Martin Luther said, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.” This coming from a man who deeply loved Jesus, pioneered the Reformation, and drank more beer than he probably should have. Oh, my evangelical!
Where’s the Empathy?
Here’s one of a number of true stories. A pastor and his wife came to me for counseling from out of state. A staff member walked into the pastor’s study and surprisingly caught him viewing pornography. The staff member told an elder in the church what he had witnessed. That understandably led to the elders meeting with the pastor and discussing this concerning issue. The leadership decided to place the pastor on a three-month sabbatical with the understanding that he seek counseling for his problem.
The pastor and his wife counseled with me in an Intensive Out Patient (IOP) setting for three days. That’s a lot of time to find out about some one’s life.
When dealing with sin issues, we so often look at just the symptom (the in-your-face sin) rather than the cause (the pathology) of why the sin happened in the first place.
Isn’t that what God did in Genesis 4?
Symptom: Cain kills his brother Abel.
Cause: Cain had anger toward God because he felt God always chose his brother over him.
God was concerned for Cain and even asked him, “Why are you angry?” Unfortunately for Cain, he didn’t go there. The answers are always in the why, not the actual act of sin. That’s hard for evangelicals to understand because we’re trained to punish sin first, then, when there’s change, we’ll embrace you back in the fold … but often at a distance.
This is what happened to the pastor who was caught viewing pornography. We went into many of the causes regarding this issue, and, by the grace of God, made real progress. The problem was, when he went back home, he was fired!
The leaders felt that there had to be a statement made for “purity’s sake” within the church. That meant that the pastor had to leave and a new one was brought in.
I couldn’t help asking one of the elders if he had ever viewed porn. He said that question was irrelevant. I then said, “This man trusted you with his position as well as his family, and in return you gave him the left foot of fellowship!” I then asked how many leaders were on the church board. He gave me a number. I closed by saying that there was a very good possibility that at least two or three of these leaders are viewing pornography as well.
You see, they reacted to the pastor’s sin while not taking more of an interest in the cause of that sin. It’s difficult to be empathetic with others when our religious upbringing blinds us from the truth: “You who are without sin cast the first stone.”
