What do we do when our Christian leaders turn out to have been harbouring awful sins in their lives, sometimes covering them up for decades? Sometimes this can cause us to question our own sense of reality, and get lost in emotions of betrayal, grief, and anger. I hope this blog series will be helpful to us all as we navigate these perilous waters. Here's a map of this series, to help you orient yourself:
1. Is Christian faithfulness impossible?
2. I'm so disheartened. What can I do?
3. I'm so heartbroken. How do I deal with this?
4. I'm so furious I can't think straight. How do I tackle this?
6. How do I protect myself from sinning like them?
7. How can I help myself heal?
8. How can I deal with my other questions?
Let’s look at the next question…
6. How do I protect myself from sinning like them?
Let's make sure we're very clear about the goal of this question, right from the start. The question we're trying to answer here is not how to avoid sinning entirely. We're asking how to avoid sinning like these leaders who spiral ever deeper into evil, engaging in decades of sin, abuse and coverups.
Biblical heroes are never portrayed as perfect. Moses was a murderer who later took credit for God's work; David was an adulterer whose subsequent cover up inflated his sin until he became a murderer [1]; and Abraham was a liar who forced his maid into a sexual relationship out of a lack of faith in God. And these were the people the Bible portrays as generally faithful to God!
These men did not come to God on their own to repent. God was the initiator. God directly confronted Abraham and Moses with their sins. The prophet Nathan confronted David on God's behalf with a parable that tugged at the heart strings. But of course, the Bible tells us, the human heart is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" [2] and "no one is righteous— not even one." [3] We cannot realize our sinfulness on our own; the Holy Spirit is the One who speaks to our consciences [4] and enables us to repent [5] so that our relationship with God can be restored.
The difference between these generally-faithful men and our faithless Christian leaders with decades of continuous sin and coverups in their history?
The generally-faithful, though they did not avoid sin, confessed and repented early.
Seeing the modern day havoc of lies and coverups, stubborn unrepentance, and self-justification in the face of overwhelming evidence—I'm starting to realize that the early unmasking of the generally-faithful's sins was God's act of mercy towards them. They responded with hearts that were still soft towards the Holy Spirit's influence.
If it is God who sparks our consciences and gives each one of us chances to repent, the question becomes:
When we sin, will we ignore His exhortations towards holiness, or will we take courageous steps towards Him?
Remember, the question we're trying to answer here is how to avoid sinning like these leaders who’ve engaged in decades of sin and coverups.
How do we do this?
- Confess early, confess often
The story of Adam and Eve illuminates the basic impulses of anyone who sins:
(1) hide
(2) cover up (Adam and Eve did this literally; we do this metaphorically)
(3) pretend to be innocent (or, shift blame and pretend to be the victim) [6]
Sin is like a spiritual virus. When it invades our system, it begins to change the conditions within the system to give it maximum chance of growing and flourishing. It fights (hard!) against anything that might extract it from its host. It knows that a close and trusting relationship with God is the most threatening thing to its continued takeover of the host, so it will do what it can to isolate us from the only reliable cure.
Sin lies to us. It tells us that we are not safe with God. But it's really just projecting its own existential panic onto us. The truth is: the virus (not the host) is not safe with God. God has declared time and again His love for us, that we are safe, and that He wants only the best for us.
So what can we do as a counteragent to the sin-virus's toxins?
Resist its first symptom. Resist the urge to hide.
Instead of shielding ourselves from God [7], we engage in 'spiritual breathing'. This is a term I learned at a Christian campus group during my university days. [8]
Much as the human body needs oxygen at a cellular level, so we need to the oxygen of our relationship with God in order to live and thrive. Conversely, our bodies need to eject the toxin of carbon dioxide or we will begin to experience fatigue, mental disorientation, paranoia, and seizures. [9] These symptoms are analogous to the ones we experience spiritually when we allow the toxin of sin to build up in our systems.
However, when we make it a habit to exhale (confess, turn away from, and accept forgiveness for) our sin and inhale (surrender control to, be filled with) the Holy Spirit—we become able to immediately approach God when we've sinned, and eject the sin-virus from our systems much more quickly and thoroughly.
God promises that this will be so: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." [10] How marvellous that we are not at the mercy of the sin-virus. God Himself is its cure!
- Cultivate a passionate heart
Few things are so potent in the spiritual realm as an unrelenting passion for loving and following God.
What does this passion look like? It looks like a no-holds-barred plunge into loving God through obedience—"with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, and with all [our] mind." [11]
We are to become so passionate about our own holiness that we're willing to rip off a hand or pluck out an eye. [12] No excuses. Just willing to sacrifice—whatever it takes, no matter how painful—because being separated from God will be more painful to us.
Our love for God is not unrequited. When we desire Him with our whole hearts, He satisfies our desires in the fullest sense. "Delight yourself in the LORD," the Psalmist exhorts, "And He will give you the desires of your heart." [13] When we truly delight ourselves in God, our one overriding desire becomes for more of Him, and this is something He delights to satisfy.
"As the Father has loved Me," Jesus said, "so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." [14]
Here, Jesus is not saying His love is conditional, but that we remove ourselves from delighting in Him and experiencing the closeness of relationship with Him when we elevate other desires above our longing for Him.
There is nothing that gives Jesus greater joy than a mutuality of delight. When we fully engage in it, there is nothing that can give us greater joy either.
- Take care of what you hunger for
Our Western culture is increasingly materialistic and gluttonous. We are gluttons for food, for wealth, for prestige, for social media likes, for pain-free ease of living.
A hunger for people's, rather than God's, approval can lead us into years of covering up our sins (and potentially the sins of others we're connected with) rather than confessing and repenting and exposing those dank and putrid things to the cleansing Son-light of Christ. Protecting our reputation (the regard of others) is often the antithesis of living in righteousness.
And yet, in this series, we've mentioned before that beautiful beatitude, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." [15] Why are they blessed? "For they shall be satisfied." [15]
When we truly crave Jesus' righteousness, God promises we will not starve to death. We will be satisfied. Our joy will be made full. We will be blessed.
Years ago, I was friends with a Korean exchange student (Susan) whose first language was not English. A new Christian, she was being discipled by a lady named Ann.
One day in their time together, Ann made an impassioned plea for greater personal holiness. At the end, Susan exclaimed, "Ann, you're a glutton!"
Ann stared back, baffled.
"You're a glutton for God!"
May we all be gluttons for God!
- Imagine your nightmare scenario
When we develop a godly horror for being used to tear down someone else's faith, when we let this become our worst nightmare, this can help propel us to courageous honesty and godliness.
This doesn't mean we live in fear of sinning. Quite the opposite. God said:
"Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."
(Isaiah 41:10)
We are "not [to] be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present [our] requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard [our] hearts and [our] minds in Christ Jesus." [16]
It does mean that our love for our neighbour can be used to help fuel our passion for loving and following God.
- Curate your focus
The Bible exhorts, "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith" [17]. We are to focus on Him because our focus drives our purpose.
If we focus on maintaining our own social image, we disable our response to sin.
God made us in His image, yes, but an unhealthy focus on ourselves can turn that image into an idol. When that happens, we become like the Pharisees, enjoying reputation and respectful greetings in the marketplace, trusting in ourselves as righteous, and viewing others with contempt. [18]
Only when we purposefully focus and refocus on Jesus, "the author and perfecter of our faith" [17], can we hope to be righteous. Only then can we conquer those obsessive thoughts and critical mindsets that disable us from seeing ourselves clearly.
These are just a few of the methods we can use to create an internal culture of humility and passion that fearlessly pursues Jesus and His righteousness. May He continue to guide each of us in the way forward, and may we each anchor ourselves onto His truth in the days to come.
Next time, we'll talk about some of the ways we can help ourselves heal after being wounded by faithless spiritual leaders. After all, we don't just want to survive this. We want to thrive...
NOTES
Unless otherwise noted, all scriptures are taken from the NASB version.
[1] He also neglected to provide justice following the rape of his own daughter, which resulted in his son becoming a murderer, too. (See 2 Samuel 13.)
[2] Jeremiah 17:9, KJV.
[3] Romans 3:10, NLT.
[4] See John 16:8.
[5] See Acts 11:18.
[6] See Genesis 3 for the story.
[7] Shielding ourselves from God might look like skipping devotions or prayer, or doing them only in a formulaic way because we don't want God to get too close and see what we've done.
[8] The metaphor of spiritual breathing comes from this pamphlet: https://www.cru.org/us/en/train-and-grow/spiritual-growth/the-spirit-filled-life.html
[9] For the effects of too much carbon dioxide, see: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24808-hypercapnia
[10] 1 John 1:9, ESV.
[11] Matthew 22:37, my paraphrase of NASB.
[12] See Matthew 18:8–9.
[13] Psalm 37:4.
[14] John 15:9–11, NIV.
[15] Matthew 5:6.
[16] My paraphrase of Philippians 4:6–7, NIV.
[17] Hebrews 12:2, BSB.
[18] See Matthew 23:5,7; Luke 18:9.
