Christianity Today news editor Daniel Silliman is trying to make sense of the recent spate of moral failures in evangelical leadership. Some good words here from Dan and Augustine:
Today is not a day when I feel particularly optimistic about the evangelical church. Normally, my own faith doesn’t feel connected to the fate of celebrity ministers. But when the news of “moral failings” piles up, and I read stomach-churning details of sexual abuse, and institution after institution demonstrates that they don’t really believe Jesus when he said that thing about millstones (Matt. 18:6), I do get gloomy.
Tony Evans. Robert Morris. Paul Pressler. Carl Lentz again. It’s too much.
But I do take encouragement from a few things I recently read in Augustine’s sermons:
- This isn’t a new problem. Preaching to people about to be baptized, Augustine urged them to beware of “the bad faithful … those who are faithful in their confession of faith but unfaithful unbelievers in the bad lives they lead.”
- God uses the wickedness of successful people to teach us to reject our natural human evaluations of success. Augustine makes this point with regard to wealth, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t also apply to honor and fame. “God, by giving these things to bad people,” he said in a sermon in the year 405, “is teaching you to desire better things.”
- Whatever secret sins of famous ministers are ultimately exposed, I know that Jesus still has the cure for my own ill soul. “His, his is the medicine,” Augstine preached. “Every day people who seemed to be good fall away and perish; and again, ones who seemed to be bad are converted and live.”
Source: Christianity Today daily newsletter.