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It’s yet another story the internet was abuzz about: reality TV star Josh Duggar and his illicit relationships created through an online web company, Ashley Madison. There was no end to the number of opinions expressed through social media, media coverage and print magazines. A world far from Jesus loves to critique, criticize and even celebrate the fall of a self-proclaimed “Christian.”
You might be asking, “When will it ever end? How many more times will things like this happen?” Friends, until Jesus comes back or we go home to be with Him, this won’t end. You can keep counting the number of people who believe in Jesus who are going to fail.
As a Christian, I found myself even saying in my own head, Here we go again. The first batch of news was hard to hear. Especially since it involved sinful choices that caused suffering to others. I am more likely to have greater amounts of compassion on a kid who is struggling with puberty and learning to figure the world out. This batch of news seemed so much darker, so much more secret and so much more costly. These choices were deliberate, manipulated and secretly sought after. Josh was not only an adult but married with children, his puberty years behind him. But as we have seen, the wrestling with sexuality and relationships had not stopped.
After processing the news of Josh and the confessions of affairs, the next question I asked myself surprised me, and I am not sure where it really came from. I asked myself, Why are you surprised? Was I surprised because I suspected TV personalities who proclaim the name of Jesus are immune to the deep dark pits sin creates? No. We have lived in a media-driven world long enough to know that if we just watch history over time, experiences within mankind are repeated.
I was surprised how easily I forget the past. I forget the life experiences I describe as train wrecks in my own life. I forget the times when I’ve sat with individuals or couples who are going through their own train wrecks.
We forget too. As a collective society, we have developed the keen ability to compartmentalize the past and, for the most part, live in the moment. Going out on a limb, I don’t think Bill Clinton was the first, nor will he be the last, public official to lose his job because of perverted sexual choices. Anyone who has ever found himself or herself in a deep pit of sin where the result of that sin has hurt all those around them understands they didn’t get there by accident. It was a process that started somewhere.
Sin usually develops like that in a person’s life. Sin starts as a decision to choose something other than what God has for us. That choice is aimed toward the target of evil. When we make that choice, we hit the target and we sin. It has happened over and over in my own life, and I know you can identify those times too.
The Bible is very clear about there being only one perfect person in history. His name is Jesus. In Jesus, we are a redeemed people, and that’s the best kind of news there is. But we also have a residue of our old life apart from Christ that influences us. Even as new creations, God in His infinite wisdom gave us freedom to keep pursuing Him, keep making choices that honor Him, and live a life not for our self.
Let’s be a people who keep pursuing Christ. Let’s be a people who submit their hearts to God and let His Word shape us. Let’s be a people who live in gospel-centered community and strive for godliness. The promise is true: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). You can count on that.