Redeeming Power Quotes

“Have you ever sat with someone unlike you, being grace and truth to them? Have you ever listened, trying to understand what it is like to be them rather than trying to correct them and make them like you? So often we listen just long enough to convince another to be more like us or to instruct them about how to “get over” whatever has happened. It is an egocentric approach. Jesus’s presence with us was not and is not like that. He listened and responded to the individual. Have you ever been struck by the fact that he healed all blind people in unique ways? Let us watch Jesus and see who he was with others who were utterly unlike him. Let us watch and see who he was with “them.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“We are God’s dissidents every time we respond in offices, in communities, in churches, in schools, and in any areas of abuse. We do this as a part of systems, many of them with good and godly aims. We must not go to sleep. We must watch. We must not assume that our family, church, community, country, or organization is always right just because the people in it use the right words. We must never agree to “protect” the name of God by covering ungodliness. In Ephesians 5:11, Paul warns us not to participate in the deeds of darkness but instead to expose them.

Understand that you cannot singlehandedly change an entire system; you are not called to do so. Yet we are to speak truth about our systems. This is difficult to do and sometimes quite risky. Just ask Martin Luther King Jr. Ask Martin Luther himself. Ask those in the #MeToo movement. When systems change, it is often little by little and usually at great cost.

When you feel overwhelmed, remember this: people are sacred, created in the image of God. Systems are not. They are only worth the people in them and the people they serve. And people are to be treated, whether one or many, the way Jesus Christ treated people.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When someone tells us that a person we know has sexually or physically abused them, we think, I know that person; it cannot be true. Scripture says that our hearts are utterly deceitful; we don't even know our own hearts. We have a hard time believing that. Scripture says that Jesus trusted no one because he knew what was in all people (John 2:24). We say, "I know that person; we trust them." But Jesus says, "I know them; I do not trust them; I know what they are capable of." He would say that about me, about you. Scripture tells us that God does not judge by appearances but according to righteousness. We judge by what we see and hear, and we assume we know the heart.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When the day comes and people push you toward a goal you believe is good, remember Jesus. The work is not your master; he is.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“We forget that anything done in the name of God that does not bear his character through and through is not of him at all. In our forgetting, we are more loyal to the words of humans than to the commandments of God.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When I held my newborn children and grandchildren, I felt as though I was looking at a treasure box packed intentionally by God with gifts to bless his world. Opening those gifts has been one of the great joys of my life. Ignoring the gifts of God in any child, female or male, does great damage to the child. It also greatly impairs the function of the church, because those gifts are given by God for the good of the body of Christ and for the glory of God.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“But one by one, light breaks through and change comes.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“But a failure to love because it renders you vulnerable will rob you of laughter, companionship, accomplishments together, and oneness of heart. The love between good friends is a thing of beauty and wonder. It’s also risky because it increases your capacity for being wounded. In fact, the more people you love, the more vulnerable to wounding you become. Even if all those relationships go well, some people you love will likely die before you do, and your vulnerability will result in great grief.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“Most humans intend to use their power for good. They want to earn more money, grow the church, protect good programs, or preserve a good reputation. Adam and Eve told themselves they were pursuing a greater likeness to God. They seemed blind to the fact that they were pursuing a seemingly good goal through utterly ungodly means. We do the same thing. We tell ourselves that measures such as membership growth and financial gain in a ministry are proof of likeness to God. We then make decisions that silence unwelcome truths about fraud or abuse and tell ourselves the cover-up “preserves God’s honor.” We say we are using our power to seek likeness to God when in fact what we are doing looks nothing like him. It is not difficult to be seduced into such thinking.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When the day comes and people push you toward a goal you believe is good, remember Jesus. The work is not your master; he is. The goal must be his goal, achieved in his way. The timing must be his. And you must be wholly his. Do not be owned by the goals of service but by the Master alone. Leaders, followers, and systems can all easily deceive us, whether they are secular or part of Christendom. But people and systems are both known by their fruit.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When God’s work seems to call us to neglect marriage and home, solitude and study, we have traded masters.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“The Nazis were not the first to burn children. God's people did so long before.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“When the work of shepherding leads us to pride, judgment, superiority, or deception, we have forgotten that we are a lamb. A shepherd who is not first a lamb is a dangerous shepherd and has ceased to follow the Good Shepherd. Our primary identity in life, if we are to be eternal value to the Father, is not that of a shepherd but that of a lamb.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“Every time we treat someone with dignity rather than shame, respect rather than disregard, concern rather than exploitation, kindness rather than brutality, and careful attention rather than turning away, we are doing things that are the reverse of trauma and evil.6”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“No system that carries oppression, silencing, dehumanizing, violence, abuse, and corruption within is healthy, no matter how godly the goals of that system may be. Tolerance of such things, out of fear, disbelief, or self-deception, will not protect the system from the disease that will kill it if left untreated.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“Our systems, our countries, our faith groups, our tribes, and our organizations are not the kingdom of God. He resides in the hearts of his people, who are called to love and obey him even when our structures, institutions, and systems fall down around us.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“True purity has been counterfeited by false sanctity. We can know, sing, repeat, and teach the Word of God, yet its true harvest may be absent in our lives, our homes, and our world. We must never assume that someone who is gifted verbally and has theological knowledge is spiritually mature. Sometimes that leader is a narcissist, working the system and the people in it to feed themselves.5”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“To tolerate sin, pretense, disease, crookedness, or deviation from the truth is to do something other than the work of God, no matter the words used to describe it.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“The trashing, demeaning, humiliating, and labeling of other believers is horrifying and grieves God. A call to truth, which we must issue, is always to be done with gentleness, humility, and dignity, for we are calling one made in God’s image. Opinions are not to govern character, no matter how strongly we hold them. Issues are not to govern character no matter how biblical they are. Character is to be rooted and grounded in likeness to Christ so that when we express our thoughts, we manifest his character and none other.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“It is abuse when an adult so threatens and intimidates everyone in the home that no one dares voice a different opinion.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church

“Listen to some words: Today Christianity stands at the head of this country. . . . I pledge that I will never tie myself to those who want to destroy Christianity. . . . We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit—we want to burn out all the recent immoral development in literature, theater, the arts and in the press. . . . In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess the past . . . few years.2 Take these words at face value. Do they resonate with you? Here is what one listener said upon hearing them: “This . . . puts in words everything I have been searching for, for years. It is the first time someone gave form to what I want.”3 I suspect many would say the same. There are thousands of people who, upon hearing these words spoken, would cheer and agree and say amen. The words are Adolph Hitler’s, and the listener was someone in the audience who made that comment to Joseph Goebbels in 1933. Goebbels was Hitler’s minister of propaganda and clearly a very good one. Hitler’s words sound like they are inspired by Christian faith and morality. Listeners assumed a certain kind of person stood behind them. But Hitler’s words masked the deception behind them so that those listening, without knowing the character of the man, heard what they longed for but what never came to fruition. What did come was the extermination of millions, the destruction of countries, and evil that has affected generations. The words were said to manipulate the audience whose longings the Third Reich understood well. Hitler deliberately deceived the people and drew them in, calling forth loyalty and service. And he got it, not just from the general population but also from the German church. Words full of promises that cloaked great evil were tailored for a vulnerable culture.”
― Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church