Some of the wisest words to be written in recent weeks came from Rebecca McLaughlin, author of the excellent apologetics work Confronting Christianity – 12 hard questions for the world’s largest religion, published by Crossway and The Gospel Coalition.
Born in the UK, she has a Cambridge University PhD and a theology degree from Oak Hill. Now she lives in the United States, where she continues to have a ministry in writing and communications.
Her wise words came on Twitter, shortly after protestors entered the Capitol in Washington. ‘Sometimes,’ she wrote simply, ‘we struggle to recognize a wolf in wolf’s clothing.’
The immediate thrust of her words was, of course, clear. But, as the ensuing debate on Twitter showed, they had and have a wider applicability too.
Someone else responded with this Tweet: ‘Ten years ago I sat in a room with a few pastors, one of whom was in the midst of a meteoric rise in fame. I noticed him frequently making sexist, inappropriate jokes, while the other pastors laughed. They brushed it off as harmless, and continued to commend him to me and others.’
That writer continued: ‘Years later, this pastor completely destroyed his church. He was fired. Many of his church members lost their faith, or had to spend years in counselling. At no point did I hear any of those pastors acknowledge that the seeds of destruction had been plain all along.’
As she rightly went on to say, there are numerous examples of this. We see recent and ongoing scandals of exactly this nature both in the US and the UK – leaders who tick all the right theological boxes, but are personally toxic. Too often this has been known but ignored.
When will we learn that character matters? What will it take?
