UNITED STATES
Christian Post
BY MICHAEL BROWN , CP OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
August 5, 2015
Without a doubt, we have hurt our witness to the world with our hypocrisy, thereby undercutting our moral and spiritual authority. Why should people listen to us if we preach one thing and do another? How can we expose sin in the society when we’re practicing sin in the church? On what basis can we speak out against gay “marriage” when we’ve allowed our own marriages to go to pot?
The pedophile priest scandal in the Catholic Church not only inflicted terrible suffering on the boys who were abused. It also terribly damaged the reputation of the Vatican, greatly weakening its influence in many parts of the world.
The flood of scandals in the evangelical church, both sexual and financial, have made us a laughingstock, to the point that many Americans simply assume that the more famous the TV preacher or pastor the more certain it is that he (or she) is getting rich off the Gospel, not to mention probably hiding some secret sexual sin. (Of course, the vast majority of evangelical pastors and leaders are not rich, not famous, and not guilty of secret sexual sin, but there are enough bad apples to make all the apples suspect.)
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