Clear Right Side, Clear Wrong Side

More from "Pretending Status Quo"

When it became clear that the elders were in on the cover up (by their own admission at a church meeting) and that Eddie had gone on the run with most of his family. Eric and I felt that the families that stayed with the church really communicated by their actions (or non-action) which side they were on.

YES, at this point we believed there was a clear right side and a clear wrong side, both morally and biblically. We felt it was necessary to cut ourselves from any family that was still standing along side the elders and the church during that time. None of this was done lightly or without much personal grief. All of our children suffered on different levels, in particularly by losing friendships that had been nurtured for six years. All of our regular activities were affected by this. We had built a community with these families. We had literally moved our family so we could be closer to the church and more involved with this church community.

If you can imagine, we were in the country on just shy of one acre, homeschooling, juggling six kids, and  suddenly very isolated. Something died inside of me when all those families continued to fellowship with this church body. I don't even know how to adequately express what I felt. But I remember thinking how can we communicate to our children that you only stand up for what is right if it is easy or convenient? This was no small matter. If there was a time to stand up and do the right thing, this was it! There is still a core group that have stayed on with Jim Cameron and Dave Barrueto as elders.

We  had one family come to us personally and ask for forgiveness for the way they treated us during that time. They were sincere and I believe honestly understood the grief their actions caused us. They were also realistic and knew although we forgave them, everything was different now and did not expect us to be friends. The husband ended up writing a very long letter outlining (from a biblical point of view), how the church should have handled this situation and how to respond to an un-repentant Patrick as a christian. His letter was sent to all the church members and some other leaders that support what the Rojas family has done. What was strange to us was everything in his letter, we had been saying all through the court process (remember this went from January to August), but we didn't have scriptures attached to every statement. Thankfully his letter did seem to open the eyes of some.

We have a friend that always refers to the "ripple effect" that Patrick's crime caused. Like when you drop a rock in the water and you see the ripples expand further and further from that one little stone. I pray that the "ripple effect" from this little blog will grow and grow and grow and shine light into the darkness, be helpful to some, healing to others, and mean freedom for the Rojas girls!