Hi ~

Some significant experiences I’ve had don’t make it onto my blog, even though there might be a good lesson from them. Sometimes that just feels too public.

Maybe I should be concerned about my sanity that emailing to a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers doesn’t feel too public?

Anyway, I’m going to tell you a story that is only hinted at on my blog.

It happened in September of 2014.

Here is the blog post that references it. Here are the words where this part begins:

I was taking care of six children for nine days, while at the same time in a different part of my life I was undergoing what at that time felt like a trial by fire, a kind of trial I had never experienced before.

Here is the story:

I had very recently entered the world of “Bob Jones University abuse survivor advocate,” stumbling around barely even knowing what I was doing, really, only knowing for sure that God was being misrepresented and I wanted to do something about it.

To my surprise, I began to feel like I had I was walking into the middle of a play that was already going on.

That is, there were already some pretty loud voices about the abuses at BJU. As I look back, I can see that they were none too happy that there was a new voice, especially THAT new—I was not a survivor myself, and I had been aware of these abuses for only two years.

(It’s one of those “who did I think I was” situations again.)

Things got pretty ugly. 

The Bob Jones University world of abuse seemed like a big world at the time. (It was a few more years before I stepped out of it into the larger evangelical world.)

So at the time, when I began to be trashed online, it seemed like the end of everything to me.

“I’m just starting to connect with survivors,” I said. “And now they won’t trust me.”

It is a terrible thing watching your reputation be trashed online. (Especially the first time; it does get easier.)

In this blog post I told how I handled this—or tried to handle it. The anxiety was sky high, but the Lord was with me through it.

He so clearly communicated to me, “Will you let Me handle your reputation?”

And I eventually was able to say, “Yes, Lord.”

Through this, I deeply pondered the difference between reputation and character.

“Let your character stand strong in Me. Leave your reputation in My hands.”

“Yes, Lord.”

It turned out that, really, that world of BJU-style fundamentalism was a pretty small world. When I began addressing twisted Scriptures in the larger evangelical world in 2017, I saw it.

In Untwisting Scriptures #3 (Your Words, Your Emotions), I alluded to this story.

This is from the chapter called “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness: Reputation vs Character.” (It’s the chapter in which I emphasize that a testimony isn’t “false witness” if it’s true, and if it presents a reputation that matches the character.)

My own reputation has gone through the wringer a few times since I’ve started speaking and acting on the topic of abuse in fundamental and evangelical circles. But when a man or woman’s reputation suffers at the hands of those who want to destroy it for one reason or another, the solution is for the character of the individual to be proven out.

And this in the chapter called “Is It Righteous Anger or Sinful?”

There have been times when rebukes or verbal attacks have caused me to fear for my reputation (which I learned I needed to leave in the hands of God).

For each of us, going through a trashing of reputation can be a kind of trial by fire.

But we don’t need to believe the lie that once your reputation is trashed, you have no reason to live any longer with integrity. Besides the fact that integrity is crucial in living the Christian life, you might find out along the way that those who trashed your reputation lived in a much smaller world than you had understood.

As our character proves out, as we stand firm in the Lord, He will strengthen us to face hard things for the sake of others.

With you in standing strong in character, through the Lord,

Rebecca

Untwisting Scriptures at heresthejoy.com

See my Untwisting Scriptures series

P.S. I know many of my readers have experienced the trashing of their reputations, far, far worse than I have. If you have a story like this and would like to share it, I would honor your story.

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