When Our Heroes Fall
I have to admit that my heart has been heavy this weekend. Nothing prepares you for this type of moment…the moment you discover that one of the spiritual heroes you looked up to is not who you thought they were or has done what you never thought they’d do. Recently, I found out that a ministry and leader I really admired in faith was exposed for some hard things and it’s been a deeply heartbreaking reality to sit with.
Part of it is because, as a woman who recently entered into a ministry leadership role myself, I feel even more keenly the sadness of when one of my spiritual role models gets exposed in some way. On one hand, it’s hard because it can feel like I’ve lost a comrade in the faith…and it can create a deep sense of loneliness as a growing leader who deeply desires spiritual mothers and fathers to learn from. On the other hand, it can feel a bit like we as leaders are all in the movie Final Destination and that at any moment, someone else could be next.
Why does this hurt so bad?
This is the question I keep asking myself as I process this. Part of it, I think, is that humans are wired to admire and revere their mother and father figures. Marked on every child’s heart is a longing to trust our parents’ word and have a model for character and life that we can look up to and emulate. There is something deeply safe about knowing that even when the world isn’t safe, we are still safe in the care of people we trust. And when parents make mistakes, own up to them, confess them and actively change, it teaches a child that even though humans can be fallible, they can still be trusted to course-correct and return to a path of integrity. For this reason, I believe, the pain of feeling betrayed by a leader can sometimes feel devastating because it shakes something that feels like a very primal need.
I use the word “betrayed” because that’s what it sometimes feels like…at least to me. When we talk about a ministry fail or a leader falling in the church, we’re rarely talking about a moment in time that happened and was quickly resolved and repented of. Most times we’re talking about a longer-term pattern of living the opposite of what they preach or claim to believe. It’s not the poor financial decision, it’s the pattern of selfish financial choices made with church funds. It’s not the outburst of anger, it’s the repeated verbal abuse over time and the refusal to repent.
Most of us would admit that we carry the capacity to forgive the fallibility of our leaders. But it gets much harder to do that if there is repeated damage being done and repentance only comes when they are exposed in some public way. This, to me, is what often feels like the real betrayal of trust. It can feel like the sin mattered more than Christ until there was a threat of public exposure. Then, the pain of exposure became the reason for change, rather than character or Christ Himself. This can feel so deeply disorienting to those who are discipled by these leaders because it triggers a string of questions:
If they are further along in faith than me and can fall into this type of sin, who am I to trust that I won’t fall in a similar way?
If they can lie to such a degree about this hidden part of their lives, what else have they lied about that I have chosen to believe?
If they, who I can see, blindsided me in this way, how can I trust that a God I cannot see won’t blindside me? And how can I trust that God is still good even when He does something that feels painful?
The questions that arise can become so existential that they can truly rock your sense of spiritual safety. It can cause you to want to deconstruct every word they’ve said to see what is truth and what is a lie.
Another reason it can be deeply painful is because following Jesus has always been a costly path. The way of Jesus never escapes a cross. It requires this daily confrontation with the life you want to live doing your own thing, and the life God is asking you to surrender to in order to become a different kind of human…a more patient and humble one, one that renounces lies and promotes peace (often by coming against the things that work against it). This kind of life is deeply rewarding, yes, but it is also painfully narrow at times. It can be lonely to have even other Christians get annoyed with you for taking God seriously, for caring about His heart and for being willing to do things you don’t want to do in order to honour Him.
In my life, I’ve lost friends to controversial conversations, I’ve ended relationships when I sensed that something was wrong or that God was saying “Not this one.” I’ve moved away from home in order to do what felt like obedience to the Lord. And it’s an honour. But it can also suck at times, and be a deeply lonely experience to feel misunderstood and to lose close connections as you try your best to follow Christ. So for me, finding godly leaders who have walked the well worn path of faith can be a lifeline of sorts. It can feel as though “Finally, I have a vision of what enduring in Christ could look like. Even if they don’t know me personally, their mere existence gives me hope that I can do this and my walk with Jesus will be worth it!”
And so, when these lifelines fall, it can be deeply discouraging and painfully disorienting. It can feel like, yet again, you’re walking this narrow way alone.
So, what do I do with all this?
1. Call it what it is: grief
This is something that has deeply saved my faith time and time again as I’ve experienced different versions of this during my life. For a long time, I couldn’t always identify when grief was happening in me. But over time, I’ve gotten better at noticing that the pain in my chest or the anxiety in my body is actually deep tears trying to get out, grief asking to be acknowledged.
But grief can be complicated because it’s often not just sadness. Sometimes it’s sadness about what happened, plus disappointment and anger at the person for what they did, plus the fear that I have no control over the worst of life showing up on my front door, plus disorientation at the way their actions have impacted my sense of spiritual stability and reality. And sometimes, it’s even existential dread that maybe God isn’t who He says He is and that maybe I’m not who I think I am or can be. I often wonder how many people who have lost faith are people who just never learned how to grieve, and as a result mislabeled their grief as unbelief. But what if the lifeline for our faith is simply the willingness to admit “I’m so confused and I don't know what to do about how much this hurts like hell right now.”
This is what I’ve been doing this weekend. There’s been a lot of staring at the ceiling in the dark while saying, “God, this honestly makes me so sad and paranoid of failing and I don’t even know what to do with all that. But I’m here and I want You to know that.”
2. Let the grief out
Once the grief has been named, the next step is actually letting it out. For me, grief comes in waves and often takes time to fully process. So I’ve had to work on giving myself permission to cry when the tears are begging to come out, and give my grief the patience it needs to resolve over time. So now, I cry when I need to, I run when I sense my body needs physical stress relief. I sing to dislodge the sadness from my chest and my gut, and to bring the tears up to the surface. Crying, running, singing…these for me are the outlets that give my body the release it needs.
3. Face reality, even when it’s painful
This one is a tough one. When things like this happen, it’s really easy for me to want to avoid, minimize or offer a quick fix. Avoidance says, “I don’t want to think about what happened. Let’s just move forward.” Minimization says “It wasn’t that bad. Everybody falls and God is love.” A quick fix says, “They said sorry, so let’s restore them to leadership quickly and make sure they don’t feel too much shame.” The issue with each of these is that they’re all an attempt for me to protect myself. Avoidance is trying to protect me from the pain of reality, but it also says “the thing that nailed Jesus to the cross is not worth addressing.” Minimization is trying to protect me from having to be courageous in calling out sin and calling others higher, but it also says “the thing that nailed Jesus to the cross wasn’t that big of a deal.” A quick fix is trying to protect me from admitting how much it would take to do the deeper work of real repair and repentance, but it also says, “I care more about everyone feeling better than I am about sincerely facing the impact of what has happened.”
But I’m learning that, maybe, sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone who has fallen is to allow the recovery to be deep and slow, not rushing to restore titles or platforms, but giving space for the Lord to do His deep work of refinement that can last for the long haul. Sometimes restoration to wholeness and intimacy with the Lord is far more important than being restored to a leadership position. This isn’t always easy. I can’t imagine being able to receive this if I were in this position. It takes a lot of guts and energy to both heal and to let someone heal. But I’m learning (and truly nervous to learn more).
4. Let their fall prevent me from my own (By God’s grace)
Something I’ve been trying to figure out is the ingredients or environments that make it easy for unhealthy leadership dynamics to develop. From some of my observations so far, it seems like there is a combination of the leader making their feelings or opinions be superior to the desire of God or the ethic of scripture; there may be a lack of accountability for the leader in their role (that is, others answer to them but they answer to no one), and often something about their ministry stops being centred around the cross of Christ. These are things I constantly am praying about because, having stepped into a leadership role myself, I see how easy it is to slip into any of these if I’m not paying attention. I am learning how important it is for me to have people around me who can lovingly challenge me.
It’s something I have to ask the Lord for help in daily because as a fallible daughter of God, I’m not immune to insecurity, immaturity, or the desire to rebel against the will of God just because I have a title. It’s a lie that a title will somehow make us more careful about our character…often it just exposes where we’re currently at, and it forces us to decide whether we’re going to go low before the Lord to let Him refine certain things out of us, or whether we’re going to hide our poor character behind our leadership title. Jesus Lord, have mercy on me and protect me from this.
5. Learn to fail safely in private
This one scares me, but I’m recognizing the gift of it. When I was younger, I always wanted to do something “big” for God. I thought that if God loved me, He would give me a big assignment. It took me a long time to realize how much insecurity and lack of self worth was behind my desire for God to “pick me”. I remember being at a missions conference during my college years, begging God for a big assignment, but He didn’t give me anything that felt special. Meanwhile, my friends were getting prophetic words about doing missions in different parts of the world and I remember resenting feeling too hidden and forgotten by God. Now, I see how much God was protecting me from myself.
I’ve come to realize that, in my life, God always made sure I had something meaningful to do even if it didn’t seem big to me. But the hidden place was a training ground for my character. I thank God for every opportunity He has given me to fail in private, where the stakes were low, the impact on others would be minimal and where falling wouldn’t mean public humiliation or mass disorientation for others. So many of us want to go from obscurity to influencing thousands or millions, when God sees that our character isn’t ready for that scope of influence. I’ve had to keep relearning the humility of accepting the level of responsibility God has chosen to give me now and asking Him regularly to refine my character so that I can honour Him in it.
The Prayer of My Heart
I’ll be honest, processing this this weekend has been difficult, but writing my thoughts out has helped. And when all else fails, I bring my heart to God and say,
“Lord, keep me even when I feel scared that I can’t keep myself. Keep me low so that I don’t get puffed up in pride. Give me the courage to face private failures so I can avoid the public ones. Keep my heart centered on the cross. In Jesus’ name and by the power of the Holy Spirit.”