I have another friend of mine who is involved with the deaf world. My friend T.
I first met T when I started nursing school at DCC. I remember sitting down next to her husband, R. in class. We struck up a conversation and got to know each other. He was a Christian, and I was a new believer, too. He wanted to introduce me to his wife, and so he invited me to his church one morning.
He could tell that I was a little lost. I’d been attending a Mainline Protestant Church in town, one with a female pastor. He felt that I’d benefit form a more Biblically sound church, so he invited me to meet him and his family at CC.
R and T had been through a lot in their life. T had grown up in the Bronx. Her parents divorced with she was a child. Her father remarried quite quickly, and her mother had a boyfriend.
She experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, and later, was almost gang raped by a bunch of guys on the streets. As a young adult she jumped into a terribly abusive first marriage, and also became involved in the occult.
She’d been a devout Catholic and always wanted to live a good Catholic life, but was easily drawn into the occult, because of the parallels between Catholicism and paganism.
After leaving a terribly abusive first marriage she met R in an online chatroom. They got to know each other, and she drove to Alabama to meet him. Her first divorce was barely finalized. But R was a good man. He believed that women should be treated with kindness and respect. They eventually married and had children of their own. T left the occult and became devout Christians.
Like me, T had OCD. Much of it was trauma related. But T's OCD simply latched on to her Christianity. Her intentions were good. Zeal for God’s house consumed her, and really the both of us. One of her dreams was to reach deaf people with the Gospel. She hoped to bring the gospel to them. She’d had a deaf friend when she was a child, and knew some sign language. She always had a heart for deaf people, and to reach into their world.
For a while, she searched for opportunities to do this with local churches, possibly as an interpreter in a church service. But she was very concerned about this. If the pastor taught in error or said something unbiblical, she would be complicit in transmitting false teaching to a deaf person. Or, even if the pastor did teach correctly, she might mistranslate it and be guilty of falsehood.
Obviously the JW’s were a no-go as they are not technically Christian and preach false doctrine.
The Catholics were a no-go because, well, it’s Catholic, and while they do ascribe to the central doctrines of the Christian faith, there’s lot of extra- biblical traditions and superstitions there.
I suggested that she try some local Bible based churches that have deaf ministries and interpreters. She looked into one church, Grace community Church, But when she researched them, found that there was a co-ed Bible study, led by a woman.
T is very against women in any form of church leadership, even as lay person leading a Bible study with men. This church couldn’t be Biblically sound.
I suggested that if she wants to do deaf ministry, she should be certified as an interpreter.
“No, but that’s trusting in man’s credentials, not God’s.”
“But if you get certified, if will give you more credibility within the community.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right, I see.”
I find this to be a common trend amongst evangelicals and charismatics. They want to avoid “The system” and human institutions and depend solely on God. Rather, than seeing God work through the system, through the formal pathways of doing things.
I had to wash my hands of this.
I loved my friend. But her excessive scrupulosity about everything having to be “Biblical” has really hurt her faith and the faith of those around her. Worse yet, her scrupulosity rubbed off on me.
No comments:
Post a Comment