Thomas Weeks forgot to read his book...

When I bought The Living Word back in 2003, the best-selling book was Thomas Week's Teach Me How To Love You. Thomas is married to Juanita Bynum, a well known evangelist, recording artist, and author. Together, they were Pastors of a church they co-founded in Duluth, Georgia called Global Destiny Church. Teach Me How To Love You is a book about their relationship, how it started, and how to become a "Godly Mate" to your spouse. Sounds good, right?

Weeks and Bynum made the news earlier today. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Juanita was severly beat by her now estranged husband in a hotel parking lot. Another story gone bad. Feels like we were just having this conversation about Ted Haggard.

Rule of thumb, I guess, is if you're going to write a book about Christian Marriages, make sure you're marriage is strong enough to handle it.

God, help us to live a life worthy of Your sacrifice. Give us the patience to work through problems and the strength to deal with the consequences of our actions.

Comments

[Nate]

Oh dude...thats bad news. Good thing you already made your $$ off of that book years ago, right?

[ttm]

As I read your post today, something came to mind from a book I've been reading entitled "The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse" by David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen.

The authors make an interesting point that some people enter the ministry with a motivation to quench personal sin and addictions in their own lives. I don't want to paraphrase because they say it so well: "They are good people; they love God and hate sin--especially their own. But the only coping mechanism they have ever employed to deal with their lust, or whatever sin, is to subdue it with their firm resolve. They neglect to deal with and heal from the wounds and motivations that lie beneath the surface of the external behaviors."

"For someone in the ministry, this translates: 'I'll be preaching every week about God's holiness and our need for self-control. The discipline of speaking it, and the subsequent need to model it, will help me 'keep the lid on it.' The ministry will provide for me the discipline that I need to keep the lid on. It will protect me. I'll preach about the wickedness of pornography on Sunday morning as a means of dealing with my addiction to it. Or I will preach about authority and submission--from the pulpit of an independent, separatist church." (p. 123)

The authors go on to consider whether this method works. It was a bit weird to read this theory in a published book, because it correlated with my own childhood observations of pastors who led the church in which I was raised. One of them was constantly preaching about sexual purity; later he was discovered to have been having an extramarital affair for eleven years. It seemed to me, especially as a skeptical teen, that the pastors in that church (the only church I knew as yet) were most definitely writing sermons pointing to their own individual struggles with sin.

So, I guess I'm not surprised that authors who are Christians might do the same thing--hoping that the chapter titles and formulaic answers will magically manifest transformation in their own lives. But transformation cannot be self-achieved. God does the work in us.

We live under the illusion that we are in control of our lives. If I choose a Christian spouse and love them fully, I will be immune from divorce. If I teach my children the ways of God and love them with a firm love, they will obediently follow Christ (and me.) If I join a church with accurate theology, I will not become apostate or infected with heretical thinking. If I don't smoke, don't get drunk, eat right, and exercise faithfully, I will be healthy. And so on...

The fact of the matter is, none of us has control. When I see "famous believers" caught in sin or whose lives are spinning beyond their careful control; I can only pray for them and remind myself but for the grace of God, go I...

[Kimberly]

I have a feeling that people who have solid Christ-centered marriages are not the ones writing all the marriage how-to books...

[Evangeline Briscoe]

Thanks so much for that! Finally a blog worth responding to. I'm still in shock that this all happened but at the same time I'm thankful because it gives people the opportunity to see that though these two are ministers... they are human first. With demons, issues, etc. that need to be worked out. We all have to find our place and acknowledge our own relationships with God rather than looking at human beings as our models for living. After all, we really don't know these people we follow. We can only trust in the word of God and the holy Spirit to guide us. I have seen Juanita Bynum at a conference here in the DC area and I believe she truly speaks with passion and does love the Lord. Her ministry is not one that I follow but I have seen a few women who have really been blessed by her teachings. I will continue to pray for her and Bishop Weeks. I hope that he will seek and find the counsel he needs to be delivered from his anger management issues. I will also pray that sister Juanita be loosed from the bondage of choosing the wrong men. Bishop Weeks is no different from the men in her past who have treated her badly. He just happened to be all dressed up and in disquise.

[Chantel]

You know this is almost a year ago that this event happened. I don't know if I deliberately didn't go and read about this when it first happened or because at this moment. I'm trying to make my own life whole again. Begin married to a minister myself and facing domestic violence by the hand of a man. That knew the bible like the back of his hand and stood before God, family and friends and declared his love for me in front of all them. Protest his love the Sunday after we got married to the entire church that we attended and stated in his testimonial how much he loved me and knew I was sent by God to be his wife. And the very next Sunday he protest his love for me another way.

Now I say all this to say. That I loved my husband at the time and I’m learning about more about how the devil will come in at the weakest moment. I’m not saying I didn’t know but I’m obtaining a closer relationship with God. Now I may have stayed with my husband separated but still married if he would have gotten some help or counseling. But he said nothing was wrong with him. And maybe nothing was. But something was wrong with my body that ached from his hands. So I say in the letter publicly I forgive you