Secrets.
My heart is heavy. Last week I learned that a pastor I know resigned because an indiscretion from some time back came to light. He had kept the secret for years... until the secret came out. As a result, there was pain on all sides: pain for him, pain for the church, pain for those involved, and pain for the cause of Christ. Many will be seeking healing for this situation for a long time.
But here’s the thing… Sin, no matter how bad it is, doesn’t cause as much damage as the hiding. Secrets are the worst; secrets erode our very souls.
All of us fall short, all of us fail to live the life we want to live. Paul described it poignantly: “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” This is part of the human condition. Some failures have greater consequences than others, but secrecy always amplifies the fallout and perpetuates the falseness.
So I have to ask: What is it about the church that makes us want to hide, that replicates this story over and over? I’m not saying this was the church’s fault; it was clearly a failure on the part of a guy—a guy I believe to otherwise be a good-hearted, Godward man. A man who has undoubtably encouraged many in their faith journey, but a man who succumbed to his shadow side. Is the church complicit?
While our failures are always our own, I do see several dynamics at work in the modern church that exacerbate the shame that drives us underground, that leads us to hide our failures rather than bring them into the light where they can be healed:
The evangelical view of God complicates the situation by telling us that a holy God cannot abide sin, that God separates from sin, that God requires a blood sacrifice for sin. The result of this mischaracterization is that, when we inevitably do sin, we believe that God shames us… and we hide.
The evangelical view of humanity complicates the situation by telling us that we are fundamentally corrupt… and we believe it. This means that, once we are “saved,” we are supposed to be free from such corruption, and so when we do still inevitably fail, the story falters, our salvation is suspect… and we hide.
Given this worldview of God and ourselves, the faith community is no longer a safe space to admit our brokenness… and we hide.
Where is the community where both participants and leaders can confess their sins and find healing without being shunned? This is not the first pastor I know who, over the last year, has been kicked to the curb for their brokenness. I’m not talking about glossing over moral failures; sin hurts many and undermines enormous amounts of trust, especially for leaders who carry the responsibility for guiding and guarding the community. It has to be taken seriously. But part of taking sin seriously is taking responsibility for restoring the penitent.
Will this pastor be able to find healing and restoration within that community, no longer as a leader but as a fellow sojourner on the journey?
The rejection of those whose sins become public (most of ours remain in the shadows) is the easiest way for us to project our own darkness onto a scapegoat and drive that one off into the desert to die. While this is human enough, it is not the way of the kingdom of God. Jesus showed us the way to handle moral failures: “Neither do I condemn you. From now on, sin no more.” This is the place where truth and restoration converge.
The greatest question I have, though, is this: Will this man, this one who carries the image of God in a flawed humanity, will he be able to leverage this great fall as access into the second half of life? Now that is the great question.
The first half of life is all about certainty, purity, and conformity. When we come to Christ, life feels fresh, new, and simple. We say the magic words, we join the right tribe, and we expect God to clear the road for us. Eventually, we are surprised and a little offended to find that life isn’t simple, bad stuff still happens, and our “flesh” isn’t as dead as it was supposed to be… and we question, if we dare, the version of the Good News we received.
Eventually, we all fall. Either we fail dramatically, or life fails us dramatically. Tragedy strikes in some form: the death of a job or a marriage or a person, a blow to our health or our ego or our sexuality. Something fails, and we wonder if we can keep it a secret. Maybe even from ourselves. But no secret remains hidden forever.
The point of an epic fail in our lives is to thrust us into the second half of life, a place beyond certainty, purity, and conformity. A place where the grace we have espoused for so long becomes desperately real and personal. A place where we either abandon the spiritual life entirely as a fabrication or we experience the Gospel in an entirely new dimension. Where we are truly born again. Again.
In this second half, we embrace the Great Mystery, we recognize humanity as the One Tribe, and we enter into the One Love. It’s not so much about believing the right things as about surrendering to divine forgiveness. Then we too become agents of healing and transformation rather than shaming. We find our shame absolved, and we have no need to shame others.
How will the story play out for this pastor? I don’t know, but I hope he will find a God and a community of loving restoration. I hope he will find a way to make amends for his failures. And I hope he will be welcomed back into a hopeful future with greater transparency. Ultimately, I hope he—and all of us—will become forever free of our secrets.