March 30, 2010: Do You Know Your Worst Sins? (Part 1)

Do you know what your worst sins are? Quite possibly you don't have a clue.

The other day I heard a radio preacher talk about all the things he did to keep himself from sexual sin. For example, he won't counsel a woman alone, or drive in a car with a woman alone, or even spend a night by himself in a hotel. His computer has moral filters so powerful that they make even his innocent research difficult. He has locked himself out of the premium cable channels on his TV, and only his wife knows the passcode.

Maybe all those measures are necessary for him to preserve his purity. If so, good - he has done the right things to shore up a weak will. But his focused zeal to make it impossible to commit the sins of seduction and lust leaves me with some concerns.

First there is the danger of Phariseeism. The sin that hung most grievously on the conscience of Pharisees - the one sin they wanted to avoid at all cost - was violating the Sabbath. God had simply said "Don't work," but the Pharisees added to that a long list of rules which ensured that they could never even come close to working. For example, they could not take more than 2,000 steps, and if they carried something, it had to be below the waist and not up on their shoulder where heavy items (like bed mats) were normally balanced.

Jesus did not applaud the stern measures they took to avoid Sabbath work. In fact, he found their legalisms insufferable - especially when they made them law for others. Surrounded by such a cloud of ordinances, Pharisees fogged up the whole meaning of sabbath rest and blinded themselves to its purpose. The thick hedges they built around the fourth commandment became walkways to the violation of other commandments, and hard barriers to the grace of God. I believe it is possible for us to do the same with any commandment - even the seventh.

A second concern has to do with the impairment of ministry. The pastor on the radio said that he had lost ministry opportunities because of his policies, and I'm sure that is true. For example, he would not have been able to minister, as Jesus did, to the woman at the well in John chapter 4. Jesus spoke to this Samaritan sinner alone for a while before his disciples arrived. If he had refused to do so, per the dictates of a "never-alone-with-a-woman" legalism, it is unlikely that she would have opened up about her painful life and received his grace.

Recently I and a couple other men, over the course of two months, helped a divorced woman in troubled circumstances prepare her house for sale. Scheduling issues would have made it impossible for two or three of us to be there at the same time. Had we subjected ourselves to this pastor's rule, we never would have cleaned things and moved boxes and made repairs.

Over the years, countless women have been led to Christ by faithful servants of God who - even though they were male - shared the gospel in good faith without seducing (or being seduced by) them. Discretion is always wise, of course, but it must not be turned into a hammer that crushes God-given opportunities to speak grace or perform acts of kindness.

Third, there is the danger of objectifying women. A female student in seminary told us of a time when she went through a spiritual crisis and tried to make an appointment to see her pastor. But he was a never-see-a-woman-alone zealot, and refused to meet her. She was grieved, and felt that she was not being treated as a troubled human being but as a temptress who posed moral danger to men. Thankfully, a less up-tight associate minister did meet with her and helped her through her crisis of faith. (And no, he didn't try to have sex with her.) It is possible to treat women honorably even when you are alone with them. When our policies suggest otherwise, it is understandable if some women think, "Oh come on, what am I to you - a piece of meat? If your wife isn't in the room, are you afraid you're going to jump me?"

There is a simplicity to the Bible's commands about sexual behavior that must not be lost in the thicket of man-made rules designed to safeguard them. The simplicity is this: "Keep the marriage bed undefiled. Be faithful to your spouse. Don't take another man's wife - don't even think about that." Add your own rules to those if you must, but beware the unintended consequences (Phariseeism, loss of ministry opportunity, objectification of women) that they will tend to drag in their wake.

I can think of a fourth danger that stalks hypersensitivity to one kind of sin: I wonder if it plays a role in desensitizing us to the real jaw-dropping evil in our lives. Pharisees who wouldn't swat a fly on the Sabbath were nonetheless capable of falsifying evidence against a good man so that he would be tortured to death. And what was true of the Pharisees can be shockingly true of us. I know it has been true of me. The radio pastor, who, in my mind, is really in no danger of cheating on his wife, has (in my opinion) a much more serious issue about which he feels no guilt at all. More on that next week, Lord willing.