There are quite a few people out there who talk about the personal difficulties they’ve experienced in life, including abuse, often abuse at the hands of church people. They tend to look at certain doctrines of the faith with great suspicion or even abhorrence.

In his groundbreaking article I shared on my blog earlier this year, Joe Carter communicated something that has been heavy on my heart concerning the different nature of the heretics the church is facing today. He used the term “Broken Wolves,” which he defined as those “who use their own authenticity, pain, and brokenness to attract believers who are also suffering and broken.”

Several readers have asked me, “When people speak of ‘broken wolves’ bringing false doctrine into the church, who are they (and you) talking about?”

While I don’t feel comfortable naming names, there are quite a few people out there who talk about the personal difficulties they’ve experienced in life, including abuse, often abuse at the hands of church people. They tend to look at certain doctrines of the faith with great suspicion or even abhorrence. Among those is the substitutionary atonement of Christ. They say that if God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus for our sin, then that means that God’s redemptive plan is centered on an act of “divine child abuse.”

Of course, since Jesus is and was and has always been God, and since He went to the cross voluntarily as an adult, not a child, it was in no sense divine child abuse. But there are many people who are questioning this doctrine now because of the pain of their own personal experiences and those of others they’ve known, which they read into the redemptive story.

Read More