Naghmeh Abedini files for legal separation

How do you know Saeed is painting a dishonest picture of their relationship to the world? You have talked to Naghmeh, at least you have claimed to. Have you talked to Saeed? Do you have a magic truth detector that no one else has?

Based on his public Facebook note.

And how do you know Saeed is intransigent and not repenting?

Someone who is interested in saving their marriage and is repentant is not going to put their wife under the bus publicly. He paints a story that she’s not interested in counseling when in fact, she is receiving counseling. (Again, it’s on his public Facebook page.)

Naghmeh threw Saeed under the bus publicly, too. Did she not? She could have said nothing publicly rather than mention the abuse and claims of porn addiction.

The only reason you see Saeed as dishonest is because you have CHOSEN to believe Naghmeh over Saeed. IN FACT YOU DON’T KNOW WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH AT ALL about current abuse in their marraige. That is my point. I don’t know either.

Also, while Naghmeh may be receiving counseling by herself, she is not with him. So, Saeed is not lying or being dishonest.

Mark said: “Naghmeh threw Saeed under the bus publicly, too. Did she not? She could have said nothing publicly rather than mention the abuse and claims of porn addiction.”

No, Mark, someone leaked the information to Christianity Today and she was forced to acknowledge the validity of it.

Mark said: “Also, while Naghmeh may be receiving counseling by herself, she is not with him. So, Saeed is not lying or being dishonest.”

Here is what Saaed said. If you cannot read the dishonesty in this, I’m not going to waste any more of our time.

I am grateful for marriage counselors who have been helping me but my wife’s relationship with me is not good at this point, so we need prayer that she joins this counseling process with us. ~Saeed’s FB page

Note “join the counseling process with us”. “us” is plural. That means she can’t be in Idaho and he in NC.

There is simply nothing dishonest in his statement.

Do you disagree with his statement that “my wife’s relationship with me is not good at this point”?

How did CT get that information to leak? Did she put it on a facebook page? Then she opened it up to the whole world…

If you can’t read that honestly then perhaps YOU are being biased.

How did CT get that information to leak? Did she put it on a facebook page? Then she opened it up to the whole world…

She sent the information to a private e-mail group and someone broke confidence and leaked it.

Note “join the counseling process with us”. “us” is plural. That means she can’t be in Idaho and he in NC.

There is simply nothing dishonest in his statement.

He’s not in NC. They are both in Idaho. So he is indeed painting a picture that she is not interested in marital counseling. And that part is true - she’s not interested in marital counseling. She knows that it’s inappropriate for her to seek marital counseling without him receiving individual counseling and working on his abuse issues first. And as we already discussed, she is also seeking individual counseling.

Have you talked to Saeed?

I think maybe the most perplexing thing about this is that some seem to think an abused wife owes some kind of loyalty to her abuser to protect his image and keep things quiet. What a load of nonsense that is. First of all, an abused wife owes not a thing to an abuser because an abuser/victim relationship is not a partnership; it is a war. Secondly, keeping things quiet is enabling behavior. It is the opposite of what should happen.

Granted, the exposer of an abuser does not always need to be public. It is public in this case because he is a public figure.

At this point, I think it would be good to revisit the link that D Myers gave us a bit back. The domestic case occurred when Mr. Abedini said something to his family about his wife that Mrs. Abedini did not like—I’ve not looked at the court records to see what it was—and closing the computer led to a physical altercation.

Going way out on a limb here, I’m going to suggest that their relationship has been difficult for a while.

Now, regarding the allegation that Mrs. Abedini is doing these things in public, it strikes me that as soon as she stopped public advocacy, the cat would have been out of the bag, no? So let’s not be too hard on the leakers—it’s not like this was going to be quiet. What went on was something I’ve seen up close; an abused woman finally decided that she couldn’t keep up the facade. Since her husband’s plight in Iran was public, this was going to be public as well.

Which means that the comment I made before about Iranian culture, along with a disfunctional church discipline/ordination mechanism, wasn’t the whole story. The long and short of it, though, is that she didn’t throw her husband under the bus by going public. It was going to be public to a degree to begin with.

And another thing that I’ve been meaning to re-emphasize is that this is another point where churches have got to get their act together on church discipline and ordination. Even if I put the best possible spin on this, Mr. Abedini abjectly fails several of the qualifications for the pastorate. As fundamentalists, do we care about this, or do we not? Are we listening to Paul (and Christ and the Holy Spirit), or are we blowing him (and Them) off?

is that people would let the Abedini’s heal or divide in private, without people blaming this all in Saeed, or on Naghmeh for that matter. In fact we know very little details, and it is not in our ability to make claims like Saeed is unrepentant for example.

It seems that certain people are determined to make this incident a symbol against spousal abuse in the church.

The trouble is that (a) you can’t control the activists, and (b) the participants in this matter are both public figures, and moreover some of their interactions are a matter of public record. And the ugly reality is as well that as long as (c) Calvary Chapel and a missions group dropped the ball on ordination qualifications and church discipline, it also becomes a picture of how churches aren’t exactly covering themselves with glory in how they deal with these realities. When obvious disqualifying factors aren’t heeded, church boards are basically writing the press releases for the activists.

Saeed is learning another rule. Never plead guilty to a charge that you don’t think you committed just to make it go away or to try to look repentant, etc. It will come back to haunt you, as Saeed is learning.

[Mark_Smith]

Saeed is learning another rule. Never plead guilty to a charge that you don’t think you committed just to make it go away or to try to look repentant, etc. It will come back to haunt you, as Saeed is learning.

That’s only possible if indeed he’s innocent, which is somewhat hard to argue when you’ve got reams of evidence entered into court records under penalty of perjury, no?

And as I’ve noted before, there is no possible interpretation of events where he should be a pastor. Either he is guilty as charged, and should not be a pastor because of brutality to his wife and use of pornography (etc..), or some or all of the charges are not true, and he should not be a pastor because his wife is slandering him, and that violates 1 Timothy 3’s requirement that a man must manage his own home well. Either way, he, along with the pastors of Calvary Chapel and the missions agency that ordained him, need to come clean on this.

In fact we know very little details, and it is not in our ability to make claims like Saeed is unrepentant for example.

What does repentance look like? It hopes for the best. It protects at all costs. It shows humility, kindness. Saeed’s public notice was none of these. The message was cloaked in words that said “love” but did not exemplify a repentant and loving heart. No repentant man is going to throw his wife under the bus publicly. He will take the hit personally and put the blame on himself by saying like, “pray for me so that I can be a better husband.” We saw nothing from him about needing to change, needing to improve, or having done anything wrong, for that matter.