Should We Criticize Todd Bentley?

… or the church? or any church leaders for that matter?

Let me first give a seemingly unrelated situation that I would like to stand as a parallel:

I know several people that are primarily influenced in their parenting by a need for their child to love them and be their friend. While this may seem like wisdom the repercussions of that parenting motivator in the long term can be quite destructive. Discipline for them is a repeated begging process for the child to do something or not do something. It is not uncommon for the child to tell them when this is over. In fact, for one acquaintance of mine it is not uncommon for the child to yell at the mother “NO MOMMY” and have her capitulate to his petulant demands.

I would be willing to bet that many readers know a child like this in our era of everything ‘fun’. Here’s the thing: has anyone ever come across a child where this was healthy? Probably not. All the children like this I know are at some stage of spoiled brat ranging from mildly annoying to needing a severe beating. In an attempt to validate every action by the child and say nothing ‘negative’ parents create little self centered monsters.

Now the parallel:

During a recent conversation a friend of mine, let’s hypothetically say his name is Mark, replied to a question in a group conversation about the church, “We shouldn’t criticize or judge the church.” He said it in the context that it was a badge of maturity and humility to validate every action and belief of our churches regardless of what they did, and those horrible rude people that had the audacity to ever say even something as mild as “Perhaps, we should try doing this a little different,” well, they were critical, negative, people that should not judge lest they be judged.

Seems like a good idea right? If we really loved our children we would give them what they wanted and not be negative towards them; and if we really loved our churches we would only say positive things about her. However, here’s the problem: just as friendship parenting leads to self absorbed bratty children; an attitude of false positivism towards the church, without any boundaries, blindly validating any behavior leads to self absorbed leaders, petulant leaders, truncated theologies, and me centered fleshiness.

Disciplining your children is hard; it can be a major inconvenience and can even lead your children to questioning your motives for the short term. They might even cry themselves to sleep once in awhile. But the point of parenting and discipline is to raise your children to be good functioning people in society. It takes patience and love towards this long term goal. it is easy to take a  shortcut and not discipline your kids and get a hug as they run away to play. It is easy to be your kids friend. Give them candy and toys. It is hard to give boundaries and discipline. However, I think proper discipline is based on an abiding love for the long term future of a child, and friendship parenting is built on a short term love for the self and not the child.

In the same way there are those that judge, evaluate, praise, criticize, meditate, discipline, discern, and wonder at the church out of a deep and abiding love for her. Not because we are “mean,” not because we are “judgmental,” and not because we think we are “superior.” But because we love her and we know what she can be when she is at her best. Sometimes this takes correction and discipline… and that can be hard, but it’s because we want her to grow up right.

Finally, this leads me to some of the defenders of Todd Bentley. Unfortunately, it seems to me that many are involved in following Bentley ala the “friendship parenting” model; unable to critically discern or correct lest he yells at them “NO MOMMY” and takes his anointing away. What does the enabling defender of Bentley do when someone mentions that perhaps not all of his behaviors are appropriate and bendficial? Deal with the real issues? Any issues? No. Of course not. Their wonder child can do no wrong.

The benefit of being realistic about your church, and its leaders, is that you get to practice all sorts of Christian ideals. Humility, grace, forgiveness, and charity. I readily admit that I make mistakes and I am open to correction, and I hope that I never fall into a pattern of behavior that is enabled by my friends and gets worse and worse. It also leaves open the possibility that I can correct negative things while keeping the positives.

The kind of enabling defense of the sheeple that often defend Bentley affords few of these possibilities. It leaves the possibility of IGNORING the negative things while keeping the positives. He is never wrong, and if he is it is not discussed because the good outweighs the bad, and the ends justify the means. Very Christian ideas right?