Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 July 2011 11:07:13
The Baptist Times website signposted me to a new report on good practice in evangelism that has been agreed. The report Christian Witness in a Multi Religious World has been jointly published by World Council of Churches, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the World Evangelical Alliance.
Reading through it is a sensitive and sensible report that seeks to ensure good practice learns from some of the mistakes of the past. However, in a brief report such as this there is still space for ambiguity and that is the difficulty. My main concern relates to the following:
"5. Discernment in ministries of healing. As an integral part of their witness to the gospel, Christians exercise ministries of healing. They are called to exercise discernment as they carry out these ministries, fully respecting human dignity and ensuring that the vulnerability of people and their need for healing are not exploited."
The problem with this is the section referring to "their need for healing". This term is one which has commonly been used towards LGBandT people and used as a justification of attempted exorcism and so forth. Now, I believe totally that all of us have a need for healing in some form, because all of us are "broken" because of living in a sinful world where both our actions and those of others around us are not perfect. Also I think there are many people who are in need of specific "emotional" and or "physical" healing and this is a valuable ministry which is often under-recognised within our churches. My recognition of this is why I think things such as Healing on the Streets (something going on all over but without a centralised web site I could find to link to) are great initiatives.
So why my worry? Well, I think that Christians often have expectations regarding the way "healing" should occur. I know that my own healing regarding acceptance of myself and my sexual orientation which occurred through a supernatural encounter with God and his Holy Spirit would have caused alarm not celebration amongst those who would have regarded me as "in need of healing". The healing I recieved was an indepth and intimate knowledge that God has created me as I am with the orientation I have and that he loves me totally that way. It was recieving this assurance of God's love and knowledge of healing which have led me to be able to have a happy, healthy and loving relationship with TOH. It was in this act of initial healing that God was able to start rebuilding and empowering me in so many other ways. The discerment that my initial experience was real has come out of seeing the results that have flowed and how I have been empowered to serve God in ways I would not have previously been able to consider, due to a unhealthy and unspiritual fear relating to the view I had of myself and the belief I had that I needed to be healed in a different way to the one God intended.
It is my hope that people will take seriously the point: "Rejection of violence. Christians are called to reject all forms of violence, even psychological or social, including the abuse of power in their witness. They also reject violence, unjust discrimination or repression by any religious or secular authority, including the violation or destruction of places of worship, sacred symbols or texts."
Whether it has been knowingly inflicted or not many LGBandT Christians as well as other minority groups have sometimes suffered psychological or social violence and have suffered the consequences of unjust discrimination and repression within churches and church structures. I hope this will be more than a report and will actually be the continuation of the implementation of good practice by Christians around the world where we repent of and learn from the past rather than repeating it.