March 11, 2021
If your old church was anything like mine, then the pastor would regularly try to insert some of his own personal failings into the sermon. He did this to remind us all that he was not perfect and he sometimes messed up.
Even when I was a believer, it annoyed me when pastors did this. Why? Because they always opted to share little “minor” sins rather than actual big ones that most normal Christians deal with.
As a result, you’ll get a “softball” sin confession. Here are a few examples I’ve heard over the years:
- “Sometimes, I get a little too caught up in my football team and it becomes kind of like an idol.”
- “Sometimes, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I think lots of bad things about that person.”
- “Sometimes, when my wife and I have a disagreement, I lose my temper more than I should.”
I’m aware that Christians view all sins as supposedly equal in the eyes of God, but we all know that isn’t practically true. Some are worse than others, particularly for a pastor to confess.
Here are some examples of “big sins” that are worse:
- “I’ve embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the church over the last five years.”
- “I’ve been having an affair with my secretary.”
- “Sometimes, I can’t help but watch porn.”
You’ll never hear a pastor say any of that from the stage, or even off the stage for that matter.
It’s obvious why these pastors avoid saying stuff like this. If they did, they’d lose their jobs.
But it’s clear that a lot of pastors do engage in some of those more serious sins. Maybe they haven’t always done it, but over a long enough timeline, the money, power, and influence can really go to anyone’s head. Pastors around the world are busted all the time for the stuff I listed above, and worse.
Another thing that always bothered me about the “minor sins” that pastors confessed was how I then compared myself to them. It sure did make me feel guilty. I thought that if whatever the pastor had just “confessed” was the most serious “bad” thing the pastor had done that week, then he was a true man of God while I was just a sin-infested wannabe.
These are the kinds of thoughts that aren’t good for anyone.
In fact, none of the pastors that engage in the “big sins” ever really confess to them. They have to get caught. That means for many years, sometimes decades, they stand on stage and preach to their congregations to not do the things that they are currently doing in their own private life.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that everyone has their own bag of shit that they’re carrying around. Whether or not it’s a certain vice or a behavior that the Church would deem sinful, it’s just something that should be expected at this point.
So automatically when I hear that someone is a pastor, I can’t help but feel they are being disingenuous somewhere along the way. Maybe they aren’t engaging in the one of the “big sins” that’ll get them fired, but they’re definitely up to something that’s a bit more naughty than the “small sins” they sometimes admit to in sermons.
It all feels like a controlled leak of information, similar to what you’d hear from your boss at your job. Imagine you’re in a meeting and you can tell that you’re boss is choosing his words very carefully so as to only tell you what you “need to know” about a new direction the company is taking even though he already knows much more than he’s telling you.
What about you? Did your pastor at your old church do this too? Was he later caught doing something much worse? Let me know in the comments below!