Beth Moore and the Danger of Dwelling on your Abuse

By Elizabeth Prata

Sunday Beth Moore did it again, tweeted something that agitated people. She is a pot-stirrer.

Pot Stirrer: One who causes unrest; one who stirs the pot. Synonym: troublemaker

Here are the three tweets, posted 9:50 AM · Dec 13, 2020. It’s the first tweet that most people saw and retweeted.

Tweet #1- “I do not believe these are days for mincing words. I’m 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism. This Christian nationalism is not of God. Move back from it.”

Tweet #2- “Fellow leaders, we will be held responsible for remaining passive in this day of seduction to save our own skin while the saints we’ve been entrusted to serve are being seduced, manipulated, USED and stirred up into a lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit for political gain.”

Tweet #3-“And, God help us, we don’t turn from Trumpism to Bidenism. We do not worship flesh and blood. We do not place our faith in mortals. We are the church of the living God. We can’t sanctify idolatry by labeling a leader our Cyrus. We need no Cyrus. We have a king. His name is Jesus.”

In his most recent podcast called “Conversations that Matter,” host Jon Harris raised excellent concerns about this series of tweets. The podcast was published on Monday, December 14, and it’s titled Beth Moore and Christian Nationalism. What follows is partly from his podcast.

Moore tweeted, 63 1/2 years old & I have never seen anything in these United States of America I found more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than_________ and Harris paused and said what would you put in that blank? Pornography? Feminism that leads to abortion? Sexual anarchy? What are the things that destroy the country the most? According to Moore, it’s Trumpism.

Trumpism? What is even “Trumpism”? Moore fails to define it. But she sure makes it sound bad. Trumpism is apparently more dangerous and seductive to the saints than anything else that has come before, at least in her 63 and a 1/2 years. It’s the 1/2 that kills me. So-called Trumpism is more dangerous than the idolization of Obama, even when people ascribed to him actual words of idolatry, such as ‘savior’, or depicting him in art as Jesus-type on a cross?

Moore is accusing people who support Trump of being devoid of the Holy Spirit, [lather of zeal devoid of the Holy Spirit]. At least, she is calling people who support the President with more enthusiasm that Moore believes is warranted as unsaved pagans. Calling believers devoid of the Holy Spirit simply because they differ from you politically is unwise as a Christian sister (if she is one) and downright mean as a leader (a category she puts herself in, RE Tweet #2]. And the reason all this is happening? “political gain.” (RE tweet #2.)

Who’s gaining? Who gains by being ‘Trumpites’? Is she overlooking the fact that President Trump has offered more to Christians in the political arena than any President that has come before in many years? Protecting our right to meet in worship, Pro-life champion, speaking at the March for Life, appointing conservative justices, restoring the embassy to Jerusalem, peace between Israel with other nations, and so much more? If anyone is gaining, it’s America.

And in Moore’s successive tweets, the straw man arguments come out. “We do not worship flesh and blood. We do not place our faith in mortals“. Of course we don’t. Who is doing this? Are there any examples? Is praying for, voting for, and supporting a political candidate idolizing flesh and blood? Does Moore not remember the scriptures that say pray for our leaders, obey them, and perform civic duties to the best of our ability as long as they aren’t asking us to disobey God? Where is the Bible in Moore’s tweets?

Moore’s penchant for confusing and unclear language is a terrible pattern, one that shows that she is a pot-stirrer. If she wasn’t, her stances would be clear. They would demonstrate concern for sisters of the faith. They would illuminate or edify. Her language is continually demeaning, accusatory, and incites controversy, the exact opposite of what the Bible calls female leaders to be.

The Bible calls women, especially elder women, to speak kindly and graciously. The Bible doesn’t have days where it is suddenly OK to not mince words. The Bible doesn’t have an age-expiration date when suddenly women are allowed to not “mince words”. No. Sixty-three and a half doesn’t give women the right to bellow into the public platform with slander, accusations, and rebukes.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips…(Titus 2:3a).
Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. (1 Timothy 3:11)

The word temperate in the verse above means “free from life-dominating influences.”

The life-dominating influence of Beth Moore is her abuse. Everything Moore says and does is through the lens of her abuse and not through the healing love of Jesus. She can’t see the President’s works accomplished as President for the good of the nation or the good of the Christian, because she hates his sexual braggadocio, his crude demeanor, and his alleged sexual harassment. Moore opposes Trump because she dislikes his ‘coarse demeanor’ which she claims provided a ‘national atmosphere of bullying, harassment, and demeaning of women’. Nothing else. That is the only atmosphere for Moore. Beth Moore only sees the potential for abuse, everywhere she goes and at every moment.

Isn’t the redemption of a soul supposed to alter our worldview so that when we gaze upon Jesus, who suffered more than any other human on the face of the earth, glow with gratitude that our own sins are forgiven? Moore cannot seem to get beyond the confines of her limited secular worldview that men are harassers and that sexual abuse can and does erupt at any moment. With Moore, there is no opportunity for grace to provide an atmosphere of love and transcend her pain.

Her god is her abuse. She idolizes it, pets it, nurses it, and proclaims it.

Moore wrote in October 2016 on Twitter, “I’m one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it.”

She was “stared down”? Oh, the horror.

Ladies, I know something of the real pain a sexual molester brings to a family. Of being targeted and tracked by a known rapist the police were trying to catch. Of being vulnerable to men with more than fixing my deck on their mind, or of staring at a tax preparer making off color remarks as he itemizes your deductions. I’m not unfamiliar. I am also not unfamiliar with neglect, abandonment, and food insecurity. I am sure you’re familiar with your own bundle of pain and woes. We all have them. All of us.

My past tragedies are not my idols. I do not nurse them. I do not carry them. I do not refer to them. I do not live with them. I am a new creation. I am filled with grace and the Holy Spirit. I am given the knowledge that Jesus suffered and died for me so that I CAN live a grace-filled life distinct from the worldly woes pushed on a young girl many decades ago. I have too much joy to dwell on any abuse or neglect. I have too much respect for my sisters to prance about as if I am the only one ever to have bad things happen to them.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Corinthians 5:17).

When you hang onto old wounds, they eventually grow enough to take over your mind. They’re weeds of fear. They choke you. (the worry of the world… choke the word… Matthew 13:22). The anxiety associated with your pain will overtake the freedom Christ brings, and soon, you will get bogged into a downward cycle and begin to see everything through the lens of that pain- and that lens only.

Seeing through the lens of the Bible, through Christ, is liberating because it’s infinite. It’s expansive. It’s fresh and clear, and righteous. Whatever your life-pain, sister, whether emotional, physical, spiritual, you’re not alone. I urge you though, to cast your cares upon Jesus because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).

Beth Moore does not speak for us. Beth Moore is no example to us. Beth Moore dwells on her pain, thus her lens shrinks daily. But the infiniteness of His holiness, love, and righteousness expands our horizons and gives proper place to our pain. It is in the past, it is part of us but will be erased on the Day, with memory of it no more. Meanwhile let it trouble you not, looking up to Him who surely suffered more than us, and who lifts us out of our morass of sinful reactions to life on this earth, we look for the Glorious Hope. Let us speak of Him.