Keeping Pride at Bay

On Christian Leaders Who Fall From Grace

Yesterday was my 3rd birthday, the 3rd anniversary of my baptism. Praise God! The taking off of the old self and putting on of the new. It’s symbolic, and ritualistic - but it’s more than that.

“Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” -1 Peter 3:21

I viewed it as a vow I was making in my heart to God, much like the vows I would make to my husband a few days later. Something that means something. The very opposite of idle speech. To be baptized, like to be married, may have been stripped of meaning in modern culture - but that’s not the way it was intended. It means something; it means everything. We should not enter into such vows in vain, without great thought and commitment and sincerity.

I am an avid true crime watcher and reader. I am not that different from the norm, in that respect, because true crime tends to be more of a woman’s interest. In watching and reading about crime, I often come across stories of pastors who it turns out were not living according to, or even preaching, the Gospel. There is an unfolding case in South Carolina that comes to mind (my true crime ladies will know of which I speak), where the pastor was having multiple affairs, allegedly emotionally and psychologically abusing his wife, and using the pulpit to bash her and tell his congregation he was going to preach about how to get rich and find a hot wife. Buddy, you have missed the mark. The fact that none of the elders of that church disciplined him or took him off the pulpit long ago is evidence of the corrupting and contagious presence of sin.

I think a lot about the falls from grace of prominent Christians. About the demoralization and destruction they wreak in their congregations and about the bad example of Christianity they set for the world at large. I don’t know if they were never sincere - never washed clean by the grace of God, never took off the old self to put on the new - or if they merely lost their way and fell into a pit of secret sin from which they could not climb out alone. I imagine it’s a bit of both. Con-artists (grifters) are attracted to sincere believers and belief systems. You will find them in Christianity, in woke, in anti-woke…pretty much wherever they can exploit the sincere beliefs of others for fame, money and power. So those serpents, those snake-oil salesmen, have always existed and will always exist.

But I wonder if there is not another kind of person - a person who at one point was a sincere believer, but who lost their faith slowly, inch by inch, after attaining fame, money and power. I wonder if it’s not pride that opens the door for so many other sins. When pride rushes in, other vices can follow after: sexual immorality, drunkenness and drugging, blasphemy, immodesty, deceitfulness. Suddenly you find your behavior, your life, completely at odds with what you used to believe - with what you still claim to your parishioners you believe - maybe even with what you tell yourself you still believe?

Perhaps this is why James 3:1 cautions,

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

Or, if you prefer Spider-Man:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

If you are responsible for shepherding a flock of believers, God has tasked you with greater responsibility, which means stricter judgment. I look at some of the mega-pastors who have fallen from grace and I wonder how rare it must be for a man of God (if they were ever at one time sincere men of God) to withstand the level of spiritual assault they must be under, and the outsized allure of what sins and vices are now available to them in such positions of power, fame and wealth. How to withstand the growth of pride in such a position?

I would caution any believer, new or old, to be wary of pride. I say this because it’s something I’ve come to conclude for myself as well. To be on guard for it, know how to recognize it, and practice acknowledging it when it appears. Seeing it for what it is and then laughing at it might be a good way to keep it from taking root unawares. CS Lewis, in “The Screwtape Letters,” has the devil, Screwtape, counsel his nephew Wormwood on how to defeat humility in a human:

“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages a you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you may awake his sense of humor and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.”

Or, as Benjamin Franklin wrestled with in his Autobiography:

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive...even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

It was the desire to fight against his own pride, that lead Benjamin Franklin to include humility in the list of thirteen virtues he wished to cultivate in himself. He resolved to grow his own humility by trying to imitate in his behavior both Jesus and Socrates.

I am very grateful and blessed to be lead by a pastor and elders at my church, Church on the Square, who are sincere and on guard against sin. Who treat Christianity not merely as a belief system, but as a behavior system. Pray for your church leaders. Pray for the people who are leaders in your community and in politics. ESPECIALLY the ones you think are good men, and who are sincere. Pray for them the most, as the devil would love to tempt and tear down such a man. Why would he bother with the con-artists and corrupted? They already work for him. But a strong man or woman of God? What a prize, if he could own them. So pray for these Christians in leadership roles, that they remain steadfast in their faith and can withstand the spiritual attacks and temptations that come with greater responsibility.

And for those who have fallen, pray that God gives them a new heart, and the penitence of David, that they are humbled by their fall, that they go to their knees and cry out for the only thing that can save us from our servitude to vices and sin:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” - Psalm 51

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, David in Prayer, 1652