A 2008 Message from Paige Patterson on Handling Attacks

In an interview with SBC Today in February 2008, just prior to the FBC Jax Pastor's Conference, Paige Patterson was asked by Tim Rogers of SBC Today the following question:

"How do we control ourselves when we as pastors come under attack, and we take attacks alot like you have, not on the level that you have, but how do we control ourselves when we're under attack like that, what suggestions do you have for us?"

I think Patterson's response is worth considering by all Christians who claim to be attacked and might seek justice, and might have particular relevance to Jerry Sutton's recent lawsuit against his critic. I don't know if Patterson has lived up to his own statements below or not, but his advice is worth considering.

I'm putting it here after nearly 2 years since the interview, as it was provided in audio-only format at SBC Today, and probably not many people have heard it. The context of the interview was at the time the Sheri Klouda lawsuit was before the court but not yet decided on summary judgment. He also was receiving heat at the time because Darrell Gilyard has just gotten busted a few months earlier, so Patterson was being roundly criticized for not doing more to keep Gilyard out of the pulpit after complaints about Gilyard's sexual appetite were brought to Patterson as president of Criswell College.

So here is Patterson's response to Rogers' question (emphases are obviously mine):

"Well, that's an excellent question. I'm not certain that I'm much of a paradigm to look at on it, because, I do have some difficulty with it. As I often say I'm half Irish and half Texan - its a bad genetic combination. What is easy for you to handle is with regard to what comes toward you personally; when your family is hurt and so forth, it becomes very difficult.

I would say that one of the most important things that a person has to do is to keep in mind the bigger picture, and the bigger picture goes something like this: first and foremost do you believe that God is really just? Do you believe that He is really merciful? Do you really believe he is omnipotent, that he can really handle the situation? Is he really omniscient, does he know what is going on? If you really believe that, then you really only have one big challenge, and that is to be sure you please God. What else happens to you, God can stop it anytime he wants to.

If its unjust, then at some point God rights every wrong. You HAVE to believe that, if you don't believe that, then you go mad, you get angry and you get bitter, and when a root of bitterness is found in your heart its not long before it contaminates you and everybody around you, as the Bible warns.

As a second feature, that helps me in it, that is that I'm an old man now and I have to face the fact that what happens to me from now on is relatively unimportant. Its the next generation and the next and the next that are coming along behind. And so with no attempt to be particularly noble about it at all, its much more important for me to take whatever folks want to dish out to me than it is for a younger man, and anybody else that has to take it. I have to learn to thank God because if those energies are expended on me somebody else is being spared and I'm thankful for that.

And there's a third thing too, and that is I believe that God uses all such attacks that come to take off rough edges on us. There's some very clear mandates from scripture about loving your enemy, returning good for evil, praying for those that spitefully use you; not a one of those are you able to do under sunny-side-up conditions. Not one of those commands of Christ can be done unless you have an enemy, unless he is misrepresenting you, unless he is attacking you in some way.

And so I have to reach the point where I say 'OK Lord, you're Lord, you can do whatever you want to about this.' My responsibility is to be sure that I respond to you properly in this situation. But if I can keep my mind and thought on that rather than on whether I like or dislike the people that are making the attack it helps me a great deal.

But in the end, I come back to say, it's your doctrine of the providence of God, whether or not that's a theory, or whether or not its a fact in your life, that is determinitive."

Great advice for the most part. Whether he and his "sons in the ministry" (as he calls them) follow this advice is something else. His comment on taking what people dish out so that younger pastors don't have to makes no sense. Seems like a clever attempt to dismiss Christians like Klouda, Burleson, Cole, Brown, and Croft and others who have raised legitimate issues in the public arena concerning Patterson. Patterson wasn't taking someone's else's arrows when he was the subject of the Klouda lawsuit - HE was the seminary president that had fired Sheri Klouda for being a woman teaching men. HE was the mentor of Darrell Gilyard and the president of Criswell College when Darrell was accused of being a sexual predator and worse...so the criticism came and rightly so. He wasn't taking someone else's arrows, he spared no one else attacks by enduring his.

But his other comments are valid and worth considering. Patterson asks if the doctrine of the providence of God just a theory to these pastors who have studied it and preached it to their congregations, or is it an actual fact and verifiable truth lived out in their lives? In other words, perhaps a critic is placed in someone's life by God to help them see something that needs correcting and to give them an opportunity to show the world how to love someone even when they despise you.

Or does the providence of God sometimes include lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and other legal maneuvers against critics?