In 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul writes:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Thigpen stated, “Rejoice not in iniquity or wrongdoing (or help it to prosper), but rejoice in the truth.”
“The truth is,” she continued, “that fear-based protections of a man-based institution is not true faith in Jesus based and rooted in living and rejoicing in truth.”
Thigpen pleaded with SBC messengers to hold SBC leadership accountable when leaders do not act as the messengers have willed:
Allowing your leadership to decide when and if the institution lives in truth and wants to uncover and expose darkness in order to root it out is allowing them to be partners in darkness while claiming to hold onto the light of truth. Exposing and rejecting darkness would be the truest example of Jesus being the center and of being his disciples. Looking away, protecting the base, fear of the laws of the land, avoiding the law, looking away from the people on the side of the road, shaming us—these are acts against the God who sees.
Giving a stark warning, Thigpen added, “God sees, so vote and act as if he sees and knows.”
“Hold those accountable who have violently sinned against us both by abuse and by its cover-up or by thwarting any accountability,” Thigpen said.
The Apostle Paul tells Christians to abide in “faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love,” Thigpen said, before stressing, “The greatest of these is LOVE.”
Encouraging messengers to show love through their actions, Thigpen said, “Please don’t allow us to walk away from all of the work to help you see and trample us again.”
“We have been giving you the gift of charity, of truth telling, in order that you may join in protecting the vulnerable among us,” she said. “It has come at great cost to each of us to remain in this space. Please open the cage door and let us carry on knowing others will be safer. Jesus came so that we might be free.”
Thigpen concluded her statement by saying, “Act justly, walk humbly, love mercy, and let that become the news headlines for abuse reform of the SBC.”
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