Maintaining Moral Purity-Part 2
May 26, 2009
Last week, we covered the first two suggestions to help you maintain moral purity as a ministry leader. Here are two additional steps to help you with this process.
Develop accountability relationships. Another aspect of maintaining purity is accountability to people who care about you, know you better than you know yourself, and are willing to confront you when we are wrong. Too many people think of accountability relationships as formal, sterile groups that meet to grill each other. While formal groups are helpful, other kinds of relationships can be just as motivating toward moral purity.
Two primary relationships that motivate my purity are my wife and children. Not disappointing my children has been a primary motivator to keep me morally right. Developing transparency with my wife and children has helped keep me morally straight.
For example, I am transparent with my wife about my whereabouts. She always knows where I am, whom I am with, and what I am doing. This requires very little effort on my part. Many days are routine, and she knows my routine. But if I go anywhere unusual, spend time with anyone (particularly women) who are not part of my routine, or do anything that might compromise my purity – I tell my wife immediately! My wife never wonders who I’m with or what I’m doing or where I am. She knows and that accountability helps maintain my moral purity.
We also made an important decision about transparency with our children. Before our children were born, my wife and I decided we would never do anything for entertainment our children could not share. That does not mean we have not done things without our children! It simply means we do not go anywhere, watch anything, or read anything we would not want our children to know about (or later do if they were really interested). This one decision has kept me from many questionable activities and helped me maintain moral purity.
Purity is also maintained through transparency with a few close, same sex friends.
These friends can help you individually or as a formal group. Some might wonder about the “same sex” aspect of accountability relationships. This is an absolute standard. While you may enjoy platonic or professional relationships with members of the opposite sex, only same sex relationships should be developed as accountability relationships. True accountability relationships require a level of frankness not possible or appropriate in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex (other than your spouse).
These are not sexist comments, just practical observations. God values both sexes equally and wants both men and women to have meaningful accountability relationships. But, apart from your spouse, an accountability relationship sharing the details of your moral life, sexual practices, and responses to temptation, is not appropriate with a person of the opposite sex.
Take simple steps to protect yourself. There are other simple things you can do to protect yourself from sexual temptation and from false accusations of immorality. Here are five simple things to do:
First, put a window, with a shade, in your office door. When you are in your office alone, close the shade for privacy. When you are talking with anyone, man or woman, open the shade. This way, you can have privacy with the person but openness about your actions.
Second, counsel persons of the opposite sex carefully. Some pastors, for example, do not meet with or counsel woman privately. While this is certainly a permissible standard, it is not practical for all pastors. If, as a male leader you do counsel women, set up some ground rules. For example, you will only meet with a woman in your office while another person (like a secretary or staff member) is present in an outer office. You will only meet with a woman with your wife’s full knowledge and permission. You may also want to set a fixed number of appointments you will have with any female counselee before referral.
Third, avoid hosting persons of the opposite sex socially, or being alone with them in business or professional settings. For example, my work occasionally requires me to host a woman for a meal. My wife or assistant always accompany me (or I simply do not go). The same is true when unexpected travel changes mean I must ride with or transport a woman (like from the airport). When that happens, I call my wife or assistant and inform them of the details. I usually call them again when we arrive at our destination.
Fourth, give unlimited access to your computer and operate it in the open. I arrange my computer screen so that it can be seen from the door to my office. Anyone walking by can look in and see what I am doing. Key staff members know my password and have access to my computer. No secrets! My Internet use is tracked and can be analyzed at any time. Again, no secrets!
Finally, avoid touching members of the opposite sex. Our family is a bunch of huggers! I am naturally gregarious. I like to touch, hug, and pat people. But the risk of being misinterpreted, misunderstood, and possibly communicating a wrong message means touching opposite sex co-workers is off limits. This may seem like a rigid standard, especially for the naturally friendly, but it is a necessary standard.
Adapted from my book
The Character of Leadership
<< Return to Archive
Maintaining Moral Purity - Part 1
May 18, 2009
How do you keep from giving in to the pervasive temptations in our culture to be immoral? What can you do, positively and proactively, to keep yourself morally pure? And if you are already on the slippery slope toward moral failure, how can you find a sure foothold and start going the other direction? This week and next, let me outline some specific suggestions to help you maintain moral purity.
Pour energy into your marriage. Married sex is the best sexual relationship possible. The erotic way married sex is described in the Bible leaves no doubt this is God’s plan for sexual fulfillment. Song of Solomon is a good example. Another is the second part of Proverbs 5, in contrast to the first half of the chapter about immorality. Referring to sex in marriage the Bible says, “Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well…. Let your fountain be blessed and take pleasure in the wife of your youth….let her breasts satisfy you at all times and be lost in her love forever” (Pro. 5:15, 18, 19).
Wow! Clearly, God wants you to have a fulfilling sexual relationship in your marriage. What many couples in our sex-saturated society underestimate is how little they really know about sexual fulfillment when they get married and how much work it takes to develop a mutually satisfying, long-term sexual relationship.
Developing a fulfilling married sexual relationship, with one partner over a lifetime, takes work. You might be in a difficult situation in your marriage and be thinking, “If you only knew how impossible my wife (or husband) is on this subject.” But consider your options. You can work on your seemingly impossible situation – counseling, reading books, resolving differences, clarifying expectations – and it will cost you time, energy, and money. Or you can have an affair, get hooked on Internet pornography, or frequent strip clubs – and these will really cost you time, energy, and money.
But consider the outcomes. If you work on your married sexual fulfillment for a decade (yes, it might take that long) and it becomes fully satisfying, then you have years and years of guiltless pleasure ahead. If you look elsewhere for fulfillment, you know from reading this chapter what the cost will be. So, the choice is easy. Pour the energy into developing a healthy, mutually satisfying sexual relationship in your marriage.
The reluctance of men to invest in their marriage is amazing. Once, while sitting in a man’s “gun room” surrounded by expensively mounted hunting trophies, the hunter told me, “Two hundred dollars is just too much money to spend on a marriage retreat.” Unbelievable! He had guns that cost many times that much and dead heads staring down from the ceiling that exceeded that price. But the idea of spending money on improving his marriage was wasteful. Make the decision to invest in your marriage!
If you are not married, managing your sexual urges is difficult but possible. These next suggestions will help you, whether you are married or not, to pursue moral purity.
Limit exposure to immoral influences. The temptation to be immoral is aggressively stalking you. You must take specific steps to protect yourself and your family from unlimited exposure to sexuality in our culture. Since it is pervasive, it is impossible to avoid it entirely. But you can take specific steps to limit the immoral influences that are trying to sway you.
Limit the amount and kind of television you watch. For the first year we were married, we chose not to have a television in our home. That helped us get control of it from the beginning of our marriage. We now own several televisions – but we monitor them and screen what we watch. We avoid any program that blatantly glorifies sexual immorality or any other contradiction of our values. We discuss more subtle influences and help our children analyze what they are watching. We turn off programs that surprise us with immoral content. We do not have access to any pay-per-view channels that show sexually explicit movies or programs.
Choose carefully the kind of movies you attend or videos you rent. This can be difficult to monitor but we made one very simple choice early in our marriage that has had profound, positive results. We do not view “R” rated movies (The Passion of the Christ was our only exception). Making this choice may have caused us to miss a few good movies over the years. But is has also spared us seeing hundreds of big-screen sexual relationships, which would have tempted us to immoral behavior and desensitized us to sexual fulfillment only in married sex.
Stay away from places that sell sex. God has some special ministers and missionaries who work with sex workers. These people have strict accountability standards and go to great lengths to maintain their moral purity. Thank God for their work! But most ministry leaders simply need to avoid strip clubs, nude bars, pornography stores, and other sexually explicit establishments.
Get control of your Internet use. Put filters on your computer and ask someone else to control the password. Use a program that automatically communicates every web site you visit to an accountability partner. If necessary, take the drastic step of giving up the Internet at home and only using it on a public computer in your office.
Leaders who travel must take special care in these areas. If you struggle to control television viewing, have the hotel remove the television from your room upon arrival. If that is not possible, disconnect the power cord or cable connection and remove the cord from the room. When possible, do not travel alone. When you travel, plan how you will use your free time so that you are not tempted toward inappropriate activity.
Some of this may sound legalistic. No doubt, these are self-imposed, arbitrary rules. Legalism, however, is when one person imposes his or her standards on another person. Imposing these standards on yourself is not legalism, its self-management. These standards are not requirements, unless you choose them to be. Therefore, they are not legalistic rules but wise, self-imposed limits that protect you from moments of weakness. A good friend has a desk plaque that says, “Others may, I cannot.” Leaders adopt higher personal standards because their influence, for good or bad, exceeds that of others.
Unlimited, unscreened exposure to immorality in the culture desensitizes you. Like a persistent river, it erodes your moral convictions. Most people do not plunge into immorality; they drift into it. You can limit the drift by specific actions to limit your exposure to immoral influences.
Adapted from my book The Character of Leadership
<< Return to Archive
What immorality will do to you
May 11, 2009
Continuing the idea from last week of the personification of immorality in Proverbs, the results of immorality are portrayed in Proverbs 5:1-14. The life-shattering results are devastating. Here is how the Bible describes some of those results.
Immorality leaves you bitter, broken, and often alone. The results of immorality are “as bitter as wormwood” and as “sharp as a double-edged sword” (Pro. 5:4). An immoral relationship begins with an emotional rush. Like a sugar-high, it does not last. A pastor who left his wife for another woman learned this lesson. When his mistress left him for another man, he was bitter (“how could she do this to me?”) and alone. He wound up living in a one-room, fleabag hotel in a rough part of town while he looked for a minimum wage job.
Years later, when he told me his story, his primary memory was how alone he felt. He felt separated from God, his family, his church, and in a sense, even himself. He felt so distant from the person he used to be and wanted to be. He remembered lying awake at night and wondering if anyone even cared if he was alive. A business leader who committed adultery and moved in with his lover, told me his greatest loss was the respect of and relationship with his children. They completely cut him off! Immorality entices you with Technicolor promises of emotional intimacy, but usually leaves you bitter and alone. You lose your family, your church, your livelihood, your friends, and even yourself. You will be alone, and lonely – which can be a suicidal combination.
Immorality steals your strength and makes you sick. When you are immoral, you give “your vitality to others” and “your years to someone cruel” (Pro. 5:9) while “your physical body (is) consumed” (Pro. 5:11). A woman, a “kept woman” as she described herself, waited for two decades for her paramour to leave his wife and marry her. One day, when the long-term affair was finally revealed, the man chose to stay with his wife and rebuild his marriage. What a disaster for the mistress! She had given the best years of her life to an immoral relationship, believing it would ultimately bring her happiness.
Another man confessed an immoral relationship with some relief. He told me how taxing it had been to maintain two women financially. Only a fool would attempt what he had done for years! Now, he was facing a major health crisis brought on by stress and overwork. He had literally sacrificed his health to sustain his immoral lifestyle.
The most tragic possible result, however, is getting a sexually transmitted disease – particularly AIDS. Can you imagine a more dastardly act than being sexually unfaithful to your spouse, getting a sexually transmitted disease, and then giving it to him or her (or even to an unborn child)? This is the most devastating physical result possible, yet it is not so far-fetched in our culture. Immorality can destroy you, literally, from the inside out.
Immorality will take your money and damage your lifestyle. An immoral lifestyle is expensive. The Bible warns “strangers will drain your resources, and your earnings will end up in a foreigner’s house” (Pro. 5:10). Basically, immoral sex will cost you – big time!
Think of the ways immorality costs money. First, you have to pay the expenses for the mistress. One minister thought he had a foolproof plan for keeping his affair a secret. He had his mistress travel on the same itinerary when he was on the road and meet in his hotel room. While it kept the immoral relationship a secret for a long time, it also cost a boatload of money. Even if you do not go to that extreme, there are all the expenses that go with “dating” – gifts, meals, and the inevitable hotel rooms.
Second, you have to pay for the expenses of keeping your secret. One young minister bought a separate computer and maintained separate Internet accounts to hide his addiction to Internet pornography. He also had the added expense of long distance bills for phone sex and secret credit cards for sexually explicit materials he obtained. What started out costing a few dollars a month, turned into thousands of dollars of expenses.
Third, you will pay for the damage your immorality does to others. You may have to pay for a divorce. Or your family may stay together, and you will get to pay for counseling for yourself, your spouse, and your children. You may be blackmailed and forced to pay money to keep others quiet about your sin. You may lose your job and take a severe pay cut with the temporary work you find to survive. You will probably have some damage to your health from the stress of the affair or perhaps from getting a sexually transmitted disease.
Any way you look at it, immorality is expensive.
Adapted from my book The Character of Leadership
<< Return to Archive
What immorality looks like
May 4, 2009
In the book of Proverbs, personification is a literary devise used to explain important concepts. Positive concepts like wisdom are portrayed by personifying wisdom as a woman and revealing its characteristics through her words and practices. A negative use of this same literary devise also portrays immorality as a woman. Two examples of this are in Proverbs 9:13-18 and 5:1-14. Analyzing immorality, personified through the actions of a woman named “Folly” will help you discern and resist immoral temptation.
Immoral temptation is pervasive. Folly sits “by the doorway of her house on a seat at the highest point of the city,” (Pro. 9:14) calling out to all who pass by to come in for a visit. Immoral temptation is aggressively, publicly seeking ministry leaders who will give in to it. Certainly anyone with any sense of awareness can see how blatant this is in our culture. Immorality is no longer restrained by public decency. The temptation to be immoral is now continually in front of our eyes – on television, movies, bookstands, and the Internet.
Recently, my youngest son purchased a program at a professional sporting event. When he turned the program over, the photo on the back was of a mostly-nude female dancer with three discreet patches covering just enough to keep her from being arrested. The advertisement was for a nude dancing club, sold to anyone with $3 to buy the program. Immorality is calling out, publicly, openly, more brazenly than ever before in places where even children can be de-sensitized and made pliable to future temptation.
For ministry leaders, the computer has become the most public (and at the same time private) source of sexually immoral material and temptation. There are billions of electronic images, videos, and products available. Many ministry organizations have filters to help screen these sources. But no screening process gets them all. Every screening process can be bypassed by simply using a public library computer. Learning to manage your email and Internet access is essential to resisting the most accessible form of immoral temptation ever invented.
Immoral temptation is aggressive. Folly calls out “to those who pass by, who go straight ahead on their paths” (Pro. 9:15). There was a time in the not-to-distant past when immorality was available but you had to know where to get it. Now, like never before, it comes looking for you. It will track you down while you are on a “straight path” with no intention of being tempted or enticed.
Television astounds me with its insidious ability to incorporate sexual immorality into almost any show. Over and over, our family has been enjoying some program when sexual immorality is introduced (always in a positive light). Recently, we were watching a sit-com about a married couple (sounds safe, right?). The couple was recounting their early years, and of course had to go into great detail (accompanied by the laugh track) about their fornication prior to marriage. Of course, “fornication” was never mentioned – just the bliss of pre-marital sex and how much it supposedly strengthened their marriage. Never mind the truth. Premarital sex does not improve marriage relationships. Not in real life. Never.
Good thing this was fiction! Otherwise, it would have strained every level of credibility. But tragic lies were delivered to our children in an amusing, seemingly factual way. The message – sex outside of marriage is good – weaseled itself into our home right under our noses.
Immoral temptation over-promises and under-delivers. Good salesmen avoid the ego-driven mistake of over promising and under delivering. They do just the opposite. Folly makes this mistake over and over. She promises immorality will deliver the opposite of its true results. She appeals to the “inexperienced” to come in for a visit and to the “one who lacks sense” (Pro. 9:16) to share her secret wisdom. Sexual immorality promises pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfillment it cannot and does not produce. But that does not stop it from making outrageous claims and promises. And, sadly, it doesn’t stop ministry leaders from gullibly falling for its lies.
A friend of mine left his wife for another woman. He told me, about his mistress, “When I’m with her I am truly alive. She understands me like no one else. We connect on a level that I have never experienced before.” But two years later, after he had divorced his wife, damaged his relationship with his children, and lost his business (and was not able to get a job), he was singing a different tune.
“I can’t believe I did it,” he told me. He had succumbed to the siren song of immorality. He really believed his new relationship would take him places he had never been before. He was right – but he did not know those places included the unemployment office and the food stamp line. His “depth of insight” turned into the deep end of the pool.
Immorality promises so much. In the early days of every immoral relationship there is the heady rush of infatuation and the raw pleasure of unleashed sexual energy. New awareness, new sharpness, supposedly new insight seems to be exploding. But it is false insight and false hope – a sham perpetuated on the unwise. Immorality promises the moon and stars, but it delivers destruction and death.
Adapted from my book The Character of Leadership
<< Return to Archive