"God forbid that a single woman meets with a male married church leader to discus church matters or that she receives counseling or pastoral care from a man at all, unless someone else is present in the room. "
Most of these paranoid sounding "preventive measures" are just very practical things which Christian leaders MUST do to protect themselves.
Not a Man
If you don't understand, then you clearly aren't a man living in the modern world.
Women will do all kinds of strange things, and make all kinds of strange accusations.
And the problem is, when a woman makes an accusation, even if it's false... EVERYONE BELIEVES HER!!!
So men have to protect themselves.
Men have to PROVE and VERIFY they DID NOT do a thing.
How do you do that?
How do you prove a negative?
How do you prove you weren't in a place, or you didn't say a thing, or you didn't do a thing... a thing which never happened?
How do you have proof of a thing which never was?
How do you prove a negative?
You prove a negative by NOT HAVING NEGATIVES ... you must have all your meetings with women VIEWABLE, PUBLIC, KNOWN, ACCOUNTED FOR, and OBSERVED BY OTHERS.
Proving Negatives
You cannot prove a negative... that something which never happened never happened.
You have no proof for a thing which "was not."
So how do you protect yourself against these negatives... these accusations of things which never happened?
There is a way.
Your only way to "prove a negative" is by not having any negatives to prove.
You cannot have any "negatives."
You cannot have any of those invisible periods, holes in your schedule, where you "may" have been alone with some woman doing something naughty.
And you cannot have any times where you WERE with some woman, and it wasn't either in a group with others, or at least publicly observable through a glass window or something. You cannot prove a negative, therefore you must not have any negatives... you must not have any alone time with women, or have any unaccounted periods in your schedule.
Christian leaders are FORCED into this issue of "proving negatives"... forced by a culture that believes anything a woman says.
And since proving a negative is impossible, we must have no negatives to question.
We must have no holes in the schedule, no alone time with women, nothing which can possibly be questioned.
Secular Problem - Not Just Christians:
BTW... women are getting so weird in western culture that it isn't just church leaders who are paranoid.
In the secular world, men are extremely paranoid about accusations from women.
There are even certain female demographics that are virtually "unhirable"... because everyone is afraid to work with them.
At most colleges, a boy can get thrown out of school, lose his money, and lose his credits, if he has consensual sex with a girl who changes her mind AFTER THE FACT.
At almost any college, a boy can have consensual sex with a girl, then the girl can "decide" later it was a mistake, and she can then actually go to the Dean's office, file a complaint of sexual abuse (claiming she was feeling vulnerable or something, and it was therefore actually against her will) , and she can have the boy THROWN OUT OF SCHOOL for sexual misconduct.
Seriously.
This college thing happens just about every week.
In the secular world, men are making girls sign contracts of "mutual consent" before having sex... to protect themselves from rape accusations. (This is common on college campuses btw.)
Some men have decided a contract isn't enough, so they're doing a video contract, where the girl actually has to state that she is about to have consensual sex, and then name EACH PARTICULAR SEXUAL ACT which she is consenting to.
CONCLUSION:
Sorry the world is so weird, and that men are so paranoid.
But your pastor didn't make the world crazy....
your pastor is just trying to survive it.
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