As something of a spoof, Harper’s magazine recently commissioned seven advertising agencies to develop full-page ads promoting each of the Seven Deadly Sins. The agencies’ efforts included, for instance, “The world’s foremost authority speaking out on the subject of greed.” Santa Claus is pictured in a business suit defending avarice (and Christmas wish lists) by saying, “Greed has always motivated men and women . . . to make better mousetraps . . . to create greater art . . . to find cures for diseases and pathways to the moon.”
Another ad proclaims: “Any sin that’s enabled us to survive centuries of war, death, pestilence, and famine can’t be called deadly.” Underneath is a 1930s-ish photo of an amorous couple. The caption: “LUST: Where Would We Be Without It?”
The series satirizes today’s ambivalent filings about sin. How easy it is to come up with good reasons for bad behavior! And sexual temptation, in particular, offers great potential for rationalization and self-deception.
What guises do sexual temptations take for pastors? How can they be dealt with? To address these questions, LEADERSHIP gathered four individuals with significant experience in ministry and in counseling pastors:
-Burdette (Bud) Palmberg, for twenty years the pastor of Mercer Island Covenant Church near Seattle, Washington.
-Arch Hart, dean of the school of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
-Louis McBurney, a psychiatrist and the founder of Marble Retreat, a counseling center for clergy, located on the mountain above Redstone, Colorado.
-David Seamands, a former missionary and pastor, and currently professor of pastoral ministry at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.
Leadership: These days, when terms like My Sin and Taboo are used to sell perfume, is temptation something to take seriously?
David Seamands: I’m intrigued by the words of Jesus: “Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation.” He doesn’t say, “lest you enter into sin.” That’s always fascinated me. I suspect he chose his words carefully because he knew that some temptations, including sexual attraction, are so powerful that after a certain point, the will gives in to the urge.
We’re to watch and pray lest we allow the toboggan to get too close to the edge of the hill, because once it starts down, it’s almost impossible to stop.
Sexual temptation is so volatile that once it’s indulged, self-control is very difficult. Jesus says to watch and pray so as not to enter that type of temptation, for “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Arch Hart: It’s absolutely critical that we assume we all can fall. That’s the starting place-“take heed lest ye fall.” If anyone thinks he’s strong here, I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near a church.
I tell my students every man has his price, every woman her price. We need an attitude of humility in recognizing the force we’re dealing with. Out there somewhere is a person who matches that price with the right personality, the right attractiveness, the right characteristics so that, given the right circumstances, each of us is capable of succumbing. None of us is beyond the reach of temptation.
Seamands: Sexual temptation is no respecter of persons, no respecter of theological labels, no respecter of leadership positions.
Leadership: What are some of the factors today that make sexual temptation so strong?
Louis McBurney: One factor is that today’s climate condones more aggressive sexual behavior. In some cases, women aggressively pursue the minister.
I recall one pastor who was in his own home, and a woman in the congregation came by to visit. The pastor’s wife had to leave for a meeting at church.
The parishioner excused herself to go upstairs to the bathroom, and in a few minutes she called to the pastor. He went up, and she was in his bedroom, on the bed, in a negligee she had brought with her for the purpose. The attempted seduction was obviously premeditated.
They had a counselor-counselee relationship that had been growing. But still, that’s pretty assertive.
Bud Palmberg: Another factor today is the media’s emphasis on “good sex,” which has greatly heightened expectations. For some individuals, this “Hollywood” comparison seems to cast their relationship with their spouse in a bad light, and they feel dissatisfied.
It also allows freer expression. In counseling, increasingly I hear people talk candidly-sometimes graphically or even vulgarly-concerning unfulfilled sexual expectations. Those experiencing continual sexual frustration or enduring involuntary celibacy because of a spouse who is no longer sexually active often become very aggressive in crying out, “I have needs, and I have a right to have these needs met.”
Yes, these desires are created by God. They’re not distorted in any way; they’re just unmet. They’re legitimate longings, but unfulfilled. And often these people come to pastors for help because we’re “the spiritual counselor”-we speak for God.
Leadership: What are the particular temptations here for pastors?
Palmberg: I know a few pastors who have-this sounds so twisted-“for the sake of this poor woman, sought to meet her needs.” They got sexually involved. As you said, David, when the toboggan starts down the hill, rational processes get left behind. But the person believes the rationalization-absolutely believes it.
Then there are some temptations that are less dramatic but perhaps more common.
Some pastoral counselors play a power game. Talking about sexual things seems to be a legitimate form of eroticism, and so they can enjoy the subject matter but from a “safe distance.” But in a sense, they’re playing games with sexuality.
Leadership: Sort of conversational pornography.
Palmberg: That’s right. The dialogue is erotic, but they legitimize it.
In Seattle, we have a skid row ministry, and a number of clergy participate. We patrol the streets, and we’re exposed to the grosser side of sexuality so common to urban areas. Once in a while we have problems with ministers who find “legitimate” reasons to be in a porno parlor or a nude dancing establishment: They’re “having a ministry there.” Usually they’re kidding themselves.
Hart: Talking about sexual needs often provides both pastors and parishioners a guilt-free trip. A pastor can get involved and not feel guilty, rationalizing, Well, I’m helping this person. And the counselee is getting a guilt-free trip, too, because “the pastor is encouraging me to talk about these things.” Counselees trust pastors and counselors to set the limits of the conversation.
Leadership: You raise an interesting point. The pastor’s office would seem to be one place where it’s okay to talk about sex. If not there, where? But you’re saying it may be inappropriate to encourage people to talk in explicit terms about sexual behavior.
Hart: I believe it’s inappropriate unless you’ve had adequate training not only in sex therapy but also in the complex counselor-counselee relationship.
Many pastors haven’t been trained to understand how often a parishioner can be attracted to the role of pastor-the power, the holiness it represents. There’s often tremendous idealization, which affects everything, including sexual attitudes. “If the pastor allows it, it must be okay.”
Unless I understand how to differentiate my role from my personality, I can get trapped. For example, a woman can fall in love with the pastor’s role, and it has nothing to do with his personality. He can be an unattractive person physically, and yet a counselee may be deeply drawn because of the role he represents.
If you don’t make those strict differentiations, if your ego gets sucked into the process and you begin to enjoy the sense of being attractive, you can get in trouble. If a pastor begins taking advantage of the situation, many times it ends up backfiring. The moment he steps out of his role and his behavior deviates too much from the expected ideal, the ax falls. That’s often when the counselee is going to tell her husband or the congregation.
Leadership: The reason such persons pursue a pastor is because they see pastors as safe?
Hart: Idealized and safe. The moment you are no longer safe, they get scared and run. This happens again and again.
Palmberg: Some initially may be drawn to the pastor as somebody safe, but I occasionally see others who see the pastor as a target. It’s the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the catch-“I brought this guy down” or “Look at all he has risked, or all he has trashed, to have me!”
McBurney: Often these kinds of women are playing out unresolved hostile feelings toward men, or toward Daddy originally. Their interest in sex is acting out their sickness in relationships rather than a real sexual attraction. And that’s what an untrained counselor doesn’t realize.
Seamands: Another factor is often “father loss.” It’s hostility, but it’s a love/hate relationship. They’re angry, but they desperately need a man’s acceptance.
It’s linked with today’s brokenness, emptiness. So many women simply reach out for a man they can trust and love and respect. This happens where there’s father loss through divorce, through death, or through a distant, unaffectionate father. Sometimes it involves incest.
Pastors often become surrogate fathers. In some cases I deal with, part of the healing process is the fact that I represent the first man this woman could ever trust. As I get older, more and more of my ministry is “reparenting.” Both Helen and I find we’re simply doing for people what a father and mother should have done for them years ago. It’s part of living in a broken world.
But this ministry is dangerous! It’s particularly dangerous with me because of my own personality. A young woman pours out her soul. Then I notice she’s dropping hints: “You know, I’m having feelings about you that I shouldn’t have.”
I usually say something like, “I understand that. We’re going to keep that very close to God. We’re not going to allow any of those feelings to develop. I understand your feelings. You are just experiencing what you should have experienced as a teenager.” I make it very clinical and bring it right into the open. That’s for my own protection as much as theirs.
I have to be instantly obedient to the Holy Spirit’s voice-when the warning signal goes up. Then right away while I’m talking to her, inwardly I’m praying, Pour on the Lysol, Lord. Keep this thing real clean. Keep it where it ought to be.
Leadership: Are sexual temptations immediately recognizable? Or do they sometimes sneak up on you?
McBurney: Without minimizing what we’ve said about explicit sexual conversations, I believe a much larger percentage of pastoral infidelity comes as a result of a relationship that did not major on sexual aspects but simply became a closer and closer emotional tie with a greater and greater sense of support and intimacy. It began as a “spiritual” relationship, and the sexual expression developed out of that.
Palmberg: I agree. For most of us in local-church ministry, sexual temptation doesn’t come painted in the lurid tones of a vamp. It comes in the quiet, gentle relationships a pastor has with people he truly loves. He aches with their pain. They sense that empathy.
The problem comes in the gradual, imperceptible eroding of what was initially healthy. What was once good and true and right is somehow twisted ever so slightly into a distortion.
Seamands: The “other woman” is usually a Bible-reading, praying, spiritually sensitive person.
Palmberg: She’s not a person who says, “I’m going to get me a minister.” And the minister usually doesn’t say, “I’m going to get me a parishioner.”
What often happens is that a parishioner and pastor who truly love God and who truly want to help one another are perhaps unwise and don’t see the danger signals. They begin to get a little euphoric because of the great relationship they begin to sense, and they lose balance.
Seamands: One woman, who was trying to end an affair, came to me for counseling, and we decided she needed to make a total break. As I often do, I asked, “Are you willing to give up not just the relationship but also the symbols of that relationship?” I wanted her to get rid of any objects that would prevent a total break.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “There is one thing. I’ll bring it next time.” I expected her to bring a photo, a necklace, or some memento.
She brought me Oswald Chambers’s devotional book My Utmost for His Highest. I wasn’t looking for that! (Laughter)
But the affair had begun as a spiritual matter. They were prayer partners and shared devotional readings. The book was inscribed with loving words. She said, “Take it. Don’t ask any questions.”
Leadership: How do you explain that close relationship between spiritual intimacy and sexual intimacy?
Hart: William Sargant’s book Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing describes that phenomenon as a “transmarginal inhibition.” That is, when you experience a spiritual high, you’re emotionally vulnerable. You become more susceptible to manipulation and control and influence. It describes how ruthless young men would follow camp revival meetings; they knew it was easier to seduce a girl who had recently had a spiritual experience.
McBurney: Neurologically, the primitive reward centers of the brain are not differentiated. That means various stimuli produce the same neurological effect. Each of us learns to attach meaning to the sensations we feel, but as far as the high is concerned, the stimulation within the brain is not differentiated.
I’ve heard people describe, for instance, an intense spiritual experience as being much like sexual orgasm.
Leadership: How do you make sense of this theologically?
Palmberg: My understanding is this: God created the sexual act as a small representation of a complete relationship. Our sexuality is the expression of God’s intention for an entire relationship-intellectual intimacy, emotional intimacy, recreational intimacy, social intimacy, all of these things. Sex is a physical expression of a much larger reality.
When I or any pastor finds himself deeply touching the emotions of another person, an intimacy is being established; it’s a natural and God-given part of a whole relationship. And-don’t get me wrong-sex is the final part of a completely intimate relationship. In God’s design, sex is not intended to be separated from the rest of the relationship. But, obviously, not all relationships are intended to progress that far. Only one is supposed to become complete in that sense.
When we begin to develop intimacy with someone, there’s going to be a natural tendency toward a sexual expression. We’ve got to be aware of this dynamic. Any time you become emotionally involved with a person, you’re moving into the arena of sexual temptation. You’re touching one of the springs from which our sexuality comes to the surface.
Leadership: Where does this complex spiritual and sexual energy most directly affect the pastor?
Seamands: One place is in how we accept affirmation. We pastors really don’t have a way to know whether we are successes or failures. We’re trying to please a lot of people, and sometimes we don’t please any. And along comes this warm, spiritual woman who affirms, affirms, affirms.
This is what is so often confessed to me: “But she understood me. She was the only one who affirmed me.” And that affirmation can so easily lead to closeness, then affection, then sexuality.
Palmberg: Power is another point of vulnerability. Frankly, society at large views pastors as powerless. For instance, I am invited to the Kiwanis club to be the official pray-er. Then they kind of smile and say, “Nice prayer. Oh, you do a good blessing.” But if I get out of my role of pray-er, they don’t want me anymore.
Look how the media portray ministers-usually as some kind of a marginally intelligent, sexually androgynous wimp. I’m caricaturing it, but it’s the impression you get. It gives what I call a “consecrated castration complex”; you feel absolutely powerless.
Living under that projection can make you vulnerable for a sense of real power. And there are moments when you sense real power-maybe a person who’s powerful in the secular world, the president of a bank, for instance, comes to you for guidance with a family crisis. He says, “Help me. My life’s falling apart.” That’s a power trip. Or when an attractive woman shows an interest in what I have to say, sex is an expression of power.
The more powerless I feel in this world, the more I’m set up to respond to situations where I can enjoy power.
Leadership: Would you say pastors are more susceptible when they’re feeling powerless, discouraged, wondering if their ministry amounts to anything worthwhile? Or, as with Elijah, is temptation stronger after a great spiritual high, when everything is going great?
Palmberg: Both are points of temptation. For me personally, when I’m down, I’m down. But when I’m up, I feel like I could walk on water-even troubled water that anybody with brains would stay off of. You know, “I’m on a roll. I can’t be touched. I’m not gonna be brought down.”
It’s a funny thing. You can tell yourself, This is massive stupidity. All the warning signals are going off. But you’re drunk with this sense of invulnerability. And that, more often than when they’re beaten down, is when I see my brothers fall.
Seamands: Six college mates in my denomination fell morally at the height of their success. They climbed the Methodist ladder. Two were evangelists, and four were pastors. And the four pastors-in widely separate geographical locations-all had more or less gotten either the top church in the conference or very close to it. They had reached it. That was the moment when down they went. Both evangelists and three of the four pastors are now out of the ministry.
In college, we had noticed these guys had what we called, for want of a better term, “unsurrendered egos.” They were gifted people. We could tell they were going to be ladder climbers. They had goals. They lived for them. That kept them clean.
But once you reach your goals, where do you go? What do you do when you’ve reached the top? They apparently concluded there was nothing else to do, and they went wrong sexually. I’ve often wondered, however, why all six of these strong and successful ministers fell.
McBurney: I wonder if adultery wasn’t a way out for them. Perhaps on some level, they had found ministry didn’t satisfy what they were really after. When they reached the top and found it wasn’t there, they needed a way out. And it’s hard to stand before your church and say, “I don’t have any motivation to keep ministering.”
Seamands: So they self-destructed?
McBurney: Perhaps.
Seamands: A phrase from C. S. Lewis keeps running through my mind-“the sweet poison of a false infinite.” It’s a beautiful phrase. They had a false goal: If I achieve that, I’ve made it. That’s a false infinite. It’s sweet, and it gave them the strength to climb the ladder, but when they got to the top, they didn’t have the strength to stay there. They fell off. Maybe they self-destructed. But they all did it morally. They got involved with women significantly involved in the church ministry.
Leadership: So in some cases, a sexual affair is an attempt to escape the feeling of being trapped?
Hart: That fits some cases, but not all. In other cases, success brings a certain element of boredom. There seem to be few challenges left to master, no more mountains to conquer. Restlessness sets in. And you begin to look around for other forms of excitement.
But there’s often another common denominator: a general dissatisfaction with their present sexual activity. An unfulfilling sex life in your present marriage increases your vulnerability.
McBurney: The dry home life may also relate to the power issue. In my experience, the men that fall are not only feeling powerless and unaffirmed in the outside world, but they come home and are presented with a list of their failures, all the things they didn’t do.
Palmberg: Hey, a preacher stands up on Sunday morning and speaks for twenty to thirty minutes without being challenged. You can’t do that at home! (Laughter)
But if there’s a lack of nourishment at home, the inevitable temptation is to turn elsewhere.
Donna and I have worked hard to nourish one another. I’m faithful to my wife, not because I don’t have strong temptations at times, and not because I don’t have the opportunity; it’s because I can’t hurt someone I love as much as my wife, who gives herself so unreservedly lo me. She’s too valuable a gift. I won’t let go of this diamond to pick up a piece of glass.
Leadership: How common is unfaithfulness by the minister’s mate? Is that a greater or lesser problem than pastors’ adultery?
McBurney: We’ve seen very few cases, maybe 5 percent, where the minister’s spouse was unfaithful.
Palmberg: In the cases that do come to mind, it seemed to be an act of anger-a way to bring down the pastor/husband. The attitude was, I’ve been so wounded and neglected and malnourished by this guy who everybody thinks is so wonderful-he’s a first-class jerk in every way-and I’m gonna bring him down in the only way I know how.
Seamands: My observation is that these affairs usually take one of two forms: The wife opts to get clear out of the marriage and the ministry, and she just takes off, even to the extent of leaving the kids; or else she has a short-lived affair, compounded with a lot of guilt.
Cases involving the pastor’s wife are not as common, but they’re happening more than they did ten years ago. Perhaps that’s due merely to increased opportunity. It usually happens at the woman’s workplace, where she meets a man “who finds me desirable and attractive, and my husband never does.”
Palmberg: The other man usually carries with him the aura of sophistication-knowing the difference in wines, that whole mystique of being worldly wise. And she may be trying to overcome a culturally impoverished background-you know, the chipped-china mentality.
Hart: But my experience parallels Louis’s: Unfaithfulness by the pastor’s spouse is much less frequent than pastoral infidelity.
Leadership: Are passions something that happen to us, or are they the product of a conscious choice?
Hart: Erotic passion happens. But the fact that you feel arousal is irrelevant. That’s a conditioned response. It’s going to happen. When you recognize that passion, however, you have the choice: Are you going to encourage it, favor it, or channel it in some other way?
Too many people are trying to prevent the arousal, the erotic feeling. And that’s not where the battle ought to be.
McBurney: The battle is with this attitude: I’m experiencing these emotions; therefore I must satisfy them. They’re part of my identity. People become slaves of their passions.
And among Christians, the attitude is, These feelings are from God. Who are you to say otherwise?
Seamands: Sometimes I think the first element in sin is irrationality. I have this warm feeling. It must be from God. Therefore it’s okay. And from then on, we’re not thinking straight at all.
One man who was having an affair told me, “This feels so right. I couldn’t go home and make love to my wife, because that would feel like adultery.”
The insidious nature of sin is that everything gets reversed. Vice becomes virtue, and it makes virtue into a vice.
But sin isn’t the last word. Rationality-God’s good sense-can return. That’s where our prayers and our pastoral counsel need to focus.
Leadership: Is fantasizing about sex harmless or harmful?
Hart: Let me begin with a general comment. The sexuality in our culture is neurotic, always moving toward the obsessional. And sexual fantasy, in my opinion, is dangerous because it leads to obsessional thinking. People become preoccupied with sexual thoughts; they’re unable to let them go once they’ve been gripped by them. You don’t control them; they control you.
Again and again I’ve encountered ministers who are incapable of avoiding pornography; they crave that stimulus. It begins with feeding the mind on sexual fantasies, and it can lead to a distorted sexuality and a desire to pursue something ever more exciting, ever more thrilling.
Palmberg: And the outer limit of fantasy life becomes more and more sick, more and more violent. In the twenty years I’ve been involved in downtown ministry in Seattle and Denver and St. Louis, I’ve seen that what used to pass for the outer limits of eroticism is now available in the corner market.
Hart: Speaking personally, it’s been a long but steady struggle to limit the amount of fantasy I indulge in. I’m always fighting it, because I know it ultimately robs me of the genuine pleasure I can get out of simple sex-not having to embellish it with novelty or taboo. Our culture is on a kick, always wanting to add some new excitement, some new thrills. Fantasy is the beginning, I think, of perversion.
Leadership: How do you control sexual fantasies or set boundaries?
Hart: Impure thoughts must be redirected. You can’t defeat impure thoughts by praying that they’ll go away. That will just make you more obsessed with them.
Seamands: It’s like the old story of the alchemist who sold the villagers a powder he claimed would turn water into gold. “But when you mix it,” he said, “you must never think of red monkeys, or it won’t work.” So no one ever got the gold, because you can never force yourself not to think something.
The one battle you can’t win is a direct attack upon sexual thoughts. You’ve got to do an end run.
Palmberg: I think in terms of what I call “the principle of displacement.” Philippians 4:8 says, “Whatsoever things are true and honorable and just, pure and lovely and gracious, think on these things.” And it doesn’t have to be some kind of a great spiritual thought that you have in your mind.
When a fantasy thrusts itself into my consciousness, I can choose to replace it with something good or just-or maybe mentally replay a recent golf game. I don’t repress the sexual thought or deny I have it. I simply choose not to spend any time on it.
McBurney: Ever since my adolescence and premarital days, I’ve had a rich fantasy life, and when it persisted into my marriage, one of the things I found helpful was to make sure my wife, Melissa, was always the object of those fantasies. That’s a choice I could make rather than allow it to be any other woman. I think that’s helped me concentrate on her as the object of my affection and my sexual drive.
Yes, stray fantasies will enter your mind, but thought life is still a matter of volitional control. This fits with what Paul said in Romans 12. “Renewing your mind” involves stopping old, familiar thought patterns and entering into a new course. When thoughts enter, you have two options: allowing the fantasy to proceed and feeding it (which neurologically, strengthens it), or sidetracking it and making other associations.
You always have that choice.
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