When the unimaginable be comes a part of our imagination, when we start thinking the unthinkable, that's when the impossible becomes possible. This is so for both good and evil, victory and defeat. Adultery is seldom an event without history. Some imagining, flirting, or pornography, some thinking or dreaming of illicit relations prepares the way. "As the man thinketh in his heart, so he is." Who we are in secret comes eventually to the light of day in the moment of temptation or hardship, and when it does, it may leave an indelible mark.
This essay has proven to be the most trying and the most amazing one for me to write so far. It is disarming and yet compelling for us to see that, urged by our love we are obliged, even bound, to survey the path of ministers' adulterous affairs. The sight is devastating, not easy to behold. Yet without this disciplined, objective, and impartial assessment we will be unfit to respond effectively to our situations in redemptive, compassionate ways.
So this is not the time for the ostrich game or for rash judgmental attitudes. If we do not look into the face of this side of ourselves, we will not see that God is still on His throne, still our Creator, still our Father, the only One able to still our repentant souls and heal our wounded relationships.
There are no winners; there are only victims in an adulterous affair. Yet it is fair and morally responsible to give priority to the most innocent bystanders caught in the wreckage. Unlike some,1 I believe the Bible considers the offended spouses and the children as the primary victims of adultery (Mal. 2:13-16; 1 Thess. 4:6; Heb. 13:4). Yet one important caution: The issues in sexual infidelity are extremely complex.
For the sake of clarity and brevity we are constrained here to assume certain limited scenarios. But we all know that each case is unique and that exact apportioning of responsibility (short of sincere confession) is a daunting task. Yet we (the church) are truly called to rescue, and God wants us to be graceful and adroit, lest we underestimate the wounds or kill our wounded, wherever they may be along the path of any particular case of ministerial adultery.
Impact of adultery on the minister's spouse
1. The jolt. It may all begin as a normal humdrum day. The kids are in school, the husband gone to the church office. A trusted friend, or somebody else, comes for a visit or makes a telephone call. Whoever comes to the minister's wife, or whatever diplomacy or skill they may use in their approach, there is no smooth way of saying "Your husband is cheating on you." The news of actual adultery is as bad as death, especially when it comes unsuspected,2 even if the husband himself is the one who has to make the confession to his wife. (I am here using the words "wife" and "husband" simply because traditionally it is male ministers, rather than female, who have been involved in adulterous affairs and thus the wife who is most often caught in the fallout.)
2. The loss of innocence. Marriage is a powerful covenant. Its uniting power on spouses is immense. The beginning of life together is in many ways a new start: a new release from the past, new trust, new chance at chastity, new freedom to grow. In other words, a new chance at innocence. And when all of this is gambled away, the marital innocence dies. This can be manifested in several ways.
Guilt. Frequently, the cheated spouse assumes responsibility for the failure of her marriage. She was not good enough to prevent the tragedy. The load of shared guilt may become unbearable, and she doubts herself as the innocent wife of an adulterous husband.3
Shame. After years of identifying with the successes and failures of her husband, the spouse cannot escape the sense of shame. And as a pastor's wife, these feelings of shame are all the more acute because such things are almost inevitably so public in her case.4
3. Loneliness. Many spouses of professionals feel lonely, but few situations can compare with the sense of desertion in the case of pastor's adultery. Even close friends disappear from the radar screen. It is not always because people do not care; "often they do not know what to say," confided one survivor of her pastor husband's unfaithfulness.
4. Lost identity. A more basic question facing the grieving spouse is "Who am I?" For so long she was Mrs. Pastor. Her self-concept, her dress and appearance, her place in society, her very life revolved around their ministry. Thus her natural reflexes will lead her to defend the pastor5 and to blame herself or the other woman. In losing her husband, she often feels she has become nobody and has nothing. She is denied involvement in ministries where she received her approval, and scores of people who depend on her support are forsaken due to no fault of hers. She is losing not only a breadwinner, but the father of her children, a roommate, a soul mate.
5. Duped. As the story unfolds and the mask falls off, the wife is faced with awful new surprises. She discovers to what extent she has been duped, how much duplicity and deceit has lain at the heart of their marital relationship.6 She feels foolish. She was so willing to give her husband the space he needed, to respect his professional secrets, his goings out and comings in! "In order not to spend all her time jealous, curious, or angry, a pastor's wife has to give her husband to his work almost to the point of not caring."7 But where is the line between trust and naivete? Love does cover multitude of sins, but how could her love be so blind as to be unable to recognize and prevent this much clandestine evil?
6. Set aside. Now that the evil had happened, Heather Bryce remembers: "The 'other women' ex-friends, Christians do not seem to need to say they are sorry or to ask forgiveness, and that leaves an empty sense of loss. Counselors told me not to get in touch with any of them, and so forgiveness had to be only from me and not returned.The support we have received has been primarily for my husband. Many, many letters to both of us encourage me to for give him, and assure him that good has come from his past ministry. Many times the help I get is in the form of 'Have you lost any weight? How are you treating him now?'"8 I admit to being surprised at the paucity of literature which focuses on the spouse of an unfaithful pastor. Why is that?
Impact on the other husband
If the literature is scarce when it comes to the betrayed pastor's wife, the husband of the "other woman" is virtually forgotten. And this is so in spite of the fact that similar shame, guilt, loss of identity, self-respect, rejection, and betrayal hit this man.
In the case of King David, the thing God was convincing him of was not only the lustfulness and impurity of what he had done with Bathsheba but the callous wrong he had inflicted on another man, the owner of the "one sheep" (2 Sam. 12:1-4).9
In the first place, adultery, as seen from the perspective of the betrayed man in David's situation, is transgression against the commandment, "Thou shall not murder." But even if David had not taken the physical life of Uriah, he would have killed the "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24) divinely designed unity to which a husband and wife abandon themselves.
Moreover, it is also in a very real sense stealing stealing another per son's husband or wife or father or mother, stealing another's most intimate happiness, breaking up (or certainly severely jeopardizing) another person's home. And yes, God appears to take the most active interest in this, the victim's side of sexual infidelity. He is concerned with the rights of the defrauded ones.
Paul declares, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to take a wife for him self in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God; that no man transgresses, and wrongs his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things" (1 Thess. 4:3-6). In Hebrews 13:4, Paul adds: "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous."
"When a person has attained his desires and what looks like a new happiness in a second marriage, it is easy to forget the price that has had to be paid for it, not paid by him but by somebody else. Somebody else has paid the price of losing his life-companion; somebody else has shed tears far into the night; somebody else has been robbed of his happiness; somebody else has had his home broken up; somebody else has been left lonely, struggling along on his own; children have been left without a father or mother. It is easy to forget the terrible wrongs another has suffered as we enjoy our new love. But God does not forget." 10
Impact on children Here they are, innocent and unsuspecting. Huddled behind their mother and father, their tower of force, their models, their image of who God is, their example of how life is lived. It is prob ably the mother who will have to break the news to the children, to face their many complex and confused reactions of an intensity never yet experienced.
1. Their father left them. They feel like they are not worth keeping at any price.
2. Public humiliation assails their lives. The whispers behind their backs, the gossip, the looks of pity make them want to disappear from the very community where they were nurtured. This all the more if the pastor is required to make a public confession.
3. Inability to trust themselves and others grips their minds. They wonder if they have "inherited" their father's tendency to unfaithfulness.
4. Sexual development may also be affected. "A child's dawning awareness of an attitude towards sexuality is, in large part, dependent on what he or she observes in the home."11
5. Children's religious experience will most likely suffer as well. There remains often a deep sense of resentment toward the church, religion, and God, who seem to have been proven impotent to protect their father from falling into temptation.12
6. Children are never too young or too old to be affected by the sexual infidelity of their parents. At about three years of age my son overheard a conversation with a neighbor whose husband had run away with her friend. As she and her little boy Mark pushed their grocery cart down the aisle, my son asked thoughtfully: "Daddy, where is Mark's dad?" "Oh, he went big bye-bye." An expression of concern came over his face. "Daddy, will you go big bye-bye someday?" I looked him straight in the eyes and said emphatically: "No, my son, never." He stretched up his little arms and gave me a choking hug for what seemed a long time.
Impact on the "other woman"
It is hard to know who receives more blame for adultery, the pastor's wife for not being the woman he needs, or the "other woman" for being a woman he should not need. The bias either way seems to be in favor of the pastor.
We will let Pamela Cooper-White share the view of several women scholars. "I argue, however, that such intimate relating is always an unethical boundary violation and that it is always the pastor's responsibility to maintain the appropriate boundaries. As with rape, a pastor's sexual and romantic involvement with a parishioner is not primarily a matter of sex or sexuality but of power and control. For this reason I call it pastoral sexual abuse rather than 'pastor-parishioner relations' or, worse, a matter of private activity between consenting adults (which is almost always how the perpetrator will describe it)... there can be no authentic consent in a relationship involving unequal power."13
The minister carries ultimate spiritual authority. He is often physically stronger and more imposing. He may be the "other" woman's employer, teacher, mentor, or counselor.
While we must always keep these factors in mind, and recognize that the pastor's responsibility is greater, an undeniable fact remains true: Short of rape or malicious abuse, we are accomplices in sexual infidelity whenever we trespass the boundaries of others or allow anyone to violate our boundary of intimacy. Whatever the circumstances, the "other woman" faces several issues.
1. The issue of stealing another woman's husband. All of the ensuing consequences of this act will come to haunt her. In the case of divorce and the marriage of the pastor and the "other woman," one wonders if the woman ever stops to think that the legitimate wife of her present "husband" is living alone in lodgings, "going out to work to support herself, doing without companionship once precious to her all because she stole the husband and thereby broke up the home."14 This knowledge has to affect her negatively in one way or another.
2. She is not just a victim, she is an accomplice too. However vulnerable she may have been, however powerful the pastor's impact on her, however bad her previous marriage, or abusive her husband, her "solution" to problems has now multiplied the number of victims for which there is no complete resolution.
Hession adds, "One wonders if she has ever humbled herself before God to confess the wrong she has done to the betrayed wife as a sin against God, whether she has ever been to confess it and crave her forgiveness and ask what can be done to put it right."15
3. Her sense of self is greatly damaged. She may feel ashamed, guilty, and stupid for letting herself be used as an object of pleasure. Her sense of self-worth, of trust and safety, are nearly destroyed. Her loss of idealism and hope are almost gone.16
4. Some women have serious physical and psychological difficulties. Stress and anxiety resulting from threats by the pastor if she blows the whistle, produced anxiety disorders, sleeplessness, and a variety of other serious health problems are results of the adulterous action.17
5. Finally, there also are serious spiritual problems. Such a woman may well have a feeling of being betrayed by God, the church, and by Christian friends who so avidly defend the "name" of the church and the reputation of their pastor that they would not listen to her side of the story even prior to the sexual act.18
Impact on the pastor
Innocence is the quality or state of being characterized by purity and integrity, and by freedom from guile and cunning. Innocent lives enjoy pro found serenity even under the most trying circumstances, the most alluring temptations, and the most glaring injustices. In spite of being sold as a slave, of resisting sexual advances of his mistress, and in spite of the consequent wrongful imprisonment, Joseph in the dungeon "had the peace that comes from conscious innocence."19
The devastating effects of a lost innocence have the greatest impact on the pastor caught in sexual infidelity. This loss affects all aspects of life and being.
1. Loss of personal innocence comes as a shock. Before the event of sexual intimacy, nothing seemed to signal such a profound change of self-image. The popular Playboy literature and its pervasive viewpoint is awash with false claims that free sex can be safe sex, and that casual intimacy is nothing more than a fabulous form of entertainment with no negative side effects.
The truth is that profound changes do occur in one's internal relation to himself. Sexual intimacy introduces us into the inner sanctum of another per son, where all dimensions of the two personalities converge. No other ex perience does this quite as completely.
- Sexual intimacy involves a total self-giving to the other. And since we have but one totality of self, multiple self-giving splinters our sense of integ rity into fragments.
- This experience of the shredding of self is caused also because each other partner connects to us differently and lays claims upon us in unique ways. We are no more our own in the way we were formerly.
- Besides this, so much duplicity and deceit lie beneath every adulterous affair.
- A profound shame bursts out (even if it's repressed) when the individ ual faces up to this new compromised self; when the members of the family do not know how to relate; when friends act strangely; even when (or especially when) speaking to God feels contrived or audacious.
2. Loss of marital innocence is another surprise. The union with our wife, the support she has always given, the plans and dreams we shared are now off lim its to us. We feel unworthy of this. We have nothing to hold on to.
- To begin with we have "lost any reason to be trusted."20
- While before we consoled, pro tected, or rescued the family from trouble, we now cannot provide assis tance, not daring nor knowing how to seek or receive the help we need.
- There remains precious little of our status as a husband or head of the fam ily. We lose our job, income, and position of honor. "I felt emasculated," confessed a client to me.
- Only God can forgive completely. "My wife forgave me, I know full well. And I will always feel forgiven. But that is not innocence. Not yet."
3. With loss of professional innocence a pastor's downfall is complete. Such pas tors may see themselves as the cause of more sufferings than could ever have been imagined.
- "Even though the pastor is human (with all the temptations and vulner abilities of other humans), by his or her vocation pastors have chosen to live on a higher plane and strive for a higher calling. This includes [taking responsibility for] the welfare of the church members and for the good name of the church in the community. Thus the effect of sexual misconduct by the pas tor is catastrophic to the persons involved and devastating to the church and the faith of the community. It may take a lifetime of trauma treatment for those involved. It may take a generation of disillusionment before the faith of the community is regained."21
- But the hardest by far is to face God, the most wounded and the most innocent victim of all. David was right when he said, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight" (Ps. 51:4).
It is against the backdrop of God's inestimable generosity that David snatched the only wife Uriah had. It is against God's express command that he acted by snubbing His divine authority. In the words of Matthew Henry,
"The devil, by aggravating the exception, endeavoured to invalidate the concession. The divine law cannot be reproached unless it first be misrepre sented."22 David knew that he lied to God directly: "Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts" (Ps. 51:6).
- Hardest of all is to face the Chief Shepherd when as undershepherds we have acted as thieves and adulterers. So hard that all our instincts, reason, feel ings, experiences, and many friends shout to us to "hide behind a fig leaf! Go to another place of labor!"
But where can we hide? Where indeed? Where can we go, if not to Him? It is now the time to offer the sacrifice acceptable to God. Not a fig leaf. He will reject that. He will see through it!
Rather a "broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Ps. 51:17). Sin, especially this sin, cannot be simply painted over, masked, straightened out, redressed.
Nothing short of the intervention of the Creator God can restore us back to innocence. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit" (Ps. 51:10-12, RSV).
We will take up this question in the final part of this series (in the upcoming November issue of Ministry).
1 G. Lloyd Rediger, Ministry and Sexuality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 29, 30.
2 Stanley J. Grenz and Roy D. Bell, _______ (Downers Grove: InterVarsiry Press, ———), 123.
3 Pamela Cooper-White, "Soul Stealing: Power Relations in Pastoral Sexual Abuse," The Christian Century, 20 February 1991, 199.
4 Grenz, 121.
5 Ibid., 122.
6 Ibid., 123.
7 Heather Bryce, "After the Affair: A Wife's Story," Leadership, Winter 1988, 63, 64.
8 Ibid., 65.
9 Roy Hession, Forgotten Factors (Fort Washington: CLC, 2003), 21.
10 Ibid., 22, 23.
11 Grenz, 125.
12 Douglas Todd, "The Beginning of the End," Vancouver Sun, 13 January 1994, Al.
13 Cooper-White, 196, 197.
14 Hession, 25.
15 Ibid., 25.
16 Marie Fortune, Is Nothing Sacred? (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 109, 110.
17 Shirley Feldman-Summers and Gwendolyn Jones, "Psychological Impacts of Sexual Contact Between Therapists or Other Health Care Practitioners and Their Clients," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (1984): 105-161.
18 See Fortune, 99-107.
19 Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1940), 218.
20 Bryce, 64.
21 Selma A. Chaij Mastrapa, "Response by a Psychologist," Adventist Review, online edition: http://www.adventistreview.org/2003-1509/storyl-2.html
22 Hession, 63.
