In the previous post in this series we talked about how the bible (and church history) are full of the failures of followers of God—and that these failures are critiqued by other followers of God. In this post I want to continue on this theme, except zooming in on the failures of leaders. I think the topic is particularly relevant because from biblical times to the present leaders are often either directly or indirectly responsible for the failures among the followers of God. In recent times it feels like every year there is a mega-pastor or Christian leader that "falls" and we hear about it in the headlines. Even for more widespread systemic issues that have made headlines recently—like the horrors of residential schools and associated unmarked graves in Canada under the Catholic Church—much of the responsibility can be traced back to those in leadership positions.
When it comes to critiquing leaders among God's people, a good place to start is with Jesus himself! He is, after all, the one who originated the now-popular phrase "wolves in sheep's clothing." He uses the phrase in a teaching found in Matthew 7:15-20 in which he warns about "false prophets." And remember, the word "prophet" here isn't meant to be understood in the narrow sense of "someone who tells the future" but more generally as someone who communicates on behalf of God. One reason this passage is important is it shows that Jesus is not surprised or caught off-guard by the fact that some Christian leaders turn out to be false or wicked. From the beginning, he knew that some people would be pastors or leaders for the wrong reasons, and warned his people to watch out for them.
It is well-known that Jesus' greatest opponents during his ministry were the Pharisees: highly religious, educated, and well-respected individuals who would have been seen as the spiritual elites and leaders at the time. Jesus was surprisingly gentle and forgiving towards prostitutes and tax collectors but unflinchingly firm in his critiques of the Pharisees. The entirety of Matthew 23 is devoted to warnings and "woes" regarding them: their hypocrisy, their neglect of justice and mercy, and their fakeness. Jesus saw first-hand that the very people we look to to lead us spiritually can sometimes do the most harm to us spiritually.
The same phenomenon can be seen elsewhere in the Bible as well. In the Old Testament, one of the major downfalls of Israel that led to its judgement and exile was the rebelliousness of its kings. Kings at that time were not only political leaders but religious leaders as well, in charge of keeping the nation on track serving God. But the story of 1 and 2 Kings is essentially the long narrative of Isreal's kings getting worse and more wicked over time. At the other end of the Bible, in the New Testament letters that are after the Gospels, Paul and the other early church leaders often have to speak out and warn against false and toxic teachers. The book of Galatians is almost entirely written against a group of preachers that were trying to get Gentiles in that congregation to be circumcised and follow other Jewish customs. And this was no small and inconsequential theological squabble. It was having real-world consequences: the Galatian church was being divided over it and racial prejudice was growing between the Jews and non-Jews. A congregation going through that scenario nowadays would likely feel like, and be described as, a toxic place.
So is saying all this meant to minimize, defend, or excuse Christian leaders who do bad things? As I've said numerous times through this series—no! Bad things are bad things. Christian pastors who do bad things need to be dealt with and held accountable. But here are the three points I'm making:
The fact that there are bad or false Christian leaders is not a surprise to God. Unquestionably it breaks His heart, but He was fully aware that this is something that would sometimes happen.
We don't need to leave Church entirely to be able to critique its leaders. It is often wise and healthy for people to leave the church they had been attending if it was toxic or especially if there was abuse going on. But apart from situations where our well-being is at risk, we should consider it an expected part of being a Christian to be on alert for "false prophets" and always be discerning what sort of "fruit" our leaders are bearing.
All of this reassures me that Church is still worth it. Despite all the harm that the Church and its leaders have caused, if God was aware that this sort of thing would happen and decided to go ahead with it anyway, it must mean that God sees Church as worth it. Something about what the Church is and what the Church does must be valuable and precious enough to God that it has been His "plan A" from the beginning and he's never scrapped it for a plan B.
An addendum regarding pastoral sexual scandals and abuse...
So above I attempted to show that there have been false, immoral, and untrustworthy leaders among the followers of God from the beginning. They faced the same sorts of issues in biblical times as we do today.
One exception to that that pops out at me, however, is pastoral sexual scandals. Nowadays, it seems like when we hear about something going wrong in a church context, that's often what it's about: a sexual scandal of some kind. The string of Christian leaders that have "fallen" recently have typically involved sexual scandal (particularly sexual abuse): Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, Brian Houston, Jean Vanier, Bruxy Cavey, Carl Lentz, etc.
In stark contrast, that is not a problem that comes up much in the New Testament church. The problems dealt with among leaders in New Testament times had more to do with pride, hypocrisy, legalism, false teaching, divisiveness, and so on. Now, if we were to include Old Testament examples the situation gets more complex, because in Old Testament times it would have been common for Israelite kings to have both multiple wives as well as slaves (that they could/did have had sex with). So among Old Testament leaders there definitely were more sexual sins, but the historical context was so different that it's hard to draw exact parallels with today.
Regardless, I would be really curious to hear someone more knowledgeable in this area speak to this phenomenon. What explains this discrepancy?
Has pastoral sexual abuse/sin always occurred at this rate, but we're only more aware of it now because of the media?
Or has pastoral sexual abuse/sin risen in its frequency recently? If yes, what explains the increased frequency?
Relatedly, are pastors engaging in sexual abuse at a rate similar to leaders in other, non-religious organizations? Or is the rate higher among pastors? And if it is, why?
Whatever the explanation there certainly is something terribly wrong going on in the Church in this regard, and I would like to hear what the experts say about it.