Insist on the straight line

Larry Nassar came to court carrying a Bible. He was charged with sexually abusing 265 girls over two decades while being team doctor for USA Gymnastics. Throughout the trials he made a point of presenting himself as a Christian.

Across the courtroom in January 2018 was a woman he had abused when she was a child – Rachael Denhollander. She was the first victim to go public about Nassar’s abuse and the last of over 200 to give her victim impact statement.

As the judge considered Nassar’s sentencing, Denhollander repeatedly asked one question of the court: ‘How much is a little girl worth?’ She wanted the punishment not only to fit the crime but to value the victims.

As a Christian you might have expected Denhollander to distance herself from the purported Christianity of her abuser. Instead she holds him to it: ‘[Larry,] the Bible you carry says it is better for a stone to be [hung] around your neck and you thrown into a lake than for you to make even one child stumble. And you have damaged hundreds.’

In referencing Matthew 18:6, Denhollander is ‘insisting on the straight line’. That’s the third of three moves I recommend in evangelism when critiques are brought regarding the church. We need to: Bust the myths, Own what’s crooked, and finally Insist on the straight line.

In my last two columns, I wrote about the first two moves. Here Denhollander will teach us the third. Brilliantly she ‘insists on the straight line’ in her victim impact statement.

She said: ‘Throughout this process, I have clung to a quote by C.S. Lewis, where he says: “My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how did I get this idea of just, unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?”

‘Larry, I can call what you did evil and wicked because it was. And I know it was evil and wicked because the straight line exists. The straight line is not measured based on your perception or anyone else’s perception, and this means I can speak the truth about my abuse without minimisation or mitigation. And I can call it evil because I know what goodness is.’

This analogy from Lewis’s Mere Christianity is so simple and so profound. A world without straight lines is not a world of crooked lines. If no line is straight then no line is crooked either – lines would just be lines. But the moment we call a line crooked we are judging it against a standard of straightness. It’s the same with goodness and wickedness. If there is no categorical goodness then there is also no categorical wickedness either. Life would just be life.

But we know this to be false. We know there are some things that are simply Wrong – wrong with a capital W. Chief among these is child sexual abuse. But if that’s ‘crooked’ then we must also be saying that there exists a ‘straight line’: Goodness with a capital G.

This is what sustained Rachael Denhollander through horrendous trauma. She has been able to name abuse as the evil that it is. And she wants us all to have that perspective. There is great evil perpetrated in the world – and often by people carrying Bibles. Our response should not be to minimise the evil, or explain it away, or insist that it’s not as bad as other evils… over there. Instead, we ‘insist on the straight line.’ Larry Nassar’s behaviour was horrifically crooked. He used his power to dominate not serve. He treated bodies like playgrounds not temples. He used sex as something selfish not sacred. And when faced with the question ‘what is a little girl worth’, he consumed them with a wicked and lustful greed.

What does that mean about the straight line, then? It means that power is intended for service; bodies are temples; sex is sacred; and little girls (along with all of us) are infinitely valuable – precious image bearers of God. All this is preached to us – even if in photo-negative – when we confront the crookedness of evil.

When responding to evils – even evils committed by members of the church – we should not minimise or self-justify. Let’s own what’s crooked and insist on the straight line. Through even worthless behaviour, true worth can be seen.