ORGANISATIONAL TOOLS THAT BECOME INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE 2: EXCOMMUNICATION

   

Excommunication for any reason is bad enough, and BEING excommunicated particularly through an unjust or ill-conceived disciplinary order when you have not sinned is worse. It is dehumanising and torture! Most people in the church generally in Zambia seem to turn a blind eye to this or they are uncomfortable, or fearful or indifferent to talk about the wrongful excommunication done by their church leaders. The word 'torture' from the Collins Cobuild Advanced Dictionary, means 'to deliberately cause great pain over a period of time in order to punish'; 'to cause to suffer great mental or physical pain or anxiety'. Where excommunication as a disciplinary tool is exercised or done without following the laid  down procedure (as found in the Mathew 18:15-18 key passage) and with the aim to just sort out someone, people become victims of hateful vendetta, or shameless and evil hounding at the hands of those who wield power or command it in churches. I have not only heard about them, I have also witnessed people I know, some of them close associates, being victimised and “whipped” out of church membership or fellowship with egoistical force and tyrannical intent as if the leaders are not accountable to the church (or body) of Christ! It ought not to be like that for Christians. 

 

The Church is an organisation with a structure and a divine mandate that is to be carried out by the collective effort of all its members, the leaders and the led, one body and diversely gifted. It is supposed to be an institution whose beauty is accentuated not only by the order that it should portray but more so the love that should be its lifeblood! 1Corinthians 13; 1John 3:11-19. It seems nowadays that church leaders especially, are becoming or have become drained of the love and compassion of the love of Christ. They are becoming or have become “all things to all men” of the world except being like the apostle Paul, less like Jesus, and except having love’s outworking in the 13th chapter of Paul’s 1st epistle to the Corinthians! They are successfully managing or running churches like personal businesses; with intimidation, abuse of authority or office, even dealing corruptly with disciplinary cases, and to a large extent serving mammon. They want to be venerated and obeyed unquestioningly, more than they themselves revere and obey Christ; they clothe themselves with pride and arrogance; they vehemently issue threats, denying people the very freedom of expression and liberty of conscience through which God is rendered joyful service, and instead kill the diversity that is also an expression of the beauty of Christ’s church. 

It seems that some of these church leaders are not satisfied to now mirror the devil, they must at least torture innocent children of God whom they don't like or they perceive to be “against” them by using an organisational tool that has biblical rules and procedures for transparency and fairness. They craftily and unilaterally decide and excommunicate the brethren without due regard of the Church’s role. Brethren have literally been forced out of fellowship and the church, tortured, with the Devil’s fingers of accusation! Those who are friends of the victims even make things worse by the manner of their dissociation which but elbows them to squirm in untold psychological, and social, physical agony. There are tears in the world and God sees and understands every bit, bitter and scalding tears, which are wrung out by personal affliction; tears of anguish, of intense corporeal anguish; tears caused by cruelty or mockery. God sees them and will act justly on their behalf one day. The irony is that while the Church itself represents something of a superior law and justice, it has instead been made to perpetrate horrifying forms of injustice, abuse of authority and corruption Should this be allowed to pass down history ignored and/or treated as unimportant? Fortunately, the voices of some of the brethren have not been stifled because they know that man at best is but a sinner and that such things have happened by the ordained will of God, although they should not have been let to happen by people who should have done their human responsibility well in the first place. Albert Einstein said, “The world is dangerous to live in, not because of those who hurt, but because of those who watch and let it happen” and Desmond Tutu echoed something similar when he uttered that, ”If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, it is because you have chosen the camp of the oppressor.” 

For Organisationl Tools That Become Instruments of Torture 1, click the links below

https://creativewriterscentre.blogspot.com/2021/06/organisational-tools-that-become.html?m=1

 https://www.facebook.com/1358364114/posts/10221217403208824/?app=fbl