On Valentine’s Day, 2019, I entered the chapel of the school where I was then teaching. It was the Thursday after the Houston Chronicle published the first few installments of its series called “Abuse of Faith,” which blew the lid off of a decades-long sexual abuse scandal in my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Along with the harrowing stories of sexual violence and cover ups, the Chronicle also compiled a database of 263 “officials and volunteers convicted of sex abuse crimes.” Four offenders were from that state where I lived. And two of those had attended the Southern Baptist school where I was teaching Old Testament and Hebrew.

The speaker’s chapel sermon that morning started out well enough. It was about romantic relationships and what to look for in a spouse—apropos given the holiday. Toward the end of the sermon, though, the speaker addressed the “ladies” in the room, offering his own advice for how to attract a mate, which included an analogy which likened women to houses and equated their lack of romance to their lack of “lawn care.”

My mouth fell open. And soon after, I started receiving text messages from others in the room. “What in the world??!” and “no, no, no, no, no, no.”

The speaker paused for a moment while the laughter in the room quieted, then (buoyed by the crowd’s response?) he pressed on with his analogy. Women, he said, should be careful who they let into their “houses,” because we all know what we call houses with people coming in and out of them all the time: crackhouses.

I sat in my seat, dumbfounded and deeply saddened. I had just learned that hundreds (thousands? who knows?) of women and children—people created in the very image of God—were abused by men who pastored and volunteered at churches in my own denomination. And now, I was listening to a preacher reduce women to objects—houses to be maintained and kept for another’s pleasure.

Immediately, I raised objections to the sermon to my administrators. Sadly, they responded by trying to bully me into silence. And soon after, I resigned.

But as I’ve reflected on that experience, I’ve realized that at the root of this type of preaching, and abuse in general, is a denial of a fundamental tenet of Christianity—that every human being is made in God’s image. And if we want to stop abuse in the church, Christians must once again embrace that humans are not merely objects for others’ enjoyment, but reflections of our Creator.

That may sound elementary to you, but this belief in the imago dei has changed everything about my life. How I talk to my kids, the way I interact with my wife, the food I eat, the films I watch, the websites I visit. All of it.

Theologians and lay folks have spent a lot of time talking about what exactly the image of God is. But there is important cultural clues that can help us discover what it means to be made in God’s image.

READ: Patriarchy and the Gender of God

In the Old Testament world, this word “image” referred to little statues that kings would fashion, which looked like them. They would set them up around their kingdom, placing them at the very edges of the kingdom as boundary markers to show that the land the “image” was on belonged to the king.

These statues were also placed in other spots around the kingdom, all with the intention of showing the people that the king was, well, the king. They reminded the king’s subjects who their lord was.

So, when the Old Testament uses this word “image” to talk about the creation of humans, it has in mind at least the idea that the image-bearers—humans—would remind everyone else whose was the Kingdom. They were, in a very real sense, extensions of the King who created them, and wherever these images were, they extended the King’s rule to that place.

Thus, being created in God’s image sets humans uniquely apart from the rest of creation. They are the representations that the King made to demonstrate rule.

When my family joined this church and started getting involved in its ministry, I thought that we were there to do good work in the community—to bring Jesus to impoverished African Americans who mostly didn’t attend church. We were there, I thought, to help them learn how to raise their children, achieve financial stability, prepare healthy meals, and the like. I thought that I had something to offer this community because I had “made it”: I am a Christian, financially stable, well educated, and I know how to cook.

Several months ago I resigned from my job as an assistant professor. That led to a lot of long discussions with my wife about what we want to do, where we want to live, and how we want to live. A major issue we kept coming back to was living locally, being fully engaged in a local community for the good of that community, and living in the same neighborhood where we worship on Sundays. And that made me start thinking about the outreach work we do at our church, and specifically about my assumptions regarding the people who live in that community and the “good I bring them.”

This is when I began to ask: what if it wasn’t the community who needed me and my church, but rather me and my church who needed that community? What if God had placed the community there to help me? I (and my family) have gifts to contribute, sure, but my arrogance didn’t let me see these people as people whom I need.

I need them.

The people in my church’s community are just that—people. They are not problems to solve, and it reeks of implicit bias and racism to think that I’m somehow there to “save” them because we live in different parts of town and deal with different types of issues.

READ: The White Evangelical Persecution Complex

Paul tells us that people are what make up the body of believers that we call the church. “Though many,” we “are one body.” As Paul develops his metaphor in 1 Corinthians, it’s clear that the body is intimately connected. If one part hurts, so does the rest of the body. In the same way, if part of the body is missing, the whole body suffers. So it’s not that this neighborhood needs my church; it’s that my church needs this neighborhood if our body is to be complete. They bring gifts we don’t have and perspectives we need, and we (that is, I) am in grave danger of missing out on the one-on-one, horizontal aspect of the gospel if I keep looking at people as projects rather than co-laborers for the gospel and co-lovers of our great God.

James confronts my pride and bias in a particularly poignant way:

“My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.” (James 2:1–9)

Of course I didn’t see my actions as favoritism or mistreatment of the poor, but that’s exactly what I was doing. I’d elevated myself above a whole neighborhood on the basis of my education and bank account, not thinking in the slightest that perhaps God had placed me there because of my lack rather than because of my abundance. So, instead of seeing myself as the white knight come to save the impoverished POC community, God is teaching me that I, in fact, am the one impoverished. I need the love, relationships, gifts, and community of the people among whom God has placed my church building.

I teach Old Testament, and I’d spent much time in my classes over the past four years discussing the image of God and its implications for how we view other human beings. I was certain when I went through the channels outlined in the faculty handbook that my objection to the objectification and degradation of women would be handled quickly and seamlessly. Of course my school doesn’t think sexually active women are crack houses. Of course my school doesn’t think it’s okay to tell women to “mow your lawn.” Of course they’ll release a statement affirming that all humans are made in God’s image and, therefore, all humans have inherent value distinct from their sexual activity or pubic hair.

The president responded — predictably, in hindsight — with an email to all students, faculty, and staff “encouraging” us to follow Matthew 18 instead of the school’s stated policy for issuing complaints. When someone is “perceived to have committed an offense, we must . . . seek more ‘official’ redress only after the biblical method has failed.”

Here’s the passage:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15–17)

Jesus is talking to his disciples about the proper way to handle conflict among themselves, that is, within a church setting. But applying this passage isn’t as straightforward as “what happens in the church stays in the church.”

Unknown or Unintentional Sin
Why does Jesus tell the sinned against person to confront the sinner, to “tell him his fault?” Because the sinner doesn’t know he sinned. Perhaps it was an offhand remark intended in jest or perhaps the sinner did something he legitimately thought was okay. But Jesus is not talking about something that is clearly and self-evidently wrong, such as rape.

Private Sin
The “sin” Jesus mentions here is personal — something a person has done against another person. Thus, correcting a fellow Christian should happen in private when that person has sinned in private. Often people will publicly make outrageous comments, like calling women crack houses, then cry, “Matthew 18!” when someone confronts them publicly. Take the example of Peter refusing to eat with non-Jews — a racial distinction that Jesus abolished. In Galatians 2:11 Paul states, “I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Peter sinned publicly, so Paul opposed him publicly. He even enshrined it in scripture for all to see!

Presumption of Guilt
Key in this passage is that Jesus assumes that the person sinned against is telling the truth. This runs against the grain of how Christians typically handle abuse allegations, where the abuser is presumed innocent. It’s fine to maintain innocence until guilt is proven; it’s a bedrock of the United States’ criminal defense system. But one cannot both clamor for Matthew 18 and presume innocence.

Not Criminal
In addition, the sin is not criminal activity, for the offender would already know that is wrong. It is more akin to the type of offense that happens when someone makes a hurtful comment about another person. However, even if a fellow Christian has committed a crime, there remains a distinction between church discipline and civil discipline. A person can receive forgiveness for a sin and still face consequences for that sin. For example, if someone steals my car, I can confront him, he can repent and return the car, and I can forgive him. But he can still also be arrested and face consequences for stealing the car. The two are not mutually exclusive. The New Testament makes clear in other places that the government was established to punish wrongdoers (1 Peter 2:14), and there is no indication that punishing criminal activity — issuing justice, that is — is in the church’s purview.

Excommunication
This process of church discipline ends in excommunication if the person refuses to repent. That is, after being confronted by one person, then a few people, the person who wrongly maintains innocence in the matter is to be banned from the church. If the situation in question does not meet each of these qualifications, then Matthew 18 does not apply.

Common Misapplication  
Wes Feltner, who was recently accused of sexually abusing two women under his pastoral care, cited Matthew 18 in his defense, stating: “The Bible directs God’s people to take their grievances first to the person accused and, if that person won’t listen, to try again and bring a witness; and if the person still won’t listen, then to take it to the church (Matthew 18:15-17). The group circulating these allegations did not bring them to me, rather, they took them directly to the church and, not being satisfied with the church’s response, they have taken them to the general public.”

This response is typical of pastors accused of sexual abuse. Let’s think through Feltner’s use of Matthew 18 in light of the requirements for applying it in particular circumstances.

Is it possible that sexual abuse was unintentional? No.
Was the sin private? Yes.
Was there a presumption of guilt of the sinner? No.
Was the sin criminal? Yes.
Did the church follow through to excommunication? No.

Matthew 18 does not apply in every single case of sexual abuse I’ve ever heard of. While sexual abuse is typically a private, personal sin committed by one person against another, it is also an intentional, criminal act. Further, innocence and not guilt is the typical presumption, and churches rarely carry the process through to excommunication. Instead, the abuse survivor is typically not believed, told to remain silent, and/or gaslighted. Rather than confront the accused, folks tend to defend the accused: “Pastor Doe couldn’t have done that!”

Since resigning from the Baptist college where I heard women compared to crack houses, I’ve waded into the world of advocacy for sexual abuse survivors. And I’ve found, to my shame and chagrin, that the school’s misuse of Matthew 18 is far from unusual.

Matthew 18:15-17 contains the words of Christ to his church, instructing us on how to deal with internal conflict with a brother or sister who sins against us and doesn’t know it. It’s appropriate to follow that model in that situation, but it’s inadequate — and becomes itself a tool for abuse — when it is used to bully abuse survivors into silence.

This crucial bit of biblical interpretation came in a tweet in early October from Rachael Denhollander, the first young athlete to accuse Gymnastics USA physician Larry Nassar of sexual assault and now a speaker and author on surviving abuse. She was responding to a tweet from evangelical leader Matt Smethurst who, while listing the various sins of biblical figures, stated, “David fornicated.”

Denhollander followed up her response the next day and again a few days later, outlining the biblical support for her assertion that what David did to Bathsheba was not fornication or adultery, but rape.

As it’s often told, Bathsheba’s story is one of a lustful king who “saw her bathing on the roof, (and) her beauty and the moonlight overthrew” him. Bathsheba is the irresistibly nubile woman who knowingly de-robed in David’s line of sight so she could seduce him. What followed was only what happens between a man lured by the wiles of a beautiful woman. If David transgressed, this reading goes, it was in murdering Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah.

Denhollander’s contradictory interpretation shouldn’t be controversial. As Denhollander pointed out, when the prophet Nathan tells David the parable of the rich man who took his neighbor’s ewe, David is portrayed as stealing, and Bathsheba is portrayed as a lamb that is slaughtered.

This is important, because the Old Testament distinguishes between consensual and non-consensual sex between married people who are not married to each other. In Deuteronomy, the laws even mulled whether the act took place in a city, where the woman could cry for aid if the sex was unwanted, or the country, where her ability to resist fell only to her, and her innocence was presumed.

That Nathan equates Bathsheba to an innocent lamb suggests that she could not resist David. Therefore he was guilty of rape.

Nor is Denhollander’s take novel. More than a decade ago, popular author and preacher John Piper also called David a rapist. Scholars such as George Athas, Richard Davidson, Cheryl Exum and David and Diana Garland likewise argue that David raped Bathsheba.

But really we only need use our own eyes and heart to see this truth. The most powerful man in a monarchial society saw a woman he wanted, sent other men to bring her to him, vaginally penetrated her with his penis, then murdered her husband to avoid being found out. That’s rape, folks.

Even David recognizes his crime. Nathan’s parable angered David so much that he called for the execution of the perpetrator, to which Nathan famously responded, “Thou art the man!” The consequences plague David for the rest of his life. As Nathan promised, destruction makes its bed in David’s home.

When most people hear the term “rape,” what comes to mind is a masked man physically overpowering a woman and violently penetrating her. That is rape, to be sure. But using one’s power over another person to coerce them into sex acts is also sexual violence. Some have claimed that David’s coercion was not physical (though it could have been; the Bible does not say). Bathsheba could have defied the king’s order — just as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego chose death rather than worship Nebuchadnezzar’s statue.

That argument proves the point exactly: Forcing a person to choose between sex and death is rape.

So why did Denhollander’s assertion create a Twitter storm? One person, accusing Denhollander of “modern arrogance,” chimed in, “If it was rape, funny how no one bothered to let God know. He condemns David for sinning against Uriah and God himself. Nothing in the text indicates rape.” Another argued that since the Bible doesn’t indicate there was “physical force,” then rape was impossible.

An anonymous commenter added, unhelpfully, that “David actually raped all his wives because he was more powerful than all of them.”

The root of these objections seems to be a concern not to apply our 21st century understanding of sexual abuse to the Bible. However, as Nathan’s story and Deuteronomy make clear, even then people understood that there are situations in which a person does not have the agency to say no.

But there’s another reason why some resist calling David’s crime rape. The Southern Baptist Convention, like the Roman Catholic Church, is reckoning with decades of sexual abuse. Those covering up or defending abuse use words like “moral failing,” “inappropriate relationship,” and “sexual incident” to describe what actually happened.

If we can use a softer label or somehow chalk sexual violence up to lust or hormones or a woman’s seduction, we are off the hook. It allows us to think that the preacher just had a lapse in judgment. And lapses in judgment are understandable, unavoidable even — “Boys will be boys.” This is what we do when we fail to call Bathsheba’s rape what it is.

Particularly relevant to this conversation is the story of Jules Woodson, whose alleged abuser recently announced plans to start a new church. Woodson was 17 years old when, she has publicly declared, her youth pastor, Andy Savage, sexually assaulted her. He never faced charges, due to the statute of limitations.

Years later, when Savage addressed his church about Woodson’s accusations, he called his assault a “sexual incident,” his response “biblical,” and the counsel he received “wise.” His self-acquittal, he said, “was done believing that God’s forgiveness is greater than any sin.”

The church stood and applauded while Savage wiped away tears and his pastor embraced him. Savage has since confessed that his sexual assault was “an abuse of power” but carefully referred to an “inappropriate relationship.”

Should Savage and others like him be forgiven? Yes, absolutely. But, as Woodson recently said to me, “Grace is not the issue; this is not about forgiveness. This is about justice and accountability.”

This is why it matters that we get it right that David raped Bathsheba. Victims will be denied justice so long as we can’t come to terms with clergy rape as rape. Ideology drives action, and for many evangelicals a skewed perception of power dynamics and sexual violence is at the wheel.

In many ways, evangelical tradition has preferred the alternative: that Bathsheba be the one called to account. In the dark undercurrent of purity culture, boys are allowed to be boys, while a woman must guard her sexuality with all her might, because that is what ultimately matters about her. It is the standard by which a future husband will judge her.

This view of female sexuality may seem unrelated to the debate about David and Bathsheba, but enshrining virginity (vaginal virginity, at least) while excusing men for deviant sexual behavior perpetuates a view that women are objects for sexual pleasure — not human beings made in God’s image.

Consider the widespread evangelical Christian response to viewing pornography. A 2016 study showed that some 57% of pastors and 64% of youth pastors have looked at or currently look at pornography. Most approaches to the problem focus on reducing access — porn-blocking software, accountability groups, etc. Women have a role here, too; they should always dress modestly so as to avoid causing their brothers to lust. If all access is cut off, the logic goes, men would not lust.

The problem with pornography, though, is not that men like looking at naked women, but that it reduces women to sexual objects. Like Bathsheba, their human agency is stolen. Instead of restricting access, we need to see women, and all humans, as God’s image bearers. Until then, sexual abuse survivors will have no justice, and enablers and abusers will thrive among us.