find some actual solace in this life if not in the next.

Indeed and this ideology actually makes people and thus societies weaker. The apparent escalation of mental health problems today is not because problems are finally being addressed (whereas before they were ignored) but because we, as people and as a society, are weaker and less able to cope with the realities of life. This is a result of decades of a victim-mentality, coupled with an extreme narcissism and sense of entitlement, being inculcated in our young. And, of course, the over-prescription of drugs which are now seen as a cure for all ailments. This all makes for very fertile ground for what we are seeing today: the mass delusion of transgenderism, the hysteria over covid, the anti-racism agenda, the virulence displayed on social media, the inability to cope with things when they don't go our way &c. Aimee Byrd is not a victim of trauma she is a narcissist who, like many tomboys, is in rebellion against her own sex. Having always wanted to be one of the boys, she is aggrieved that godly men told her to stay in her lane. And so she launched a vicious campaign against them and when things didn't go her way she cried victim. And now she basically wants to overthrown Presbyterian polity because she didn't get what she wanted. All this does is undermine real victims of trauma and abuse. But she gains more publicity and sympathy, which is of course what this is all about.

 

[Taylor]

Here is a screenshot of his likes taken from his twitter feed. To me the word "like" means to like something, to approve of it. Some people have used the reasoning that "liking" a tweet can merely be a form of bookmarking it when one first sees it in order to go back to it later to respond to it. Well has he responded to it? Has he condemned this? If not I take him at his word, that he "liked" it.

Let's also not forget that Boz publicly criticized Samaritan for not accepting homosexual applications for adoption. And, to ensure they regretted such a decision, Boz publicly called on homosexuals to flood Samaritan with thousands of applications to bog down their system. Of course, the relevant tweet seems to have been deleted, so I cannot "prove" this happened. But it did. I saw it with my own eyes. Boz Tchividjian is bad news.

 

[A.Joseph]

I think it’s great that the church is aware of potential blind spots. Paul’s epistles we’re vital in that area. But again, our worship and wisdom is ultimately vertical and that’s where our healing will come. It’s not an easy road. I pray our victimhood, often very real and sometimes perceived, does not define us.

@lynnie , I didnt fully read about the abuse stories you shared as I get very sensitive about those things. I couldn’t begin to fathom some of those horror stories. Those pastors, laymen and counselors who help the struggling trauma-affected are doing God’s work. But there may be some whose own actions may disqualify them for such work. May God bless and strengthen you sister in your interactions and service to those bruised reeds who suffer.

As far as the AB-GC fallout, I saw one name, in particular, associated with Geneva Commons, who I know is a good man, a good pastor, and I’ve seen him around here in the past. Others, I worry, seem a little imbalanced, like they could substitute for JD Hall on P&P….

As for AB. I caution to say anything in the truly negative as she has endured many arrows shot her way. But I do wonder if her OPC affiliation is part of her unique ‘brand’ at this point. Is an air of orthodoxy just a selling point to her? That is her call at this point. She wouldn’t be the first, male or female. A much more extreme Peter Enns comes to mind. Why would you want to teach at WTS when you are undermining their mission?

 

[A.Joseph]

His brother, right? “The congregant with whom Tchividjian had an affair accused him of “grooming” her.” https://www.relevantmagazine.com/fa...llian-tchividjian-is-starting-another-church/

 

[retroGRAD3]

Let's also not forget that Boz publicly criticized Samaritan for not accepting homosexual applications for adoption. And, to ensure they regretted such a decision, Boz publicly called on homosexuals to flood Samaritan with thousands of applications to bog down their system. Of course, the relevant tweet seems to have been deleted, so I cannot "prove" this happened. But it did. I saw it with my own eyes. Boz Tchividjian is bad news.

All of the Tchividjians are bad news

 

[arapahoepark]

Here is a screenshot of his likes taken from his twitter feed (still there at time of posting this comment). To me the word "like" means to like something, to approve of it. Some people have used the reasoning that "liking" a tweet can merely be a form of bookmarking it when one first sees it in order to go back to it later to respond to it. Well has he responded to it? Has he condemned this? If not I take him at his word, that he "liked" it.

This tweet traumatized me. Let's vent in circles about it!

 

[Susan777]

Here is a screenshot of his likes taken from his twitter feed (still there at time of posting this comment). To me the word "like" means to like something, to approve of it. Some people have used the reasoning that "liking" a tweet can merely be a form of bookmarking it when one first sees it in order to go back to it later to respond to it. Well has he responded to it? Has he condemned this? If not I take him at his word, that he "liked" it.

It appears that they are lying in a hospital bed together. What? Are they pretending to have given birth? So sick!

 

[lynnie]

We knew a guy years ago, an elder at a PCA church who also worked at a ministry for gays and sex abused people. My best friend back then told me that his "success" stories were amazing. He had some of the worst perverts and drug addicts and many of them eventually ended up leading decent lives. Of course they were also part of decent churches eventually as far as I know, she heard at lot at her PCA.

I had an opportunity to ask him once about it. He said that for the first two months of any new counselee he just offered compassion ( backgrounds were terrible, the emotional pain was immense). Then he began to gently move into their own sin as their greatest problem, and their sinful reactions to evil doers. He said you cannot start on the sin without understanding of the wounds.

Even Jesus healed people first and said " go and sin no more".

It sounds like Amy is too geared to the empathy part and not moving on to the greatest problem, our own sin. I didn't read her writings so I'm not sure. A lot of women are like that though. Even Dan Allender said the hardest thing of all for him was trying to move from compassion on people who were terribly sexually abused to confronting their sin nature. But it must be done. I'll stand by what I wrote before though....it sounds like some of you guys are too quick to jump on the sin. Try weeping with those who weep first.

Even if it seems trite, like just "hurt feelings", you don't know how deep it goes and how they are wired. Just start with the sympathy that the other person treated you rotten, and yes, it hurts. Then you can move to forgiveness and a sovereign God and all the rest. I've seen some things at PB in theological debates that seem pretty thin skinned to me but hey, to the person debating it is a big deal.

I don't have all the answers. Just throwing out thoughts and not wanting to derail the thread. But I've seen Amy in the past be right on about some garbage in churches that should change. Maybe she's going off now, I just don't know. Its all sad.

 

[lynnie]

Let's also not forget that Boz publicly criticized Samaritan for not accepting homosexual applications for adoption. And, to ensure they regretted such a decision, Boz publicly called on homosexuals to flood Samaritan with thousands of applications to bog down their system. Of course, the relevant tweet seems to have been deleted, so I cannot "prove" this happened. But it did. I saw it with my own eyes. Boz Tchividjian is bad news.

I just want to be 100% sure. This was Boz, not Tullian? I'll believe you, but I don't want to believe it. Ack. And no way it was a hack? I know people who got FB hacked and fake things posted, so can that happen with twitter? And then you try to clean up the hacks? Hope its not the real Boz. How distressing if so.

 

[alexandermsmith]

It appears that they are lying in a hospital bed together. What? Are they pretending to have given birth? So sick!

James White was talking about the staged nature of it recently on the Dividing Line. Why are they together in a hospital bed? Neither of them delivered the babies (and I thought there was a scarcity of hospital beds because of "the covid"?). Why are they wearing id tags (on different arms)?

 

[alexandermsmith]

I just want to be 100% sure. This was Boz, not Tullian? I'll believe you, but I don't want to believe it. Ack. And no way it was a hack? I know people who got FB hacked and fake things posted, so can that happen with twitter? And then you try to clean up the hacks? Hope its not the real Boz. How distressing if so.

It's Boz's timeline. A quick scroll through his timeline and likes would suggest this was a genuine like.

 

[Joshua]

There’s your sine.

Noice!