It is a sober week in my small town.  The sin of a local youth pastor has been exposed and he has been arrested.  Some of the very people he was supposed to shepherd and nurture have become victims.  The church where he worked is shocked and distraught.  The consequences are far-reaching; the fall-out will be coming down for a long, long time.  Our hearts ache for our friends who are facing such a heavy, heavy thing.

Sin is so ugly. 

Secret sin is insidious.

In a letter of apology to the church this pastor said something like this: I thought I could control this.  But it controlled me.

It’s a mercy, really, that he was caught.  It’s always a mercy when a dark corner is exposed to light.  The opportunity to privately and publicly confess the sin can begin the healing that needs to take place.  James says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Justice also needs to be served, and that is now in the hands of the judicial system.

We are humbled by the knowledge that none of us are immune to the temptations that brought this man down.  We are talking in our family about the need to seek help when you are struggling with wrong desires, no matter how shameful they may seem.  We’ve discussed  the trajectory  that  sin takes.  One does not wake up  out of the blue one morning and say, “Let’s see, I think I’ll go do _____ today.”  Jeremiah Burroughs put it this way:

Another warning about secret sins from Thomas Goodwin:

Lord, have mercy.