Heart Breaking Reflections of a Friend
Commentary on the Epstein Files I'm guessing, very reflective, saving here for future review, deep and heart breaking
Johanna Freer -
8h
https://www.facebook.com/rosie.pott/posts/pfbid032o88JZ4ydvcmHfssuGGnYTszBgyRA3ybLNJTY2HQ7kkpPDGkM941ygncs5R3zgzl?__cft__[0]=AZbw818eaPzz8fNIfsSvO16_hUzTiXSsi7LqmPFECCbBEEJjr_dEk9FMM7mUP8yhdAypFKwWEhMIG8Gxq0G9GcXUByHgPwbpsRd4zmdRb7TPMMQSihSrgaPWL__GZuZaolz2-ziRf2mqMox9Oij78dYExWsAI-uINXVpkby9WrgS4A&__tn__=-UK-R!%3Av-R
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I try to stay in the place of neutrality with intention to hear both sides. Sometimes neutrality wont cut it. I Read this today, and was deeply convicted. This is an American speaking, being Canadian doesn't change the essence of what has been written.
I didn't repost directly from the person, because its not something that anyone should get more likes or make money from.
What is our world coming to?
Something is being asked of the Church right now that we don't have a category for. I want to try to name it.
Most people haven't read the files. We have opinions about things we haven't seen with our own eyes. Most people won't read them. The documents are massive, the details are nauseating, and honestly, your brain—quite mercifully—would rather not go there.
So I went there for you. Not to report what I found—some things aren't mine to name, and some things aren't appropriate to share—but to sit with it long enough to ask what it requires of us.
I've read hundreds of pages, watched more interviews than I can count, and sat with this for a long time before writing a single word. The emotionally charged nature of it all makes it dangerously easy to say something reckless. But I've also learned that silence, when children are the victims, is its own kind of recklessness.
So here's what I need to say, and I need you to stay with me.
This is not a partisan issue. There are perpetrators on both sides of the aisle, among the politically powerful and the culturally elite, people whose names have been defended by some and demonized by others. The exploitation didn't follow party lines. The cover-ups didn't either. And if we're honest—painfully, gut-wrenchingly honest—the reason this network flourished for as long as it did is because powerful people on *every* side had something to lose by exposing it.
And that should shake us to our core. Not because of what it reveals about them, but because of what it reveals about us.
Here's the thing nobody wants to talk about:
We have built an American Christianity that is exquisitely skilled at straining gnats and swallowing camels. Jesus said that. Not me. He looked at the most religiously committed people of His day and said, "You hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matthew 23:23, NIV).
We will go to war over worship styles and Bible translations. We will split churches over carpet colors and song selection. But when it comes to the systematic exploitation of children by the most powerful people in our society?
Crickets.
Or worse: an algorithm-curated silence that lets us pretend we never saw it.
These were children. Some of them younger than your kids, your grandkids, your students. They had names before they became files. And the gospel that announces Jesus as King is the same gospel that declares their lives sacred, their suffering seen, and their abusers accountable before a throne that no election can touch.
And I get it. I understand why we go quiet. Because this isn't just overwhelming. It's disorienting. When the faces attached to these crimes include people we voted for, donated to, watched on television, or held up as examples of success, something inside of us breaks. We don't just lose trust in a person. We lose trust in our own judgment. And rather than sit in that grief, we do what empire has always trained us to do.
We pick a side. We point fingers. And we move on.
The sheer volume of names, the widespread nature of the corruption, the wealth and influence involved… it's designed to overwhelm you into inaction. Your brain will crash before it can even begin to name what you're feeling. And in that numbness, the Overton window closes in. Your feed refreshes. A new outrage cycle begins. And the victims? They disappear again.
But the gospel won't let us look away.
There's a moment in Matthew 20 that has haunted me throughout this whole ordeal. The mother of James and John approaches Jesus and asks Him to seat her sons at His right and left hand when His Kingdom comes. It's a power grab. A request for proximity, influence, status.
Jesus looks at them and says something devastating: "You don't know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?" (Matthew 20:22, NIV).
The cup. In Scripture, the cup is never filled with applause. It's filled with suffering, with grief, with the weight of a broken world pressing down on you until you think you'll collapse beneath it. And Jesus is asking: “Can you hold this?”
These files are a cup. Not the cup of salvation. A cup of reckoning. And I believe Jesus is pressing it into the hands of His Church right now, asking us the same question He asked James and John.
Can you drink this?
Can you look at the names without rushing to defend your guy? Can you grieve for victims you've never met and never will? Can you resist the urge to turn this into ammunition for your political tribe? Can you hold the horrifying tension that people you trusted—people on *your* side—may have participated in unspeakable evil? That they have forfeited any right to power, platform, or public trust?
Can you sit in that without running away?
Because here's the part of the story we always forget. James and John said yes. "We can," they told Him. They had no idea what they were agreeing to. But they said yes.
And later, Matthew reveals who actually ends up at Jesus' right and left. Not kings. Not cabinet members. Not political allies. "Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left" (Matthew 27:38, NIV).
The seats of honor in the Kingdom weren't thrones. They were crosses.
This post is not about the files. Not really.
The files are a symptom. They are the inevitable fruit of a world that runs on power, secrecy, and self-preservation. Empire always produces this. Always. It concentrates power at the top, shields the powerful from accountability, and sacrifices the vulnerable to protect the machine. There is no number of bodies too great that empire won't bury to protect itself.
And the Church is supposed to be the alternative.
We are supposed to be the people who protect the powerless, who refuse to look away, who speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy" (Proverbs 31:8–9, NIV).
But somewhere along the way, we traded our prophetic voice for a seat at the empire's table. We fused the cross with the flag so seamlessly that we can no longer tell where our faith ends and our politics begin. And when the empire's sins are exposed, we don't know how to respond because we've been chaplains to the very system that enabled the harm.
This is not a Left or Right problem. This is an allegiance problem.
When most of us say "justice," we mean vengeance. We mean we want them to suffer the way they made others suffer. And I won't pretend there's no part of me that understands that impulse. But the Kingdom doesn't offer us vengeance and call it justice. It offers us something harder and, I think, more devastating to the powerful: accountability that cannot be bought, appealed, or escaped. Not retribution. A reckoning that no news cycle can close.
"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8, NIV).
You cannot pledge allegiance to a political party and claim undivided loyalty to King Jesus. The moment your loyalty to a party makes you hesitate to condemn the exploitation of children at the hands of your tribe, your allegiance has been hijacked. And the gospel demands you get it back.
What does it look like to demand that accountability without becoming the thing we're angry at?
Rulers come and go. Parties rise and fall. Empires crumble. But Jesus reigns. Not by vote, not by force, not by cultural influence, but by virtue of who He is: the crucified and risen King who conquered death not with weapons, but with wounds.
His Kingdom doesn't start in Congress. It doesn't start with an election. It doesn't start with outrage or advocacy or even justice.
It starts at the cross.
Where power is surrendered, where the condemned are embraced, and where the empire's logic is finally, permanently shattered.
You don't have to fix this.
You have to refuse to look away.
In a world drunk on power, that refusal might be the most dangerous thing you'll ever do.
