~ "Unspoken or Unwritten Rules" ~

"Unspoken or Unwritten Rules” ~

This also brings up a little known, but pervasive idea within churches; unwritten rules.  A major one being the "don't talk rule."  The tricky thing about unwritten rules is that the only way to discover them is to break them.  

With the "don't talk rule,” if you speak of a problem, you are the problem.  You will hear things like, "Things will be fine or fix themselves if you just go on quietly about your business and pray about your concerns.  Let God take care of it in His own time.  Talking about problems just makes them worse."  

Things have a tendency to get turned upside down when everything is not on the up and up.   

Talking about problems exposes them, it doesn't cause them.  It is common knowledge that communication is vital to the resolution of problems and reconciliation.  It's one of the main reasons God gave us the capacity to speak.

Here is a good example of the lunacy of faulty logic to the contrary,

"Who is the evildoer in an abusive marriage— the husband who is abusive, or the wife who exposes a crime? It is not “evil” for the wife to expose a crime. It would be wrong to keep quiet and stay, or leave the relationship and say nothing."*

Not talking prolongs and enables abuse, the victims continue to be victimized and in the case of churches, the number of victims multiply. 

  

Another funny thing about the "don't talk rule" is that it seems to apply to everyone except church staff.  Before you know it, as they tell it, the perpetrators have become the victims and the victims the perpetrators.  While it can happen, rarely does abuse occur from the bottom up.  It is almost always instigated by those in leadership positions, on down.  

When questions and concerns began to arise we prayed about them without saying anything for a long time (too long) because of this faulty understanding.  When we finally did go to the pastor, he danced around the issue and eventually said, "You are the problem."  

For example, in one of the many meetings described earlier,  we asked if there was anything else we could do in addition to our regular ministries to help lighten his load.  We brought up the fact that we were concerned he didn't have the time needed to devote to the preparation of messages because of other pressing church work he was always busy doing, and from our perspective the messages were beginning to sound repetitive.  We also told him that as a result we didn't feel we were being fed by the messages, and that we knew others had expressed feeling the same, and we thought he should know.   He had been through a lot earlier that year. We genuinely, sincerely just wanted to help.   

His response was that if we weren't being fed it was because we weren't faithful enough to the services, and we chose not to listen to the cd's provided for the sermons that were missed while doing our regular ministries.  As a result of my husband simply asking him to be open to feedback about his sermons, after we left the church he took it upon himself to tell the church people that my husband had tried to tell him what and what not to preach.  

Only after several more meetings which were a series of incredulous denials, with a complete and total lack of humility to consider that what we were saying might be true, did we go to others with our confusion and concern. 

The apostles were also persecuted by those in authority and that authority imposed a "don't talk rule" on them.  This is their response:

Acts 4:17-20 and 23,  "But that it spread no further among the people, let us straightly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.   And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.  For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard ... And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them."  

They not only went to their companions and told them what the abusive authority had said, they prayed for boldness to speak more truth, and this is what is referred to later in the chapter when they said that it is better to obey God rather than man.  

They could not "but speak the things which [they] had seen and heard."  This phrase refers to what Jesus taught and lived specifically, but its application is broad.  That was us.  How anyone stays silent in the face of gross dishonesty and injustice is inconceivable to us.  This brings up what I like to call "gossip-mongering."