Love is Not Enough

Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the Lord hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside~ Exodus 9:20

It’s been a depressing week. Nothing truly awful occurred; just a whole bunch of petty little first-world problems that conspired together to wreck my week. I’ve been sick, my husband has been out of town, and we’ve had car problems, problems with the dog, scheduling issues with our kids, and on top of everything else it’s September and it still feels like July in Tucson.

My blue mood intensified on Tuesday while I was searching the Internet for an article. I could remember what the article was about, but not the title or who wrote it. So I spent the better part of an hour undertaking the modern equivalent of searching for a needle in a haystack. I never did find what I was looking for, but I did come across a rather bitter tirade written by a former Christian turned irate atheist. Among other things, his diatribe contained a list of prominent Christian leaders who have failed morally in the last decade. The length of the list was appalling.

But it got me thinking.  

Why do Christian leaders fail?

They shouldn’t. If there is any type of leader on earth who should be able to hold it together it’s a Christian leader. And yet the last three decades have given the world some really outstanding examples of leadership failure within the Christian community. Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, Doug Phillips, Bob Coy, Ted Haggard, and Tony Alamo are just a few of the more notorious examples of Christian failure the world has witnessed in recent years.  

 This is an issue all Christians should think about for a couple of reasons. First:

All Christians are leaders.

Parents lead children, managers and business owners lead employees, employees and students lead their peers, and teachers lead students. If you are a believer in Jesus and you aren’t leading someone in some way, you are doing something terribly wrong. There is no leader on earth who is immune to temptation. We need to understand why leaders fail so we can avoid moral failure in our own lives and preserve our influence in the world.

  Christian leadership failure hurts everyone.

Failure damages the person who fails; they lose their incomes, influence, reputations, and sometimes even their families. Moral failure devastates followers, shatters trust and tests faith. Moral failure makes it challenging for all Christians to spread the gospel. It is difficult to convince those on the periphery of the faith that Jesus has the power to change and empower people when Church leadership can’t uphold some very basic principles of the faith. Tragically, moral failure hurts unbelievers most of all, giving them a handy excuse to never ponder the claims of Christ, ensuring that they will spend eternity without Him.    

Popular theories of why moral failure occurs are many and varied, but a list of contributing factors usually includes:

Lack of accountability

Isolation of the leader

Stress

Pride

Too few boundaries

Too many temptations

Fatigue and depression     

All of these issues can and often do contribute to leadership failure, but there is more to it. One thing is clear: moral failure is not always about a lack of love for Jesus. I cannot speak for every Christian leader who has fallen. But I can tell you that every Christian I have ever known who has failed morally has loved God deeply and passionately.

 Lack of love is not the problem. Lack of fear is.

 Love is a soft squishy emotion that is easy to push aside when other emotions like greed and lust are riding high. Fear of God has got to become a central part of our belief system. If it doesn’t, we will undoubtedly fall victim to the first appealing temptation that comes along during a moment of stress or weakness.

Fear of God has gotten a bad rap in the last few years. The expression conjures up images of edgy Christians biting their nails and cowering in corners. It’s really a deceptive image of fearing the Lord. Fearing God is not about being afraid. Fear of the Lord simply means that we really believe that God will bring the consequences He has promised in His word to those who violate His commands.

A fear of the Lord must be cultivated in a person’s life. It begins with remembering that not all of God’s promises are pleasant and that God does discipline those whom He loves most.

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death~ Proverbs 14:27