All the safeguards in the world will not help the counselor who has not come to terms with his own sexuality.
Andre Bustanoby
Prayer, meditation, and temptation make a minister.
Martin Luther
Recent surveys by Christianity Today, Inc. (CTi), show that both pastors and lay people recognize clergy are particularly vulnerable to sexual temptation. Our positions and duties put us in places of potential danger. And all too often, because we are fallible human beings, pastors fall. In the recent past, as we all know, the secular news media have delighted in reporting the sexual sins of prominent ministers. Unfortunately, they’ve had no shortage of stories to tell.
Actually, according to the CTi surveys, there are a lot more stories of pastoral indiscretion that could be told, which should come as no surprise. Of the pastors responding in one survey, 23 percent admitted to having done something they consider sexually inappropriate since entering local church ministry. Most of the time it’s been with someone in the church.
Fully 79 percent of the pastors said they personally know at least one other minister who’s had an extramarital sexual relationship while pastoring a church.
Thus, while we all struggle in this area and many have fallen, it’s to our credit (and God’s grace) as a group, I think, that more of us haven’t yielded in light of the temptations we face, especially in today’s seemingly sex-obsessed society. But there’s no escaping the fact that it’s a serious problem, one of the most serious we face in the tension between being holy and being human. There’s probably no surer way to damage a pastor’s ministry.
In the hope of helping us better understand and deal with this dangerous area of temptation, then, I offer the lessons I’ve learned over the years.
Why and When We’re Most Vulnerable
Contrary to what we might assume, most adulterous situations are not primarily the result of a sexual problem. With those I’ve counseled who had been involved in extramarital affairs, I’ve observed that sexual problems are life problems. That is, when you really get down to the bottom of why something happened, it’s rarely just sexual dissatisfaction with a spouse or lustful desire for the other person. Almost every individual I’ve seen has been dealing with some form of impotence — not sexual impotence necessarily, but what we might call “life impotence.”
People are most vulnerable to sexual temptation, I’ve found, when they’re unable to achieve their goals, when they’re frustrated or they’re discouraged, when their dreams are being dashed. That’s why I say sexual problems are life problems; the sexual involvement grows out of feeling that their lives are out of control, that they’re personally impotent. Life is not affirming their value as people. For pastors, troubles in the church or a church that’s not growing can lead to these feelings.
Then along comes a person who does affirm the hurting person’s value, who accepts him just as he is, who indicates she finds him very attractive. And when the hurting person becomes involved, it’s a way of proving to himself that someone still wants him, that someone still finds him attractive, that at least in this one area, he can still compete with others and win the affections of someone of the opposite sex.
Almost always, this “other woman” is not as attractive physically as the hurting person’s spouse, which I take as further evidence that the infidelity doesn’t grow primarily out of physical desire. This is why I say to an injured wife that trying to make herself more sexy or wrapping herself in cellophane won’t really solve the problem. The wandering husband’s self-image is at the root of things.
Of course, a spouse can be a part of the mix of what makes a person feel down. If home is a place of nothing but “real life” — bills and diapers and taking out the trash — and if a person’s dreams and aspirations are continually belittled or ignored, the person is going to be more vulnerable to the approach of someone else who is supportive.
Another time when people are especially vulnerable is shortly after a big achievement, such as when a goal-oriented pastor completes a major church building project. This may sound as though I’m contradicting everything I said in the preceding paragraphs, but I’m really not.
What happens is that a person pushes, prays, and perseveres day after day, week after week, to reach a certain goal, whether it’s building a church or launching a new ministry. For a while, that goal basically defines his reason for existence. And then one day the goal is reached. There’s no more striving to be done; though there’s still work to do, the major challenge is over. At that point, with the recent driving motivation gone, a person often falls into a few months of emotional lows. And in that postachievement depression, the person is vulnerable to sexual temptation for essentially the same reasons as the person who sees himself as impotent.
Middle age often brings with it a particular vulnerability to sexual temptation, too. Some men become frightened about growing older, and they wonder if women still find them attractive. So they’re tempted to test the waters to find out.
I travel on planes a lot, and it’s interesting to see what happens when the female flight attendants stop relating to a passenger as a male and start calling him sir. I see a number of older men who try to change the relationship from sir to “How about a drink together after we land?” It’s not usually because they’re obsessed with the young woman, but because they want some affirmation that women still think of them as men and not as fatherly types.
The road to sexual intimacy usually begins with the growth of emotional and intellectual intimacy, and there’s plenty of opportunity for that in the pastorate — social contact, counseling, significant conversation about personal topics. The development of a warm relationship into one with sexual overtones can be very subtle, which makes it all the more dangerous; dealing with sexual temptation would be a lot easier if it were based just on physical desire, which is easier to recognize.
Let’s say a pastor is feeling frustrated and a little defeated in his ministry. At home, he’s got two small children and a harried wife, and it seems as though it’s been months since they’ve talked about anything but dirty diapers and leaking faucets. On those occasions when he’s tried to talk about some book he’s been reading or some optimistic plans for the future, his wife has, with understandable reason, responded with “I don’t have time for that” or “I’m too tired to think straight” or “Let’s just try to get to the end of this week, okay?”
And then this pastor meets another woman who has the time and energy to read and stay intellectually alert. The conversations start out innocently. They discover they enjoy one another’s company. This woman supplies an important element his life has been lacking. Before long, the discussion of ideas and events becomes more personal, moving to the emotional level as well as the intellectual. Easily and subtly, compatibility and intimacy on these levels can lead to sexual intimacy as well.
My daughter said something to me recently that surprised me. We were talking about marriage and how infidelity happens, and she said, “I would be hurt more deeply if I found out my husband had a strong friendship with another woman, in which he discussed things with her that he couldn’t or wouldn’t discuss with me, than I would be if I discovered he’d had a one-night stand.” To her, the emotional intimacy with another woman is more significant than a short-lived sexual affair.
Growing up in a more Victorian age, I hadn’t really thought about it that way before. I had been taught that as long as you weren’t sexually unfaithful, other kinds of intimacy didn’t matter. Now I realize how wrong that notion is.
Does this mean we can’t have any close friends of the opposite sex? No, not at all. I’ve always hoped I could be mature enough to have deep friendships with women without any sexual overtones, and I think I have a few such relationships. But all of us need to remain alert to the potential danger because it is so great and so subtle. It’s easy to fool yourself, to lose touch with your spouse because you’ve found a new friend elsewhere, all the while telling yourself there’s nothing wrong with the new relationship because it’s not sexual. Or so we want to believe.
Overcoming Sexual Temptation
Given the usual process by which sexual sin comes about, it naturally follows that the most important part of resisting sexual temptation is to maintain a good marriage relationship. That’s the lesson of my experience, and it was also the answer given by pastors in the CTi survey. If the marriage relationship is meeting the needs God intends, a person won’t usually look to get those needs met elsewhere.
This means husband and wife need to work at maintaining intellectual compatibility. My wife and I try to read together, go to movies and plays and museums together, and then go out afterward, just the two of us, and discuss what we’ve seen or read. That discussion is worth more to our relationship than the outing itself.
Some events are going to stimulate better discussion than others, of course, so it pays to be selective. One of the most stimulating movies Janie and I have found, for example, was Passage to India, where the clash of two different cultures and value systems was so central to the film and made for a lot of interesting observations and conversation between us. It got us talking about what we hold dear, always a good topic for nourishing a relationship.
I know that with all the demands we face, including obligations to our children, finding the time to maintain this kind of relationship with a spouse isn’t easy — far from it. It may be that finding the money for outings and babysitters isn’t easy, either. But there’s simply no more important human relationship in the world for us to maintain. It’s worth the effort and time and money it takes.
Lest I be accused of saying that working on our marriages is drudgery or an obligation or nothing more than insurance against infidelity, let me point out that those times together can be the highlight of every week, more fun than anything else you do. On our wedding day, Janie and I each thought the other was pretty terrific. Over time and as responsibilities crowd in, however, there was a tendency for that vision to grow dim. But we’ve found that a little effort can help rekindle the flame and make it even brighter than before.
Another big help to me in actually avoiding lust has been what I call contextualization. I pastored a church for fifteen years, and after about the twelfth year it dawned on me one day that I’d never had a sexual thought about any woman in the church. That amazed me, frankly, because I’m a sexual being like anyone else. I have sexual thoughts. I notice when I see a beautiful woman on the street; I didn’t go blind when I became a Christian. In fact, earlier in my Christian life, when my buddies and I talked honestly, we all admitted that maintaining sexual purity was one of the major struggles of the younger man.
Why hadn’t I had sexual thoughts about women in the church? As I thought about it, I finally realized it was because I saw each of them in context. I knew all the people there so well that I knew everyone’s husband, wife, son, and daughter, and many of the parents and grandparents, too. No one could be an object of lust to me without my being reminded of that person’s other relationships. I knew that everyone there was a dear person to other people I knew and cared for. This included the women, and I couldn’t look at them apart from their contexts of family and friends.
The only way you can prey on people and turn them into some kind of objects, especially for lust, is to mentally get them out of context. Conversely, if you think of them in context, you’re not nearly so tempted to lust. Thus, I find it a good practice in ministry to continually think of people in context.
For example, suppose I’m driving down the street and see some beautiful teenager who’s dressed in an attention-getting way. My automatic response now is to contextualize her, to say to myself, Hey, she’s about the age of my daughter. I wonder who her parents are and how she gets along with them? And suddenly the sexual part of it disappears. The girl hasn’t changed, but my perception has. Instead of being an object of sexual thoughts, she’s become someone’s daughter, someone’s little girl.
The same thing is true now that I find myself a college president on a campus that has its share of beautiful coeds. I can’t say I haven’t noticed them — I’m not blind — but I can honestly say that I don’t think of them as a sexual turn-on. To me, they’re all someone’s daughters, someone’s sisters, someone’s granddaughters.
After I realized how my mind’s eye was seeing people in context, I also realized that this is a biblical principle. It’s what Paul told Timothy to do in 1 Timothy 5:1-2 — relate to older women as mothers, to younger women as sisters.
I’ve also seen enough lives and ministries ruined by sexual sin that that’s a deterrent for me. And I’ve had frightening temptations in my life that help deter me, too; just thinking about what might have happened if they’d gone another step in the wrong direction scares a lot of sense into me when I need it. We might call that putting yourself in context when you’re tempted.
One time when I was much younger, I was flying to Denver on business, and a young woman in her twenties was sitting next to me. As we were flying, I noticed she was crying. I wondered if I should say anything or just respect her privacy. But after several minutes, I finally said, “Is there any way I can help you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, then looked away.
“Well, I’m involved in youth work, in Youth for Christ,” I said. “And I’d be happy to just talk to you if that would help.”
She began to open up then. She said she had been engaged to a young man, and she’d just learned that he had run off to marry another woman. “The worst part of it is I’m still a virgin,” she said. She went on to say that she had always believed that if you kept yourself pure, everything would turn out right. Now she had decided that since a “wild girl” had stolen her man, her remaining pure had been to no avail, and she was going to go to some ski lodge and make up for lost time.
“Do you think it’s worth giving up what you’ve always believed because of one painful experience?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, then sank into silence. Finally she continued, “Well, where are you staying tonight?”
I told her, and she said she was staying there, too. Then she suggested that maybe after we arrived we could “have a couple of drinks together and see how the evening turns out.” In effect, she was inviting me to help her initiate her new lifestyle.
“I don’t want you to be confused,” I said. “Let me show you my pictures.” I took out my wallet and showed her my family photos. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was putting myself in context. Looking at your wife and children really cools a potentially hot situation.
After I showed her the photos, I went on, “I sympathize with the pain you feel. If you need someone to tell you you’re pretty, let me tell you that you’re very pretty. If you need someone to tell you you’re sexually attractive, let me tell you that you’re very attractive and desirable. But if you want me to say I’m willing to act on that desire, no, I’m not going to do it. You’re vulnerable right now; you’re in a difficult situation. Further, I’m married. I’m also a Christian. And I’m not going to do it because it would mean taking advantage of you and violating my commitments and my faith.” Then I explained a bit of how my faith commitment guides my life.
She was silent for a few minutes, but then she said, “Well, if I thought that by waiting the rest of my life I could find another man who would turn down the offer I made to you tonight, I’d stay a virgin till I found him.”
I replied, “There are more guys like me out there than you may think. I hope you don’t go through with your plan.”
When we got to Denver, I put the young woman in touch with some female YFC staff, and she stayed the night with them. They spent a few days with her and then sent her back home.
So far, thank God, I’ve never been given that kind of offer when I was vulnerable. But I have been tempted, and it’s always helped me to put both the woman and myself in context.
That story raises another issue. Even though I told Janie about that incident later, I didn’t tell her right away. At the time, I thought it would do more harm than good. The incident was over and the young woman was certainly no threat to our marriage, yet Janie might have felt threatened by my travels and unnecessarily uneasy about the times we were apart, knowing this had “just happened.” Later, in the context of another discussion when she could hear about it, and I could tell it, a little more objectively, I thought it was good for her to know about it.
There are some people who think that everything ought to be brought out in the open immediately, that there should be no secrets. But I feel it’s important to ask whether the news is going to help or hurt people. For example, I know a father whose son adores him, and I also happen to know that the father was once unfaithful to the young man’s mother. Would it do that son any good to hear about it? Would it make him a better man? I don’t think so. Will the father feel he’s guilty of some kind of breach of trust if he doesn’t tell his son about it? No, I think it will make him more careful in the future not to break that trust by being unfaithful again.
Carrying painful secrets can be a great burden, and we’re often tempted to unload on the wrong person. We feel better not having to carry the secret alone, even if the person we’ve told becomes burdened with the knowledge. But part of love, I think, is to sometimes bear painful truth silently rather than allow it to cause more pain, unnecessary pain, by spreading to those who would only be hurt.
Recently I received a letter from a nineteen-year-old woman, and in it she says that when she was eight and her brother was nine, a seventeen-year-old uncle babysat for them a number of times during the summer. Over the course of that summer, the uncle molested her repeatedly, she said.
Then that fall, this uncle was killed in a car accident. No one else except the girl’s brother knew what this uncle had done, and everyone in the family adored the uncle. At the funeral, the girl said, the whole family talked about how sad it was that this fine young man had died so early.
“My brother acts as if it never happened. We never talk about it,” the girl wrote. “And every once in a while my uncle’s name comes up, and his picture is on top of the TV in Grandma’s house. He’s the family hero, and I love him and think he was a good person, too, but I know this about him. Should I tell somebody?”
My advice to her was that unless she somehow feels guilty about what happened, which often happens even if the victim is completely innocent, she should not reveal her secret. Who in her family would be helped by knowing what the young man had done? What good would it do for their fond memories of him to be shattered? “If you ever do start feeling guilty or that you just can’t carry the burden alone anymore,” I said, “go talk to a professional counselor about it.” But in this case, unless she starts feeling that way, part of her forgiveness of the uncle is accepting the pain of his transgression.
Especially for Pastors
For those of us in ministry who find ourselves in counseling situations, there are some natural rules that can help us avoid trouble. Most of these have been discussed before, so I won’t dwell on them here, but I’m thinking of such things as stepping out of the room for a minute every once in a while; letting an associate or other trustworthy person know in general terms, without betraying any confidences, the outline of what each counselee has come to you for; and so on.
What all these rules boil down to is that if you want to avoid temptation or even the appearance of impropriety, you do the opposite of what you’d do if you were trying to engage in and cover up some illicit activity.
Sexual temptation is all around us these days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we know we’re often vulnerable. In spite of all we do to avoid tempting situations, there will be times, such as my experience on the plane, when temptation will stare us right in the face. Our job is to prepare ourselves and keep our marriages strong before we find ourselves in those situations so that when the temptations come, we’ll be able to maintain our integrity — and our ministries.
Copyright ©1988 Christianity Today
