Editorial note: This is the final installment of Ministry's eight-part series dealing with pastoral sexual infidelity, that began in January 2004.
When I was 13, news of adultery in my native village church hit me with herculean force. I wondered what it meant to be a member of a Bible believing church. All my arguments for Christianity vanished as my fellow villagers taunted me, saying that my religion could not create better citizens than could the secular Communist society in which we lived. The question presented itself with compelling force: Is there any hope for marriage here on this earth?
Today, as we look at the increasing trend of sexual infidelity inside the church and among its ministers, the same questions of identity, relevancy, and hope for the church, its ministry, and Christian marriage face us. Perhaps our young people face it even more pointedly than those of us with a few more years of life under our belts.
In this essay we ask: What kind of church would it take to stave off immoral behavior and make faithfulness and purity in relationships an attractive reality? What corporate self-concept, what level of intimacy with God and His Word would yield a community that would cause people in the surrounding culture to notice and say, "These Christians are different people. Their marriages are safer, and their sons and daughters are taught the eternal principles that are relevant for today. There is hope because there is a Christian church" (see Deut. 4:5, 8).
In the world
The truth is that in a very important sense, Christians are not yet home, and this is of capital importance to us. In the words of Jesus, His disciples "are in the world" (John 17:11) but "not of the world" (verse 14). Unsettled and with out sovereign borders, they, though united as one body, live geographically scattered throughout the world where they do not belong (John 18:36). While living with their neighbors, they are called upon not to live just like them. They are called to be "strangers and exiles on the earth" (Heb. 11:13, RSV). In this environment, infidelity is openly promoted, rather than sexual fidelity in marriage. Here is how this promotion presents itself:
1. The centrality of the individual. The church is plunged into a society of dis connected individuals. It is not as much the proverbial village that raises a child as it is television, the Internet, or the street. This is the outcome of the long march of history.
Starting with humanism in the Renaissance, aided by the corruption of the Reformation's stress on the individual's direct access to God, through the affirmation of the primacy of reason in the Enlightenment, and finally the personal, political, and economic freedoms that have evolved in Western democracies, we come today to the postmodern radical individualism where self is the center and its own authority.
Accordingly, all institutions, includ ing marriage, are here to serve "me." My priorities, my aims, my methods, my needs must be satisfied. Personal preferences are the standard when it comes to deciding what is right. Personal experiences are the standard of what is real, and personal desires are the touchstone for what is best.1
In such a climate, if my priorities, aims, or needs are not met, staying married makes no sense. If the contrary is the case, and you cater to my needs, only then are you seen to love me, only then are you worth being loved in return. The one-flesh union, the "until death do us part," the "forsaking all and keeping yourself only for her" are retro categories today. This same self-centeredness and all that goes with it are part and parcel of the minister's adultery too.
2. The individual as the creator of truth. One basic difference between the individualism of the seventeenth century and the modernism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is the issue of truth. Truth is not out there anymore in quite the way it used to be. It is not an objective locus, exercising influence and convicting human minds and hearts. Truth is not to be discovered, it must be created; it is not to be heard but intuited. And the difference is enormous.
"People who discover truth and people who create truth think and behave in quite different ways. Logically, truth makers are bound by their own rules." 2 And because human opinion fluctuates, so will rules of conduct and commitments, including our marital vows. Thus they are made vulnerable and remain unprotected from the hazard of morphs and mutations.
Competition and friction between truth makers is to be expected, and divorces can be avoided only by some kind of carefully designed "loose" relationship. Hence, for instance, the popularity of the custom of cohabitation. This kind of "truth making" is also a key ingredient when it comes to sexual infidelity.
3. An incredible burden. But life is no easier now than it used to be. The radical freedom of this radical individualism yields radical aloneness. The fair-weather spouse is not there when you're under the weather. He and she have their own needs to tend to, and if the partner can not meet them, then they are free to look elsewhere for someone who will.
Vulnerable and insecure to the core, the contemporary Adam rejects the expert diagnosis, "It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18). He is too obsessed with self to fully trade his freedom for one-flesh unity.
But there is yet another burden: responsibility without accountability. The idea of arbitrating between different versions of truth, life aims, priorities, and allegiances may seem great until someone else's truths, aims, priorities, and allegiances cross or cancel yours and there is no one to appeal to, because neither partner in the partner ship is accountable to anyone.
Even at the height of an affair, the incredible burdens of aloneness, vulner ability, and liability terrorize the human mind, perhaps especially that of the adulterous pastor.
4. Sex overload. One profound and continuing element amidst all this shift ing of self-centered subjectivism is sex. It is charged with the task of helping men and women discover and develop themselves. Unrestrained gratification without consequences has always been an irresistible temptation, but today it is a culturally sanctioned norm.
In this context the very idea of betrayal is meaningless. Mathews and Hubbard describe the situation in this way: "Sexuality is separated from relationship; a sexual act can be separated from its content and consequences. Sex is only sex; it is emotional candy; it is a body-based 'natural' adrenaline high; it is comfort it helps me 'make it through the night.'. . . Sexual expression is biologically justified; whatever my body finds pleasurable and gratifying is morally acceptable."3
The trouble is, unbridled sex is addictive, not liberating. One recovered pastor confesses: "This is about life and death. The only way I could live another day was to be in an inappropriate sexual relationship. . . . My addiction was destructive to my health, and my marriage, and my career. My addiction gave me many dreadful days. It also kept my heart beating until I found recovery."4
5. Replacement toys. Unable to find true answers to their plight, postmodern men and women grasp for the virtual toys offered by our consumer culture. "Television provides what is in effect a virtual community, one that people may enter without effort, commitment, or risk and leave without being missed or grieved."5
Soaps and sitcoms talk to us, make us laugh and cry. In absence of a deep marital love and intimacy, virtual chat rooms, interactive Web sites, and Internet pornography provide a virtual community replete with sex, or some thing like it.
But this cannot do either. Lonely, burdened, insecure, and addicted to self, many men and women opt for dope or other more desperate measures. Without lifelong belonging, human identity is deconstructed and dissipated.
Not of the world
God alone has the means to heal and keep our marriage unions safe in a society of disconnected individuals.
1. An integrated community. God has called us out (1 Cor. 1:2), as an assembly (James 2:2), a household (1 Tim. 3:15), and a people for Himself (Rom. 9:25, 26). 6
What is our task? It is to manifest what the power and saving grace of Jesus can do to men and women. In His love for the world God did not spare His Son, nor His church as an integrated community; He placed them here so that self-centered individualists have a chance of belonging. Belonging in two ways.
First, interpersonally. Just like an organ in a body is joined to another by blood vessels, nerves, connecting tissue, and joints, "So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another" (Rom. 12:5, RSV, italics added). I cannot mind my own business without affecting yourbusiness, because I as an individual am part of your business.
Second, corporately. Each person belongs to the whole body of Christ. My speaking, touching, and fantasizing affects you, and the entire body. "Now you are the body of Christ and individu ally members of it" (1 Cor. 12:12-27). What I do under the cloak of night impacts my church. How I treat my spouse or my church organist in private is the church's business: Both of us are "individually members of it [Christ's body]."
Today's church must act responsibly as an integrated community in spite of the discomfort and vehement opposition of some of its postmodern members.
2. A disciplined community. Because of this organic closeness, someone will sense when I'm tempted, unless one or neither of us are really members of each other. Church will be a more secure environment for our sexuality and our marriages when Cod's will, not our personal needs, guide our conduct; when we take seriously our responsibility for others and the entire body; when we're willing to risk sharing with our spouse, and a friend of the same gender enough of ourselves so they can "feel" when something is the matter with us; when we respond to the urges coming from the Head of the church (Eph. 5:22) rather than to the "urges" that come from around us and from the darker recesses of our being. The church is a disciplined community when intense preventive ministry precedes corrective or redemptive measures.
3. A gendered community. We bring our sexuality into Christian fellowship. Consequently, our deficiencies, strengths, outlooks, reactions, and vulnerabilities will be gender specific. These idiosyncrasies are our Cod-given right. It is not a matter of majority rule, nor is it dependent on who holds the reins of power.
My church can help prevent adultery when, as a part of its ministry, it provides an aggressive and thorough Christian formation about gender identity and relations by including: (a) information about our own sexuality, and about myths and stereotypes; (b) the opportunity to learn about the other gender and their unique characteristics; (c) an energetic and studied affirmation of biblical teachings about safe maleness and femaleness countering popular distortions; (d) premarital counseling that is adapted to every stage of life. Two or three brief sessions during the month or two before the wedding is merely a formality; it's not enough.
Christian parents must know that children learn what a husband, a wife, and a marriage actually are through the daily interactions that pass between parents. It is the church's privilege to positively influence the content of those lessons. A more intentional instruction about marriage, about sex and sexuality, is essential during the most sensitive and most opportune time of puberty. A safe church will nurture marriage and home life, being "insistent in season and out of season" (2 Tim. 4:2) just like the media is, only better!
4. An obedient community. Business as usual means more and more scandal and less and less reason for people in the surrounding culture to join the church. But the church is called to do her Master's bidding.
During seminars on the "Ethics of Church Discipline" I am often asked: "When did you last hear of any church being involved in church discipline?" (Meaning: "No one does it, so this is not an issue anymore.")
The implications of such a question are serious indeed. First, it implies that no church engages in disciplining its members, even though that is not true. It also indicates that the internal, informal culture of the church (tradition) has become normative. It means that because some churches are indifferent to the pain and despair of those who are in the grips of sin, God, too, must be unconcerned.
When Paul urged us not to "conform" to this "age" (world), but to "be transformed," he did not refer only to the world outside the church. "This age" (aion) is inside as well. Tares will always be inside, even to the moment of the eschaton. But should the tares become the standard?
Notice the paradigmatic shift in the new way some thought leaders do their thinking. In the name of relevancy they begin from the situation in the world that they want to address. Inadvertently, perhaps, they adopt the frames of mind and presuppositions that operate in the surrounding world culture and thus transform theology to make it contextually inoffensive.
But such inoffensive theology risks being ineffective too. The prophetic tradition of the Bible teaches us to start from biblical/theological presuppositions and then confront the social issues with God's Word, yet in a culturally sensitive manner. Our beliefs and our identity must challenge postmodern criticism and postmodern presupposition, precisely because of relevancy. 7 We must trust God's Word. Our mission will not be irrelevant when we stay within the biblical hermeneutical paradigm.
5. A transformational community. The church is called to be a change agent the salt, and the light within its own walls before it can impact the world. If we wish to become a community that can guarantee safety for our marriages, we must become known as a people who invest time, energy, talent, and means for the task.
Christian marriage is not perfect because a Christian man and woman join in holy matrimony. Weddings are beginnings. Marriage is the place where saints-in-process open themselves, as in no other context, to another trusted, "madly-in-love-with-you" person, whose destiny is intertwined with our own.
Spouses need the church as a home. Society is too disconnected. Inside the church their tensions, fears of estrangement, doubts, jealousies, temptations are shared with trusted brothers and sisters, who will not rest until the issues are solved. The church must be different from the world, and intentionally so.
6. A community of resident aliens. But is this thing about a different church realistic? Can such a community ever see the light of day? Who is willing to care as deeply, to be as involved in the traumas of others? Don't we all have enough struggles of our own?
Then too, who is willing to let others come this close into our very private chambers anyway? Am I dreaming? No, but here is Jesus' dream: He wants His church to be without wrinkle, holy and spotless.
With this goal in view He sends us to those of our community who privately mourn our marital failures, who are terrified to share our dreadful secrets, those whose hearts are like "unwanted aliens" just coping to survive. He is aware of children of sexual infidelity whose capacity to love deeply and trust their spouses is all but gone.
Some of them have asked me some agonizing questions: "Is it worth it to fall in love and marry someone and then live in constant fear of divorce? Believe me, I know what my parents went through. Where can I go to get rid of this anxiety, this distrust of myself and this doubt about marriage?" What can we answer? Where do we send them? And where do we send a pastor or his wife?
7. A community of spiritual resources. We must first point people to Jesus Christ Himself. No one can accomplish what a close walk with Him and His direct influence can accomplish. No one contends for us like Michael, our Prince (Dan. 10:21). We are privileged to invite people into closer contact with His church. There they can connect with people of all ages, all levels of education and experience.
Paul is aware of the richness of these resources in the church, and he urges Timothy and Titus to engage everyone in some form of service (1 Tim. 3; 4; Titus 2:1-15; 3:1-11). This is why spiritual gifts are given. Marriage enrichment seminars, for example, teach skills such as communication, conflict resolution, and sexual responsiveness. Our marriages must stay in connection with their home, which is the church, the body of Christ.
But in the case of an actual affair, or adultery, so much more is needed. Spiritual resources such as prayer, fasting, solitude, meditation in God's Word, forgiveness, confession, and worship are needed to survive such ultimate trials. If these habits do not exist, we become vulnerable and weak without knowing it.
There are also para-church organizations that provide highly professional help to victims of pastoral sexual abuse.
To summarize, a Christian marriage, with its unique characteristics, must be lived "in the world," but it must not be "of the world" that promotes self-gratification and self-centered individualism. The Christian church is challenged to construct a community that will give proper support to godly marriages and homes.
"Men and women can reach God's ideal for them if they will take Christ as their helper. What human wisdom can not do, His grace will accomplish for those who give themselves to Him in loving trust. His providence can unite hearts in bonds that are of heavenly origin. Love will not be a mere exchange of soft and flattering words. The loom of heaven weaves with warp and woof finer, yet more firm, than can be woven by the looms of earth. The result is not a tissue fabric, but a texture that will bear wear and test and trial. Heart will be bound to heart in the golden bonds of love that is enduring."8
1 David E. Daye, "The Influence of Postmodernism on the Family: A Biblical-Sociological Analysis"
(Masters Thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2002), 9.
2 Alice P. Mathews, and M. Gay Hubbard, Marriage Made in Eden (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 39.
3 Mathews and Hubbard, 45, 46.
4 Anonymous, "Sexual Addiction," Pastoral Psychology, 39, no. 4 (March 1991): 266.
5 Mathews and Hubbard, 53.
6 Raoul Dederen, ed., "The Church," Handbook of Seventh-day Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 2000), 547-549.
7 Stanley Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Fundamentalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster, 2001).
8 Ellen G. White, The Adventist Home (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1952), 112,113.
