One story of abuse is one too many, but the instance is exceptionally disturbing when the perpetrator is a pastor. This person is supposed to be a representative of God in a broken world, but instead he betrays his friends and his flock in the most heinous way. For those who knew him personally, for those who heard him exhort, encourage, pray, and preach the word of God with conviction, this news can uncover questions of faith-shaking proportions. How can someone, by all claims and appearances, know God and yet perpetrate evil? What does this say about the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit in a believer's life? Or is everything I've heard a lie? Some people would choose to believe so, and point to this instance as yet another example of the hypocrisy of Christianity. I have to admit that those thoughts have crossed my mind as well. At the end of it, though, I don't think Christians need to be embarrassed by these instances, as if the failings of our leaders have any bearing on the truths they taught us. Rather, this is a story that is repeated far too often, but it only serves to confirm the gospel each time.
We are seriously messed up human beings. If a pastor whom so many people respect can act this way, what does that say about me and my capacity for sin? This situation is proof that no amount of study, no vocational calling, no degree of success can protect us from ourselves. We are completely inept at maintaining moral purity and we have a desperate need for divine intervention. Religion does not cause these atrocities. These events only serve to draw our attention to the basic assumptions that atheists still makes on a daily basis:
A. There is a way the world ought to be. ( Example: Pastors should live in honest and uplifting fellowship with their members).
B. The world is not the way it should be. This is not a matter of moral preference, but of very definite reality, a moral universal law.
C. We ought to be held accountable for our actions.
D. Justice must be served.
E. Human justice is not enough. (Dispensation of human justice does not erase the devastation this man caused in the life of the victim or the church community.)
If no God exists to save us from this dilemma, then we are truly hopeless.
It would be easy to doubt God in situations like this. It would be easy to blame Him and curse him, because those who were supposed to be His representatives have done a pitiful job. In one pastor's failing we see the age-old problem of evil arrayed in modern robes. But instead of asking why God allowed this to happen, we must consider how this situation points us back to God; how the existence of evil is actually evidence for God.
This is a God who holds us accountable.
who hates sin
who dispenses justice
who promises evil's annihilation.
But he goes beyond even that. Our God is not only a God who has power over evil, but who stepped into it. This is a God who became human,
who endured suffering and hatred.
who bore with injustice
who offers forgiveness
who modeled humanity as it was meant to be
who makes restoration possible
who faithfully brings good out of every bad situation
who took on Himself the cataclysmic consequence of humanity's sin, so that we might step into the incorruptible glory of Divinity. .
Sickening situations like these will arise, and in each one I have a choice. I can walk away from what I've been taught, reject faith, turn into myself and try to find my own answers for the atrocities in this world. But I am already well acquainted with human frailty; I'll find no satisfactory answers down that road. Or I can retreat to the arms of the only One I know to be true and stable in this world. When everything is turned upside down, I have nowhere else to turn.
