He said/she said games

Doug Wilson's pastoral writings are some of his best. Here's a recent blog:

"Now suppose I as an individual know of someone's guilt, but am not in a position to prove it. What then? I may know that he is guilty, but if I can't prove it, what should my judicial stance toward him be? I may not make a public charge that I cannot substantiate under cross-examination. So suppose I see someone commit an egregious sin with my own two eyes. I go to him privately and confront him, and he says something like, "Yeah, I know that you saw me come out of that motel room with that woman, but I also know that you are the only one who saw me. Ha, ha! And if you come around with your busybody two and three witnesses, I will deny everything. Period. Your word against mine." Now suppose this person is a member of my church, and I am looking forward to serving him the Lord's Supper in two days. Do I offer him the bread and wine? You bet. I have no business taking any judicial action against him unless my charges can be independently verified and established. If [they] are true, but cannot be established, then he should have a far greater problem coming to the Supper than I should have with him coming to the Supper. He is the one with the problem, not the rest of the church. Scripture has a much greater problem with innocent people being kept away than with guilty people coming. And the guilty people who are eating and drinking condemnation are not eating and drinking someone else's condemnation. They are doing it to themselves. So in this sense, we don't need to fence the Table; the Table fences us."

As a pastor, I have been in the situation described at the beginning of the paragraph, and have had several people come to me in this situation seeking help. The main way to go here, is to Scripture. The Psalms of vindication are very helpful: the Psalmist calling on God to vindicate, leaving vengeance with Him (Psalm 7, 10, 55-59). (Note that these can get a little violent at times; there are two ways God will destroy the wicked: 1. Hell. 2. Forgiveness - God destroys the wicked within them and saves them; we ought to pray these Psalms in this second fashion.)

Then one must deal with bitterness as well, before the Lord, when there is a lingering complaint (Hebrews 12:15). Whenever you feel the resentment swelling, stop, pray, repent of YOUR sin of bitterness. Ask God for grace to drain the hatred from your heart.

Complaints against others must drown in the ocean of grace we've received from God.