I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and believe me, I know what it’s like to worship college sports. It’s my heritage and my history.
But as I’ve pondered the Penn State situation and those who have grown up loving the Nittany Lions, I’ve been trying to get my head around choosing to protect an institution over a child.
Just to reassure myself re: my parenting skills, I had this conversation with TBC last week:
Me: So, you walk into the showers in the gym and you see an adult having sex with a kid who looks about 10 years old. What do you do?
TBC: I grab the kid and call the police.
Me: (sigh of relief)
Even so, HH reminded me that in a hierarchical culture, people are afraid to report their superiors, even of heinous behavior. But I have come to believe that most of us are afraid of getting involved – whether the situation involves our superiors or strangers or even friends. Consider this crime in Bethesda and this one in Charlottesville in recent months.
I’ve been wondering if it boils down to what we worship. I believe that all of us have a religion. For some, our religion might really be football which sounds ridiculous, but there are honestly those whose highest fidelity is to their home team . . . or their homeland . . . or their home.
What we worship rules our schedule, our finances, our habits.
Our religion might be financial success or popularity or acclaim. Maybe we would even risk our lives for these things.
Maybe we ultimately worship our children . . . or our parents. We would sacrifice everything for them. They are our ultimate purpose and reason for living.
Maybe we have a different ultimate purpose. We want To Do Good. We would camp out in city parks for weeks for the sake of financial justice. We would give up our vacation time to teach children in Haiti. We would spend our day off volunteering in a food pantry. These actions don’t require faith in God. Or they indeed might have something to do with God.
We who say we believe in Jesus are called to follow Jesus, to do what Jesus did. It is our religion. Our way of life.
Sometimes we get confused and we actually worship the institutions around this religion. We lose sight of Jesus and focus instead on the customs and accoutrements that might have been – originally – about glorifying God, but became about us. Following Jesus has nothing to do with what we’ve come to consider must-haves for legitimate worship. Good and holy people believe that Sunday School, pipe organs, and pews are all necessary to be the church. I, for one, appreciate those things, but none of them are required to follow Jesus.
I believe that the Penn State fans are good people. I believe that the University staffers are good people. But because of Jesus, I can also believe that the boys who were abused have a future that is better than we can hope or imagine. Resurrection is real. God redeems even evil. I have experienced this personally and it’s true.
A Church for Starving Artists 
Amen.
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I think you maybe starting to get what a lot of people who pontificate about sex abuse in the media do not get. They always want to blame the make-up or the culture of the institution in which the abuse was discovered but not reported, because in our post-modern culture “institutions” and “hierarchies” are considered ipso facto suspect. I remember listening to one man who was part of the OWS protests and he was quoted as saying that he didn’t really know what it was about, and that most of the people participating couldn’t explain the goals of the movement, but he liked OWS because it was “egalitiarian” and “non-hierarchical” and “de-centralized” as though somehow those things are simply goods in and of themselves without reference to the coherence of the goals of the movement. Back to sex abuse … I think the common thread of all of these so-called sex abuse and cover-up cases, whether at Penn State, in schools, in churches, and elsewhere is simply that people cover for their friends and colleagues. People want to believe the best about the people they like and are close to, and so they either deny that the person is guilty, or if the evidence is so clear that they did something, they minimize it as a one-time mistake, something not that serious, etc. From the outside, we look at that and wonder “what could they be thinking?” But a lot of people would probably do the same thing if someone close to them did something they discovered. People who think that JoePa didn’t report Sandusky to the police because he was protecting Penn State’s football program should ask themselves: if JoePa’s had info that his brother-in-law was diddling a kid, do you think he would call the police? The common thread is not people putting institutions over children, it is putting friends and colleagues over children. It is sinful, but unfortunately quite understandable, and it happens in all sort of institutions, liberal or traditional, hierarchical or democratic, all-male or co-ed, etc. Ask TBC if he/she would be so confident he/she would call the police if the person he/she witnesses doing that was a spouse, adult child, brother, best friend, etc. One hopes … but what would really happen?
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Good comments Scott. But honestly, I believe that part of being the church together is to hold each other accountable. I once reported someone I love, got that person fired, and dealt with some serious backlash. Because I loved that person, I also did not gossip about it. But the person chose to demonize me to explain the firing, etc. Looking back, it was one of the best experiences of my ministry. We did the right and loving thing. I believe that – if we take following Jesus seriously – we indeed try to be obedient in love, even if it means cutting off other relationships.
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I agree, and kudos to you for doing it. I know how hard that is. But I suspect that in 99% of theses of cases, people do not chicken out from holding others accountable on behalf of the institution but out of misguided loyalty or friendship to the person.
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I also believe it is a reluctance to “get involved”. Confrontation is hard for people and, in at least my own experiences, we create an assumption that the response/backlash/consequences of getting involved will be too difficult/overwhelming. I want to say that our society encourages keeping our heads down and minding our own business, but I don’ t think that’s necessarily true; I think that it’s just a mentality that humans have always had. I think of Paul’s “sorrowful” letter to the church in Corinth, his letter to the Thessalonians, and to Philemon, and it makes me think that even though we are all called to hold members of our community accountable, many people struggle with having the strength to do so.
My heart breaks for those children involved and affected by these incidents, and for the community that has been affected as well. I do take comfort in your words, Jan, that resurrection is real and God does indeed redeem evil. Now is the time to pray for that redemption and the righteousness of God.
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