Yesterday a well-known pastor resigned from a high-profile church. I don’t know enough about that situation to comment on it one way or another. But I find myself—as many of us will today—reflecting on my own life, and on the state of our little evangelical world.
I am struck by how quickly I am prone to judgmentalism. The problem isn’t the making of judgments or discerning truth; it would be no good going to a dentist who tells me my rotting teeth are fine just to spare my feelings.
“Love does not delight in evil,” Paul said. But I often do. In my love-challenged condition, seeing a difficulty for someone else can leave me feeling a little more smug or superior-by-comparison.
I talked once to a psychologist (who often works with church leaders) about the need to confront a pastor concerning some misbehavior. He said the confrontation would need to be done by a non-pastor, otherwise it would elicit a “You’re-fallen-and-I’m-not” dynamic. I was struck by how quickly he was able to name this, by how often he had seen it.
The problem with ‘immorality’
I was struck, too, by the language quoted in news reports yesterday to describe this situation. The pastor, the board said, had been guilty of arrogance—along with other attitudes and behaviors associated with arrogance. But had not been charged with “immorality.”
When did arrogance cease to be immoral?
I suspect that most folks in our evangelical subculture will understand that “immorality” is really being used as a substitute term for sexual misbehavior. But why would we reduce such an important word to code language for one area of misconduct?
C.S. Lewis wrote: “If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins…. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
I suppose one reason we miss this is that pride attacks us on a sliding scale. An act of promiscuity is not abstract; pride is always a matter of degree and open to subjective interpretation and harder to diagnose.
But the word “immoral” needs not to be collapsed into one category. Of course, there are important reasons why sexual violations may play a unique role in a pastor’s needing to leave church work. (Another important distinction: “church work” is not the same thing as “ministry,” and as a pastor it contributes to my sense of grandiosity when I confuse the two.)
When we use the word “immorality” as a synonym for sexual misconduct, we communicate to the broader world that we are obsessed with sexuality, and that we do not regard other areas (humility, integrity, concern for the poor) as carrying the same moral weight.
It also reinforces a dynamic that says a pastor’s two main jobs are to be successful and avoid scandal. I remember a church leader once, when the truthfulness of a statement he made was challenged, responding with: “How dare you question my character?”
Actually, my character needs to be questioned. On a regular basis. By people who know and love me.
The day people around me stop questioning my character is the day my character begins to grow vulnerable. With visible “success” in any profession (including church) comes power and reputation, which are always character dangers.
The more successful someone becomes the more they need to have their character questioned. And the less likely it is to happen.
It is a reminder that in all areas of life and character I am becoming a certain kind of person. And the task of the church is to help make disciples—to help people learn from Jesus and be empowered by Jesus to become excellent persons. If my church is not doing this, it is not being “successful,” no matter how many people attend its services.
My job as a pastor is not to grow a big church while avoiding job-disqualifying scandal. My job is something that is at once both infinitely larger and infinitely smaller.
Dallas Willard used to say that the main thing God gets out of your life is the person you become. And the main thing you get out of your life is the person you become.
That is what I will take into eternity.
My first task, as a pastor, as a “curate of souls,” is to seek the cure of my own soul. To become a person after God’s own heart.
