Sunday, March 04, 2012

All sin is equal

…except for when it’s not.

The whole equality of sin concept is one of the reasons Christianity untenable for me. Saying that a white lie to my wife about her latest hairstyle is on par with raping a child make the concept laughable. On earth, in the Untied States, raping a child gets you prison time. A white lie keeps your marriage sane. 

Morgan Hepburn of Rock Point Baptist Church came rushing to the defense of volunteer youth worker Jordan Roseboom with this crazy misguided tweet.

All sins are equal in God’s eyes. Pray for healing. #PrayforRockPoint

The man she is defending… he has admitted to molesting children and was just charged with an additional five counts of child molestation. Morgan Hepburn, I’m sure glad we don’t’ know each other, and I don’t want to be your friend. You are an enabler.

Let’s look at the failure modes in this case.

We know that Roseboom was allowed to have sleepovers with young boys. Even if these events were not sanctioned by he church, the sleepovers should have been against the church’s code of conduct. Failure one – tacit approval from Rock Point Church and the parents of the alleged victims.

Allowing an adult male private time with a young boy is unwise. Failure two – allowing unsupervised visitation with young boys. The parents own this one, but the church should have also made it a matter of policy. As in… use the rule of two. Two adults are required for all activities with minors.

Instead of taking the allegations directly to the police, the church contacted all affected parents and then held a meeting with the parents of the child who came forward with the abuse allegation. Then the church notified the police while encouraging Roseboom to turn himself in. Failure three – The allegations should have be brought directly to the police without the church interfering or trying to manage the situation.

I can’t comment on what type of preventative and predictive programs are in place at Rock Point. The press did not cover this area. I would be interesting to know if there is a professional conduct policy for people working with children. It would also be good to know if staff and volunteers are given training to help recognize abuse. The last item, and it is actually the first questions reporters should ask is, what kind of background checks and monitoring were done on Roseboom?

3 comments:

Local said...

The church is defending him too. It is awful around here. They are ALL posting the same things about forgiveness and one minister still has pictures of Roseboom in a facebook album...of shirtless Roseboom on a canoe trip with shirtless little kids.

Anonymous said...

She is also a little girl but truthfully all sins are sins when looked at by god it's truly sad when a child has more knowledge than adults

Local said...

All sin is equal in that is saddens God...all sin is not equal in it's disgust or severity. Even parents realize this because how you may punish a child who tells you they don't have any homework when they do is different and less severe than how you will punish the child who steals the family car and sets it on fire.

Why in the world would you, anonymous, stand up for someone who is suggesting that the act of child molesting is no more heinous than someone sinning or breaking the law by driving over the speed limit?

Are you a sheeple from Rock Point? Put down the koolaid and find a church with some sense. First Baptist, Woodland Heights, anywhere but Rock Point!