I don't glory in the public fall of a professing Christian, nor do I find value in piling on someone when everyone else is doing it.
But any perceived silence or passivity on the part of believers when someone wearing the name of Jesus commits a high-profile crime or gets caught in a devastating, wide-reaching sin, conveys a message about Christianity that (1) isn't true and (2) is extraordinarily damaging to the great privilege we have to tell the world about the truth and grace of Jesus.
That is why no Christian should have any equivocation about condemning the sin and lamenting the damage of mega-minister Robert Morris. If you haven't seen the news, Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey summarized it well:
Pastor Robert Morris is one of the most influential pastors in the world, leading a church that gathers about 100,000 congregants each week. Today, he resigned after an alleged victim accused him of molesting her when she was aged 12-16. He was a married father and pastor.
In response to her recently published story, he didn't deny the accusations but rather described his behavior as 'inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady,' which implies a consensual interaction with an adult. But, in reality, if her testimony is true, he sexually assaulted a pre-teen and was never properly held to account for it.
The accuser told her parents in 1987, and her father went to Morris's church leadership and urged them to remove Morris from his position. Morris stepped away from ministry for two years, then was restored as a pastor.
To grasp the true depth of this alleged depraved conduct on the part of Morris, his victim deserves to be heard (yes, this is explicit, gross, and extremely disturbing):
'I'm, of course, just appalled,"'[Cindy] Clemishire told [The Christian Post] on Saturday about his description of her as a 'young lady.'
'I was 12 years old. I was a little girl. A very innocent little girl. And he was brought into our home. He and his wife, Debbie, and their little boy, Josh, and trusted and preached at the church that my dad helped start and then began grooming all of us to do this, which took me decades to wrap my brain around as an adult,' she said.
'It went on for many years. He says there was no sexual intercourse, but he did touch every part of my body and inserted his fingers into me, which I understand now is considered a form of rape by instrumentation. I was an innocent 12-year-old little girl who knew nothing about sexual behavior.'
No one is beyond redemption, of course. But that is stomach-turning, vile, and to anyone who has seen or spoken to a 12-year-old girl before (that would be all of us), it should be enraging.
How must Cindy Clemishire, now a grandmother, have felt when he was "restored to the ministry" just 2 years after these alleged crimes were brought to the attention of the church elders - those entrusted with the care, well-being, and spiritual shepherding of people like her?
What would that tell her about the seriousness with which these men took the faith they espouse?
It is remarkable that Cindy's faith in Christ has seemingly survived that traumatic experience, and it's a testament to her maturity and wisdom that she properly discerns the difference between fallible, heinously sinful men and an infallible Savior.
But Cindy deserved justice that she never received. She says she was molested as a child - and the man who did it to her was never arrested, never punished, and in fact, amassed great wealth promoting a sham theology. Governing authorities are given to us by God for a reason - namely, to protect the innocent. No church has legal or biblical justification to handle criminal matters "internally." Doing so is a disgraceful betrayal of victims, and far from helping the church save face, it eventually subjects the name of Jesus to public disgrace.
So in light of this tragic revelation, a few cautions I'd offer for Christians moving forward:
Celebrity Christianity is unwise and dangerous. Human pride is a deadly force, and one of Satan's surest weapons against us. All that plays into it, including the tendency of believers to elevate men into positions of high esteem and honor, should be avoided at all costs. Jesus is the rockstar, not any of us.
Church discipline is critical, but it is absolutely insufficient when a crime has been committed. If these allegations are true, Morris deserved to go to jail for his crimes, and under no circumstance should any group of elders conclude he is "restored" and ready to return to a pulpit.
Where there's smoke, there's fire. Morris has been preaching false doctrine for years. He has used the power of the gospel as a means of accumulating large amounts of earthly treasure. By his own choices, greed - one of the most serious sins - has been a defining element of Morris's earthly ministry. That is bad fruit, and Jesus Himself said that a good tree will not produce bad fruit. Use the process of deduction and realize what we should have known about this man all along.
Pray fervently in response to all this. Pray first for Cindy Clemishire, who is now having to re-live an unimaginable trauma. Pray also for the families of all parties involved, including church family. And finally pray for Morris himself, that somehow this public disgrace would provide the necessary humbling that always precedes true and honest repentance.
