The Hopeful Reality of Church Scandal

The church is no stranger to scandal. But the potential breadth and depth of the Ashley Madison hack seems begging for a whole new category.

In late August, computer hackers released to the public stolen data from a website designed for people to have extramarital affairs. The slogan of the Ashley Madison site is “Life is short. Have an affair.” But the site has since been revealed as essentially a scam with 90-95 percent (or more) of the users men, and women all but non-existent. The information the hackers released included 32 million names, credit card numbers, email, and mailing addresses along with preferences of customers on the dating site.

Days after the news hit, Ed Stetzer, executive director of Lifeway Research, predicted, based on “conversations with leaders from several denominations in the U.S. and Canada,” that “at least 400 church leaders (pastors, elders, staff, deacons, etc.)” would resign by the week’s end.

Of course, only a few of the casualties from the Ashley Madison fallout will make headlines, as did one prominent church leader this week. R. C. Sproul, Jr., wrote a blog post containing his admission that he had visited the site, registered his email address, and left the site, “never to return.” As a result, the board of Ligonier Ministries where Sproul served (and where his father and founder is board chair) suspended him until next year.

This news was the latest in waves of sex scandals in the past two years. The revelation that Josh Duggar, a former executive director with the Family Research Council, was also a client of Ashley Madison was, perhaps, given previous revelations of sexual impropriety, less surprising. But claims that the clean-cut father of four young children engaged in violent sex with a stripper are quite disturbing.

Recent weeks also brought the fall of yet another prominent church leader, Tullian Tchividjian, who resigned as pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church as a result of an affair. Earlier this summer, a missionary admitted to being involved in child pornography. Last year, Bill Gothard resigned from the ultra-conservative para-church organization he founded in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse by more than 60 women. Less than two years ago Vision Forum founder Doug Phillips resigned after an extramarital affair.

And these are just the sex scandals. Add public reports of addictions, arrogance, bullying, divorce, financial corruption, plagiarism, slander, and suicide, and the church is left with an alphabet soup of humiliation and shame.

And these are just the sex scandals. Add public reports of addictions, arrogance, bullying, divorce, financial corruption, plagiarism, slander, and suicide, and the church is left with an alphabet soup of humiliation and shame.

Or is it?

It’s easy to despair when the Bride of Christ proves hypocrite and harlot all at once. But God’s judgment is a mercy. He chastens whom he loves.

A blessing well disguised

A well-worn axiom in the business world says that a crisis is an opportunity. For the church, the crisis of a scandal offers something even better than opportunity, and that’s refinement.

The Scriptures are replete with passages about the refining work of God, both in the lives of individual believers and in the church as a whole.

Those who have been caught in a scandal can heed the words of Hosea 6:12: "He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will restore us, that we may live in His presence."

This refining work of God is not done for the sake of mere whim or sadistic pleasure. Rather, the Bible says, it is so “that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:7)

God’s refining is not limited to individual believers. God is refining the church as a whole, his Bride:

“In the whole land,” declares the LORD, “two-thirds will be struck down and perish; yet one-third will be left in it. This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God’” (Zech. 13:8-9).

In one of his iconic sermons, “The Sitting of the Refiner,” Charles Spurgeon expounds on this painful but necessary process for the church, based on Malachi 3:3: “And He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” Spurgeon tells us, “All things are on trial.” He continues, in words that might have been written today, following the Ashley Madison scandal, instead of more than 100 years ago:

“You are constantly hearing of this time and that time as being ‘crises’ and the saying is true. There is always a crisis of something or other during these days of the Lord’s sitting as a refiner. All things are being thrust into the furnace and the fire is kept burning at a white heat—and nothing evil can abide the flame. Everything that is good shall be conserved, purified, made brilliant—but all that is evil, be it what it may, the whole world over—since Christ has come, shall be tried and dissolved as by fire. … It is well for us to know that whenever Jesus Christ draws near to a soul He comes in utmost mercy to make it clean. Because He is, in Himself, the Incarnation of ineffable Love, His coming always means that He is about to purify the soul, for the highest mercy is to rid us of sin.”

We cannot know what private, inner impurities are being burned away in the refining process of these individuals caught in scandal. But we can prayerfully seek to discern what impurities God needs to cleanse in our present humiliation.

Surely, the American church has grown soft and complacent in our illusion that we exist in a “Christian country.” We have not always attended to the planks in our own eyes before concerning ourselves with the specks in the eyes of others, especially those outside the church. We have become infatuated with the feel-goodism of superficiality and moralism. We have mistaken isolationism for holiness. We have not been a place where brothers and sisters struggling with sin—particularly sexual sin—have felt it was safe to confess, repent, and seek reconciliation.

We can be certain, as Spurgeon reminds us in another sermon, “You may thank God for your trials, for you will come forth as gold purified. Once more, how does gold come forth from the furnace? It comes forth ready for use."

The garments of humility these scandals have cloaked Christians in have always been ours to wear. So adorned, we can sing with David the verses he penned following his adultery, “let the bones that you have broken rejoice” (Psalm 51:8b).

Karen Swallow Prior is Professor of English at Liberty University. Her latest book is Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist