Let’s not confuse being anti-abuse-in-the-church as being…

“Let’s not confuse being anti-abuse-in-the-church as being anti-church. I love the church which is why I believe in protecting the individuals in it.”

@brittneymoses from Twitter

I know personally I’ve become one of those people that’s all about quoting a verse in context. You can’t just read the quote, you have to read the verse, the chapter, the book, and maybe do a little more research after that. I think we need to take the same tactic when we deal with people online. The discourse has gotten to the place where a lot of us are engaging in attribution bias. Based solely on a single post, tweet, or comment, we place somebody on a side and then assign all of the negative opinions with that side on that person and then engage with them as if they hold all those opinions to be true. Frankly we’re more nuanced than that. I mean…I think we are?

I think people deserve the same amount of context. When a person argues a conservative point, that doesn’t mean they are a republican. When someone argues for a progressive program, that doesn’t mean they embody the entire progressive agenda. And when somebody calls out abuse in the church, they may be calling it out because they want to see the church become the thing it’s supposed to be. Are there people just trying to throw every stone they find at the church? Yes, for sure. But I know I don’t want to assign those negative traits to people that are operating in good faith. And I can’t know if they’re operating in good faith until I do the research to find that out.

Using that same logic, churches are different and vast and plentiful here in the US especially. I think we do them a disservice when we assign a negative biases to them without doing the research to find out if they actually hold them. Hurt in one church doesn’t instantly to hurt in all churches.

I guess I’m clumsily quoting James 1:19 with all of this. Slow to speak indeed.

Note: I know part of attribution bias involves us assigning all of the positive opinions to someone we see as “on our side.” That’s problematic as well. This stuff is hard. 😭