Part 4 — The Language of Exoneration
The rain outside The Shepherds Cafe had turned to a thin, steady mist, like the sky had chosen patience instead of thunder. Inside, the pendant lights warmed the wood tables and made the windows glow softly. The espresso machine hissed, the grinder chirped, and the café held its quiet rhythm—like it was built for conversations that needed truth and tenderness at the same time.
Barbara arrived early and picked the long table near the window.
She didn’t bring a stack of articles this time. She brought a few notecards, pens, and her Bible.
At the center of the table she placed a single card with four words written in plain handwriting:
WORDS DISCIPLE PEOPLE.
Elijah and Jeremiah sat at their usual spot across the room. Not hovering. Not intruding. Just ready.
Jeremiah watched Barbara set the pens down. “She’s going to teach like a surgeon today.”
Elijah nodded. “And she’s going to do it without cutting the wrong place.”
The bell chimed.
Four young women came in over the next few minutes. Some were friends, some clearly weren’t. One kept checking her phone. Another looked like she hadn’t slept well. One had the confident face of someone who’d watched a hundred videos explaining why she didn’t owe anyone anything.
Barbara stood and greeted them with a warm smile that didn’t apologize for being serious.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “This isn’t an attack on anyone who needs help. It’s a warning about a replacement gospel. And I’m going to teach it by questions, because I want you to see it—not just hear me say it.”
They sat.
Barbara didn’t open with a sermon. She slid a notecard to each of them.
“First question,” she said. “When you’re upset, what phrases do you reach for now—phrases that weren’t part of your life five years ago?”
Kayla answered first, quiet. “Triggered. Dysregulated. Protecting my peace.”
Mia—the confident one—added quickly. “Unsafe. Boundaries. Toxic.”
Barbara nodded, like a teacher collecting data.
“Good,” she said. “Now—second question. When you use those words, what do you want them to do for you?”
Silence. A few blinks.
Barbara leaned in slightly. “Do you want them to describe your experience… or do you want them to end the conversation?”
Mia’s lips tightened. “Sometimes both.”
Barbara nodded once. “Honest. Thank you.”
She tapped the card in the center of the table.
WORDS DISCIPLE PEOPLE.
“Third question,” Barbara said. “How do you define these phrases—without using the phrase itself?”
She pointed to Kayla.
“Kayla. ‘I’m triggered.’ Define it.”
Kayla hesitated. “It means… something hit me wrong and I react.”
Barbara nodded. “And what’s the implication?”
Kayla swallowed. “That I’m… not responsible for what happens next.”
Barbara didn’t pounce. She didn’t shame. She simply held the line.
“That,” Barbara said softly, “is where the Therapeutic Gospel starts.”
A couple of heads lifted. This was the center of what they’d come for.
Barbara turned the notecard over and wrote a sentence while they watched:
Explains my struggle → excuses my sin
She underlined it once.
“Fourth question,” Barbara said. “What is repentance?”
Hannah, the tired-eyed one, answered carefully. “Turning around. Changing.”
Barbara nodded. “Good. Now tell me this: in the Therapeutic Gospel—what replaces repentance?”
Mia shrugged. “Healing.”
Barbara nodded again, but her voice stayed firm.
“Not healing as Scripture defines it,” she said. “Healing as permanent exemption. As if the goal is not holiness, but comfort. Not transformation, but insulation.”
She paused and let the café noise fill the space for a moment.
“Now,” Barbara continued, “fifth question—this is the key:
If you get a diagnosis, do you become less accountable… or more intentional?”
Mia answered immediately. “Less accountable. Because you can’t help it.”
Barbara held her gaze, not angry, just clear.
“That,” Barbara said, “is the counterfeit creed right there.”
She opened her Bible slowly—not for drama, but for weight.
“Scripture makes room for weakness,” Barbara said. “But it never turns weakness into a throne.”
Jeremiah, from across the room, rose and walked over with Elijah—not to take over, but to signal support.
Jeremiah sat beside Barbara like a steady wall.
Elijah placed his notebook on the table and let the women see he was listening, not prosecuting.
Barbara pointed at the women’s notecards again.
“Now we get practical,” she said. “I’m going to say a phrase. You tell me whether it leads toward humility and growth… or toward exemption and lawlessness.”
She pointed to the first phrase.
“‘That’s not safe.’”
Kayla answered: “It means I don’t want to be judged.”
Barbara nodded. “Now define ‘judged.’ Do you mean condemned cruelly? Or do you mean discerned honestly?”
The table went still.
Barbara let them feel the difference.
“Because if ‘unsafe’ means ‘don’t correct me,’” she said, “then you’ve built a world where nobody can love you enough to tell you the truth.”
Elijah spoke quietly, with the steady tone of an elder who has had too many hard conversations to waste words.
“‘Be doers of the word, and not hearers only,’” he said. “If we can’t be corrected, we can’t be discipled.” (James 1:22)
Barbara nodded, then lifted another phrase.
“‘I’m protecting my peace.’”
Mia said, “That means I’m avoiding stress.”
Barbara replied, “Or avoiding sanctification.”
She didn’t say it sharply. She said it like a diagnosis of its own—accurate and uncomfortable.
“Biblical peace isn’t avoidance,” Barbara said. “It’s obedience. Sometimes the most peaceful thing you can do is repent.”
Hannah’s eyes moved down to her card as if she knew she’d used the phrase to dodge hard accountability.
Barbara took a breath. “Now I’m going to show you what this looks like when it grows up—when it becomes public culture.”
Minnesota Example 1: “Trauma Language” Becomes a Moral Weapon
Barbara slid a single printed page forward—simple, not sensational.
“Minneapolis has been in the national news for weeks,” she said. “Two civilians were killed in shootings involving federal immigration officers, and it triggered a wave of protests, walkouts, and nationwide demonstrations.” (Reuters)
The women nodded. They’d seen the clips, the headlines, the commentary.
Barbara held up her hand gently.
“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “I’m not here to litigate immigration policy at this table. I’m here to show you how language shapes righteousness.”
She tapped the paper again.
“In the coverage and in activist responses, you see a pattern where labeling becomes the engine—people are called ‘kidnappers’ and ‘terrorists’ on posters, identities are exposed, and online crowds amplify it as moral duty.” (The Guardian)
Barbara looked directly at Mia and Kayla.
“And what’s the emotional forcing function?” she asked. “It’s the language of trauma and harm being used as a replacement for sober judgment—so anything done in the name of ‘safety’ becomes justified.”
Jeremiah’s voice stayed calm, but his words carried weight.
“When a crowd decides feelings are the highest court,” he said, “you don’t get justice—you get escalation.”
Barbara nodded. “Exactly. And Scripture warns us about that.”
She turned one page in her Bible.
“‘There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death,’” she said. “When we make emotion the judge, we excuse what God condemns.” (Proverbs 14:12)
Minnesota Example 3: Diagnosis as the New Absolution
Barbara shifted to the second lane, and the room tightened—not with fear, but with attention.
“Now,” she said, “let’s talk about diagnosis.”
She lifted another sheet.
“There are Minnesota cases where serious violence intersects with competency findings or mental illness defenses—some defendants have been found incompetent to stand trial, which shifts the case into a different legal track.” (Star Tribune)
She held the page up, then lowered it.
“And there are cases right now where a defendant has invoked a mental illness defense and the court process will determine criminal responsibility.” (People.com)
Barbara’s tone stayed careful.
“I’m not mocking mental illness,” she said. “The law recognizes narrow categories because sometimes the mind is profoundly impaired. But what I’m warning you about is cultural misuse—people using diagnosis language like a spiritual shield: ‘I can’t help it, so don’t correct me. I can’t help it, so don’t expect repentance.’”
She looked around the table.
“That is the Therapeutic Gospel in its pure form,” she said. “And it produces a person who is permanently excused and permanently unchanged.”
Elijah nodded. “And Scripture does not promise us exemption from obedience.”
Barbara pointed at the notecards again.
“Here’s the biblical category you cannot lose,” she said. “Responsibility.”
She read slowly:
“‘God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and discipline.’” (2 Timothy 1:7)
Then she leaned in and made it plain.
“A diagnosis may explain a struggle,” Barbara said, “but it cannot cancel God’s call to growth, self-control, and obedience. If anything, it should make you more vigilant—more accountable—not less.”
Where This Leads
Barbara let the room breathe for a moment, then asked her final question:
“Ladies—if a whole generation is trained to believe ‘I’m not accountable because I feel strongly,’ what happens to law, order, justice, marriage, parenting, and the church?”
No one answered quickly.
Hannah finally whispered, “Everything becomes unstable.”
Barbara nodded. “Yes. Because when repentance disappears, relationships become hostage situations. The church becomes a support group instead of a holy people.”
Jeremiah’s voice came low and steady.
“And without holiness,” he said, “you don’t get God—you just get religious noise.” (Hebrews 12:14)
Barbara slid one last notecard to each woman.
On it she had written two words:
TOOL / THRONE
“Therapy can be a tool,” she said. “But it cannot be a throne.
A diagnosis can be information. It cannot be absolution.
And your feelings can be real. They cannot be your authority.”
She softened at the end.
“We’re going to keep meeting,” Barbara said. “And next week, we’re going to practice translating phrases. Not to embarrass you—to free you.”
Kayla’s voice cracked slightly. “I don’t want to hide behind words anymore.”
Barbara reached across the table and covered Kayla’s hand briefly—motherly, steady.
“Good,” she said. “Because Jesus didn’t die so we could be labeled. He died so we could be changed.”
They ended in prayer—real prayer, not affirmations dressed up as prayer.
And when they lifted their heads, the café looked the same.
But the women didn’t.
They looked like people who had just discovered that language can be a leash—and Scripture can cut it.
End of Part 4