THE SEDUCER & THE PHYSICIAN
A “good” minister receives a lot of praise and he has the power that goes with that reputation. He’s fair, compassionate and sympathetic and he has a wonderful Message; he has all the things we associate with a good leader. Whatever his appearance he’s an attractive person because of these lovely qualities and he attracts the happy, healthy and well adjusted. He also attracts the hurting, the vulnerable, the unhappy and the troubled. They listen to him, trust him, allow him into their lives at very personal levels and people like that are open to manipulation by a powerful person.
But this is a “good” minister and deliberate
manipulation while it’s possible (of course!) isn’t the first thing that comes
to mind. This good minister isn’t Jesus so he has weaknesses and needs and
areas of vulnerability as well as power! For these reasons he’s dangerous.
He works a lot with a lot of people. He only
needs to meet one person in a hundred whose area of weakness matches his own
and they’re both in serious danger. Is he inclined to over-ambition? Hungry for
money? Is he a weakling in his relationships to women? Hungry for praise? Is he
subject to envy or inclined to bitterness? Does depression hound him?
Let’s settle for the sexual area and suppose him
to be vulnerable though he behaves uprightly. To the right person, perhaps,
he’d confess that it’s something of a struggle always to behave as he knows he
should and truly wants to—but by God’s grace, grace that shows itself in
numerous ways, he has maintained his integrity.
Here she comes to him for help. This is a good
woman coming to a good man. Her marriage isn’t at all what it should be, isn’t
what it could be and she blames her husband for the bulk of the problems. But
the good minister gently—though plainly—suggests maybe there’s more to it than
that and proceeds to offer other perspectives. He does it all in a kind but
fair way. The troubled lady may not completely agree with him but she’s pleased
that the man she’s talking to is fair even to a husband she’s mad at.
He doesn’t always see things her way but he’s
always sympathetic and kind. Always gives her a good listening to. She doesn’t
get that from her husband (maybe she really doesn’t!) and she finds the
minister thoughtful, wishes these qualities were in her husband, begins to see
this man as the husband she wishes she had and is sure she doesn’t have. She’s
certain that if she had a husband like this man she’d be a better Christian
(and she may be right).
She begins to experience a transfer of affection
from her husband to this man who is modeling before her all that she wants in
the man she has loved and married. The power the minister has is working
against her—she’s being “seduced”.
But the minister has no intention whatever of
seducing her! He’s all the things we said he is and he’s talking with a hurting
woman who needs from her husband the kind of things she sees in the minister.
She goes home to her colder, less tolerant husband who’s too tired or wound up
or too something to respond to her the way the good minister does and the
emotional gap widens between them. This good woman had no designs on the
minister nor does she mean to become involved in something sinful.
The good minister we’ve been talking about is married to a good
woman who knows the good minister very well. She loves him, of course, but she
doesn’t hang on his every word, doesn’t see him quite as wonderful as others
do—so she’s immune to his seductive power. When he comes home her eyes aren’t
always shining at his arrival (they’re sometimes tearful because she’s been
peeling the onions). He tells her he thinks he’s helping “Mildred” and she
wishes he’d help a bit more around the house. He speaks words of wisdom and
instead of awed agreement he gets an argument. Why doesn’t his wife treat him
the way Mildred and others do? He knows the answers; but knowing the answers is
only half the battle, and the smallest half!
He doesn’t intend to involve himself with
Mildred in anything sinful and much less to manipulate her. But she’s drawing
closer to him and he’s liking the warm attention she pays to him and because
they’re both vulnerable, one day a hand touches a hand, a glance is too long,
an unwise phrase is used that suggests (I mean “suggests,” not says or
claims)—a phrase suggests that something might be possible that should forever
be impossible. An intimacy begins that neither person planned. An intimacy that
should be purged immediately—for a host of good reasons. An intimacy that once
indulged becomes addictive and strengthens the pattern of weakness. This means
the future is less and less secure and it means misconduct with others like
Mildred (or the good minister) becomes increasingly likely. And even a
successful purging though it can be profoundly helpful, is not without its own
dangers. (“I controlled it in the past, I can control it now.” Flashing red
lights should go off everywhere.) This situation may have been unplanned, but
it’s still sinful and it’s still damaging. But it was unplanned! Well,
unplanned at the conscious level. If it’s a first offence it may even have been
unplanned at the subconscious level. Once the good minister or Mildred sees her
or his vulnerability and has enjoyed the pleasure that such intimacy brings,
the planning can go on at the subconscious level despite all his or her
conscious protests.
And listen, the intimacy that has developed with
the good minister (but hasn’t yet reached an overtly sexual expression) has
lifted Mildred’s spirits. She gets through the day better, she’s more patient
with her husband, the fatigue she’s been fighting is nowhere in sight and she
has now begun again to enjoy going to church. The forbidden form of intimacy
lifts her to an emotional level where she’s able to desire spiritual things.
How do we explain that? However we explain it, this is true; she feels better
able to face life! She doesn’t weep or brood or complain as much. And while she
can’t and won’t tell herself the forbidden intimacy is “good,” she cashes in on
the lift it has given to her life. If she had gained a wonderful friend, that
friend would have given her something of this marvelous lift—without the
forbidden elements. But not even friendship can give that specific pleasure she
or the minister is experiencing. (You understand that such an emotional lift
can be gained in an innocent relationship. An unattached man meets an
unattached lady, they find one another adorable and he feels his spirits
lifted. This is commonplace. I just wish to make the point that the same
emotional experience can happen in a relationship that is not innocent.)
So she rationalizes the wrong and takes
advantage of the new energy she has for doing and being good in other areas and
other ways. In some crazy way good is coming out of this evil so she’s tempted
to think, “It isn’t really evil.” And he, though he knows better and in his
more lucid moments is frightened by it, is experiencing his own surge of
energy. And because of this energy surge he is more passionate in teaching,
more involved in the lives of the needy and without claiming it he
half-believes he is a better minister. The whole situation is corrupt and
corrupting but a lot of the time it doesn’t feel that way. The whole situation
is corrupt and corrupting but because many good things are part of the whole
mix it can be difficult to do, decisively and permanently, what should be
done—end the thing!
One of the major elements that have helped generate this
situation is the good minister’s power. And it’s precisely because he draws
people to him (including the vulnerable) that he is both dangerous and in danger.
I don’t doubt for a moment the existence of impenitent, plotting,
hypocritical and evil men who prey on wounded and vulnerable women
and children. Nor do I doubt that there are predatory women who go after
vulnerable people (including children). I do know very many, personally,
who live with endless
remorse and shame because they’ve been in a number of sinful intimacies
and
fear they’ll be in more. Not one of them is an impenitent predator!
Idiots, sinners,
failing, sinful, weaklings—but not predators! Destructive but not
self-conscious
predators!
It’s a mistake to think of the minister only in
terms of how dangerous he is. We need also to see him as someone in danger.
It’s right to make the point that people of power—men or women—are in a
position to impose themselves on others and that they have the equipment to
draw and even seduce others. This is so! And it’s especially distressing that a
man or woman finally gets to the position where they can really help someone
and instead, they do them a terrible injury. It’s an abuse of power as well as
a betrayal of trust!
We’re not to minimize any of that but there’s
something else to be said. Those who have compassion, warmth, charisma and
confidence draw to themselves so much more temptation than those who lack these
qualities do! Anyone can hit a home run once in a blue moon, it’s someone well
gifted who can do it game after game after game. Most of us can resist a trial
that comes along now and then, but if we meet them week after week we have to
be vigilant week after week, have to be strong week after week. Imagine this: this week I’m
happy and contented so the trial isn’t severe but other weeks see me down and
lonely and vulnerable and the temptation is still there. It’s not only still
there, it’s stronger now because my situation is different. A full stomach is
less tempted to gluttony and hoarding than an empty one. A cold and
self-sufficient person is less likely to be tempted by forbidden warm intimacies
than the insecure and warm person is.
A minister is under great pressure. He’s in
danger as well as dangerous. He must be dealt with when he behaves improperly
but he mustn’t be left alone to wrestle alone. He must be protected as well as
watched. He mustn’t be made to bear all the guilt alone. If he’s half the man
we think he is then he’s no predator.
It might give us a real sense of our uprightness
that we’re “tough on sin” but it might be more to our credit if we understood
more about sin and sins, if we worked without arrogance for the prevention and
cure of sins rather than simply holding people “accountable” for their crasser
sins. There is a difference between being tough “on sinners” and tough “on sin”.
Instead of watching the trouble develop without stepping in
early to nip it in the bud we often let it grow to full bloom and then come
down on it like a ton of bricks. Everybody loses in that case. What we call our
attempts to “keep the church pure” are more like “benevolent bungling” than
anything else. And often it isn’t even “benevolent” bungling.
And wouldn’t it be terrible if in our awful
eagerness to “deal with the sinner” we ourselves are sinning by sending the
signal to the younger people who are struggling with sexual temptation, “Here’s
the kind of harsh, almost heartless, treatment you can expect from us when you’re discovered!”
Somewhere
in the middle of working our way through these
situations we’re desperately in need of having a heart and a wise,
balanced and compassionate policy worked out. In the long term it
doesn’t help for
people to shout at each other, “You’re merciless” or “You’re soft on
sin”.
There’s got to be a way that we can lament the sin in our believing
community
without making full-blown lepers out of the sinners. There’s got to be a
way
for the congregation to come together in sadness in the face of the fall
of
brothers and sisters without isolating them and seeing them as
second-class
citizens.
I accept that sin in leadership must be addressed!!!!!!!
And of course I’ve been writing as though ministers of the Word
were the only people who wrestle with impurity and sexual misconduct—far from
it! And I’ve been talking as though it’s only women who have a tough time with
cold husbands or some such hardship that leads to trouble. This isn’t the case.
Sometimes boredom accounts for the kind of sin
we’re talking about (though it’s never merely boredom—it’s never
“merely”
anything). Men and women with too much time on their hands and too
little on
their minds find themselves drawn into something “more adventurous”.
Maybe
there’s a gospel somewhere that if we heard it, would draw us into so
much
glorious adventure that we wouldn’t have time for the shabby and
shameful but the problem doesn't lie with the gospel, does it? Maybe
part of the problem is that the gospel isn't gospeled!
Let me close this for now with this and this is the riskiest
part of the piece—surely the above would have everyone’s agreement though it
needs further development.
We
need to expect Christians to be sinners! Read 1
John for yourself. What John will not tolerate is the view that
Christians do
not sin! What John does not tolerate is the view that Christians can
choose to
live sinful lives—lives that dismiss sin as nothing or as non-existent.
Nevertheless he fully expects sinners to sin even while they walk in the
light (1:5-10)!
We must receive his word as the truth of God as well as the witness of
our eyes
and ears—we actually see and hear Christians sinning! Unless we are
completely
insensitive we experience sin in our own lives and do we seriously
imagine that the world doesn't know we're sinners? Is it not a brand of
stupidity for us to refuse to acknowledge before the world (with
appropriate sadness) that we too wrestle with sin?
John wants to encourage no one to sin—ever (2:1)! But he says, “If
anybody does sin we have an advocate with the Father.” This last sentence has a
comforting and comfortable sound not only because we all know we do and will “sin”
but because the word “sin” is a nice general term—a term Christians are very
familiar with. It’s so familiar and general it doesn’t cut to the bone by being
too specific. It’s not like the word “slander” or “embezzle” or “commit
adultery”. Try allowing John to say this: “I write this to you that you will
not sin. But if anybody does commit adultery, we have an advocate with the
Father.”
All of a sudden a familiar text that never troubled us—that assured
and consoled us—is hardly recognizable. This response says nothing about the
truth of the text; it does say something about our way of seeing life and
consequently our way of reading God’s word. The passage that many Christians
were sure dealt with what John Watson all those years ago called “respectable
sins”—that passage we’re now being asked to believe includes the sins we’re
loathe to forgive because they’re “not my sin.”
All sins are enemies to the human family, all sins are unlike
Jesus Christ and he didn’t come at the Holy Father’s bidding to make it easier
for us to sin or enable us to become friends with our sins! But it’s never wise
to be “wiser” than God; it’s never righteous to be more “righteous” than God;
it’s never Christlike to despise those Jesus thinks are “sick and need a
physician” (Matthew 9:10-13).
(To be continued, God enabling)
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