Horrible things

A recent column by L.A. Times reporter William Lobdell chronicles his time as a religion writer for the Times, and his slide from being a “born-again” Christian to agnosticism. As a self-declared serious Christian, Mr. Lobdell was thrilled at the opportunity to match his calling to his vocation. He hoped to be able to report religion stories more seriously and respectfully than he had seen in the past.

And that’s the way it worked out at first. He told stories of forgiveness and faithfulness?stories about earnest and delightful people. During the time when he was converting to his wife’s Catholicism, he also began covering shocking stories of abuse by priests, cover ups, payoffs, and other disillusioning behavior by those who propped up the offenders. He saw what appeared to him to be widespread hypocrisy in religious leaders. Mr. Lobdell abandoned his plans to become Catholic and stopped going to his former church also.

Then he turned his eye toward television preachers as investigations revealed opulent lifestyles, tax fraud, and a list of unsavory behaviors that just couldn’t be told in an uplifting way. By the end of the column, William Lobdell says that he concluded he didn’t have the gift of making that leap of faith across all this sludge. He requested reassignment from the paper.

I find the story very poignant even though my inner apologist was firing comments as I read it: “Don’t equate religion with Christianity!” “Sincere Christians are also scandalized by these things!” “He’s chosen two of the most unbiblical laboratories ever for an evaluation of his faith!” and so on. Admit it, some of you were thinking the same things as you read my brief account of it. You’d be right. Those are important points to consider when someone becomes a poster child for faith that doesn’t take root.

There’s a human element to it also that we should recognize in those around us. Why is it that some pastors hesitate to hire a secretary from their own churches? Why does my Spidey sense start to tingle when a prospective employee rails against the pagans he formerly worked with and then expresses a certainty that God’s people won’t disappoint in the same way? It’s because expectations like this are often devastatingly unrealistic.

Sure, I’d hope that folks who get to know Christian leaders would see that they are in private what they are in public, and this is overwhelmingly true. To some folks this isn’t enough. I remember going to preach for a young pastor who seemed to very much appreciate my writing. I spent the night with his family and preached the morning service the next day. All weekend long I sensed that he was disappointed, especially that I preached from an NIV Bible. I never heard from him again after that weekend. It happens and there’s no way to guard against disappointing someone who expects you to be superhuman.

On the other hand, bad things happen in ministry that we should take more seriously than we often do. I’ve heard young believers berated for voting against a founding member in a church business meeting. It is to my shame that neither I nor my church initiated a Matthew 18 process with that older deacon. I’ve heard iffy jokes and cold-blooded comments made in the presence of young clerical workers with no thought about how this might affect their spiritual walk. I’ve seen leaders storming down the hall for some petty thing or another, all the time assuming that everyone will be more forgiving of them than they are of others. Hey, I’ve been that guy and someone should have jerked a knot in me.

The disillusionment we can inspire in those about us by being hypocrites may not be enough to shake their faith in God but it can surely ruin our ability to be ministers to them or to those they tell of their disappointment. The weaker brothers among us are a stewardship from God.

Our attitudes don’t have to be intentionally wicked and our actions needn’t be illegal for the impact to be horrible. But some of the things that churches and ministers blink at too readily are objectively bad, even to the lost world. These things have fallout way beyond the principals, although, as in the case of clergy abuse, that can be quite bad enough.

Our churches all contain some people who are very tender. Some of these are also a bit judgmental and arrogant. They look for flaws in others and dwell on them until their feelings are hurt irreparably. If these immature ones are offended by the truth of our lives or by the gospel itself, that’s regrettable but not something we can untangle for them. If they are offended because we are too timid to confront open sin or because we are self-absorbed louts, it’s another kettle of fish altogether.

Mr. Lobdell’s case sounds like the seed that fell among thorns (Matthew 13:22). Perhaps this look at the ugly underworld of Christian religiosity was his first experience with hypocrisy of this magnitude. I know that if he was ever born again he still is. All that said, when seed falls on hard ground, take care that we are not the birds that eat them up. And when a tender plant is choked by thorns, woe to us if Christians are counted among the thorns.