Why should I go to church when it’s full of hypocrites? (continued)
Having gone through the exact thing she was now facing from a spiritual standpoint, I understood the pain she was feeling. Both she and my daughter, myself, and countless other Christians have experienced in some point in our walk. We have taken our eyes off what is really important, being our personal relationship to Jesus Christ, and making it totally dependent on our emotions and fleshly logic.
My daughter made a mistake that many Christians do – they see their pastor as being the perfect example of what a Christian should be never realizing that he is made of flesh and blood too. When we follow or put the trust and faith into man that should only be given to God, we are setting ourselves up for failure and disappointment. If the pastor did have an affair, he should first seek the forgiveness of God, then the forgiveness of his wife. He should then seek the forgiveness of his congregation and the woman he had the affair with. However, he should no longer serve as the pastor of the church for a couple of reasons:
- The husband is to be to the wife what the Lord Jesus Christ is for the church. When the husband has an affair, not only does he forsake his marital vows to his spouse, he has also broken them with God.
- As a pastor, he has the responsibility to be the husband of one wife, blameless, and of good behavior (I Timothy 3:2, 3:12; Titus 1:6). By having the affair, he has disqualified himself for the role of pastor.
It does not mean that the man serving as pastor has lost his salvation or his relationship with God; it means that he has lost the special position that God has called him to serve. His repentance of the sin will restore his fellowship with God but there will still be consequences of the sin that cannot be undone. Instead of giving up on church, my daughter should watch and wait to see what the pastor does since the affair was just made known within the last two weeks or so.
If he truly apologizes, steps down, and the church selects another to serve, then there is nothing hypocritical about how the church or the pastor handles things. If he does not seek forgiveness and resign, then she has the right to move to another church.
The former college student of mine made a mistake that Christians can easily become consumed by. I do understand the need to keep physically busy when trials, difficulties, and those “valley walks” happen in our lives. I think that our subconsciousness believes that if we work ourselves to the point of sheer exhaustion, we will be too tired to think and will be able to sleep and if we keep busy we will not be able to dwell on our situation. I believe that this is the situation in her case. When asked, she said she never asked the pastor for clarification; her pastor also was wrong for telling her not to question the church leadership. He should have given her an honest answer rather than to be so dismissive of her question.
Neither of these women have the scriptural authority to to write off all churches and church members as being hypocrites. Churches are not where you will find the spiritually perfect, sinless people but where you will find people who are struggling with the flesh, who seek the comfort of God’s presence and his people. They are hurting, they are mourning, they are spiritually growing, they are fighting the same devils and trials these young ladies are fighting. Those who regularly attend church want to share one another’s burdens, lift up prayers for the afflicted, and praise those who receive a blessing from God.
