How To Recover From a Christian Sex Scandal

jamin | August 25, 2015 | 0 Comments

Last week hackers threatened to release information from “How to have an affair and ruin your marriage” experts at Ashley Madison. For those who did not know before now, Ashley Madison is a site that allows people to make dating profiles to have affairs. They have over 38 million accounts. Hackers found some popular names and released them to the public. Some names that have come up are the Family Research Council’s former lobbyist Josh Duggar (of the “19 Kids and Counting” Duggar family fame on TLC) and Sam Rader, popular YouTube vlogger (who told his wife she was pregnant before she knew it because he used her pee from the toilet for a pregnancy test. nasty) who said that he set up the account before YouTube, but that was a lie. (It was when he had an account but before he went viral.)

Sam Rader

This happens a lot (more to conservative Christians, it seems) – a Christian takes a loud, public, obnoxious stance against any moral failings we encounter as humans (and, of course, say any reckless thing against the LGBT community) and is himself engaging in the same moral failings as the rest of us. It’s ultimately tragic that the lesson of YOU’RE NOT BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE is never learnt. (What makes it worse, politically, is that it’s these people voting against things like gay rights citing morality, but they’re having affairs up and down the East Coast.) It’s hypocrisy in its finest form. What can I do to help? I can do this:

Josh Duggar

Tips for navigating your conservative Christian sex scandal:

1. Just admit that you like sex. It’s fine. Not all of us Christians are virgins walking around or virgins when we get married. Is fornication a sin? Yes. Is sex enjoyable? Yes. Did you “open your gift before the big day”? Yes. Does grace cover you? Yes. Does God want you to stop until you’re married? Yes. Will you? It’s entirely up to you. But what doesn’t work is saying how evil people who have sex before marriage are while you’re out there helping them accomplish that goal outside of your own marriage, in which you’re supposed to be having sex with your spouse.

2. You’re not “struggling with sin”. You’re sinning. One of the things that I hate hearing in churches from people doing a mea culpa is how they say they’re “struggling with sin.” Uh, we ALL “struggle” with sin and some sins we lay down and let walk over us and others we more readily escape. What you might struggle with is giving into temptation. Sin, though? It’s something you do or don’t do.

3. Blame yourself only. Josh Duggar’s initial apology for being caught on Ashley Madison was a rambling thing blaming the Internet, pornography, sin’s seductive nature, and Satan. It’s so easy to fall into that as a church person – “Satan and sin are bad and they tricked me! Please forgive me! I fell for their wiles!” Uh, yeah, why that may be true, the only one we can see as hurting your family, Josh, is you. Only you. Just you. The second, edited, apology was much better – it placed the blame all on him.

4. Ask God to help restore you but also for the grace to be kinder to others who “struggle” with other sins. You’re no better than anyone else. That’s the point that always goes missing in these scandals – these people normally go right back to judging others harshly because “It’s all about grace and God’s forgiveness. He forgave me, so now I can get back to withholding grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love from others! We’re in the last days, beyotch!” (That last part is a paraphrase from self-appointed prophetess Michele “Zany Eyes” Bachman.)

5. Just live. Try to do it right, but just live. Don’t get on that pedestal that so many fellow Christians put out for you – it wobbles, shakes, and isn’t built sturdily. It’s a much better existence and helps you stay real and more authentic before others.

In closing, too often Christians look at other humans as examples of how to live, and they get let down 100% of the time. Often, people get caught up in the Perfection Game themselves so much that they think Christianity becomes more about how they look in church in front of other Christians more than engaging the world around them.

Look, we’re all human, boo. We all make mistakes. Look to Jesus as an example of how to be perfect, but do NOT look up to me for that! I guarantee I will let you down somehow and I have no interest in being placed on a pedestal in your mind only to have it crumble when I say I went out with someone I met online, or you read a past blog where I admitted to things you don’t agree with.

Save yourself the heartache, Christians, and just live and enjoy life, taking people where they are and when they show up. Ain’t nobody perfect. Ecclesiastes 7:20 for the one-time.

Peace.