Sickened. Furious. Fed up. That’s how I felt this summer when I came across a news story about a pastor arrested for sending nude pictures to a teenager on multiple occasions.
I probably wouldn’t have given much thought to this case, as I must confess a level of desensitization at the alarming rate of such stories appearing these days, and because the offender doesn’t belong to my convention of churches.
But this time, the pastor exposed for exposing himself had been a visiting speaker at the Christian school my kids have attended. He had delivered a sermon the week of my daughter’s graduation. We had watched him extend an invitation and call students to come forward and get right with God, to recommit their lives to holiness. According to the police report, it was the very next day that this pastor initiated (not for the first time) a criminal interaction with a minor.
When news of the arrest arrived, we were angry and appalled. The sheer grossness of the allegations. The depths of hypocritical wickedness. The absence of any fear of God. How does a shepherd stand in the pulpit with the holy Word of God, and then prey on the flock, eyeing the “little ones” he can draw into the clutches of his own perverted power plays and sick fantasies?
Abuse Reckoning
It’s been more than two decades since The Boston Globe published the results of an investigation that led to the criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests and placed the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in the national spotlight. Subsequent investigations and allegations revealed a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-ups in various geographical areas across the United States.
What had first appeared to be a few isolated cases of abuse became a nationwide scandal, then a global crisis, for the Roman Catholic Church.
Many evangelicals at the time (wrongly) assumed the reason that sexual abuse had become so widespread in the Catholic Church was the extrabiblical demand for priestly celibacy. Now, multiple denominations and churches (even churches that don’t affiliate with a denomination) all around the world have been racked with scandal as sexual abuse has come to light in recent years.
It’s as if the Lord has seen fit to expose the corruption at all levels and remove any reason for denominational or tribal pride. There’s hardly anywhere any of us can look for a church tradition or Christian organization that isn’t, in some way, stained by this evil. The scandal of sexual abuse—the unbearable weight of story after story of spiritual shepherds abusing their authority and preying on sheep—has grown heavier and heavier.
Today, I sense a weariness among many church leaders when it comes to this issue. There’s less interest in litigating the adequacy or inadequacy in how church leaders and organizations have responded in the past. Even though a good number of churches and pastors are better equipped today than they were 10 years ago—stronger policies and procedures around childcare, more knowledge of how to handle allegations or suspicions, when to contact the authorities, and so on—there’s a sad sense of resignation because, at some point, one realizes not every evil scenario can be prevented.
For example, in the case of the man arrested this summer—a traveling speaker from the revivalist tradition—the predatory behavior wasn’t confined to a local church campus where certain protections might have been in place. In the digital age, with smartphones so prevalent, there are more ways for malefactors to engage in their evils.
Honor of the Lord’s Name
When I come across new scandals, I often glance at the comments section. And what strikes me there isn’t the anger on display but the cynicism. The here-we-go-again response. The impression that the church is filled with hypocrites who not only don’t believe what they teach but who use sound doctrine as a mask for their sinful schemes. The cynicism and disgust is palpable.
Who can blame people for such a response? The fallout from the egregious acts of bad shepherds is massive, casting a cloud of suspicion over good and faithful pastors too.
Part of me grows weary. Another part of me wants to weep for the victims. But I think roiling underneath all those emotions is a fierce desire to protect the name of Jesus, to see justice enacted against all who would smear his glory with their atrocities.
In Jeremiah 23, the Lord declares, “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (v. 1). The land itself is in mourning when the shepherds’ “power is not rightly used” and “both prophet and priest are ungodly,” the Lord says. “Even in my house I have found their evil” (vv. 10–11).
We’re right to ask the Lord to expose the rot wherever it is, and to purify his church, and to restore those who have endured such abuse, and, most of all, to clear his name—to show he’s the One who said that anyone who would harm the least of these would be better off with a millstone at the bottom of the sea (Matt. 18:6).
If Jesus turned over tables because the temple leaders had turned the house of prayer for the nations into a den of thieves and robbers (21:12–13), it’s hard to imagine him giving a lesser response to so-called shepherds preying on his precious sheep, using their spiritual authority as a shield to evade detection.
And that brings me to Odysseus in The Odyssey.
Odyssey and the Suitors
The summer of 2026 set off an Oppenheimer-level mushroom cloud of think pieces about Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the epic poem from Homer. This piece will not be one of them.
Oh, I could wax eloquent about Nolan’s moviemaking, offer my opinion on which editorial decisions worked and didn’t, the casting choices, and the score. I could point out the adjustments that made The Odyssey more palatable to a society infused with Christianity’s moral sensibilities, especially the characterization of Odysseus as less a trickster and more a man racked with guilt, confessing his sins through a screen to Penelope, with a goddess showing up beside him (the Catholic confessional booth, anyone?). But this paragraph is already straining my promise not to bore you with another take.
What I will point out about The Odyssey’s original story (a part masterfully captured in Nolan’s film) is the end. When Odysseus returns to reunite with Penelope, his bride, he comes undercover. He must first deal with the suitors—the band of insufferable men who have been glutting themselves at his table and taking advantage of his family, hoping to be matched with Penelope so they can inherit all the wealth.
A coworker of mine noted a parallel in the church world. The “suitors” are the pastors and Christian leaders who want the perks of proximity to the Bride, without any real love for her. They gorge themselves on the generosity of God’s family, in ever-ascending games of status-seeking, marked by pomposity and hubris, with no fear of the returning Groom.
In Psalm 50:16–17, God says, “What right do you have to recite my statutes and to take my covenant on your lips? You hate instruction and fling my words behind you.” After a litany of sins and injustices comes this line: “You have done these things, and I kept silent; you thought I was just like you” (v. 21, emphasis added).
Oh, what a critical error! To think God is just like us. Excusing sin the way we do. Assuming he is indifferent to injustice. Failing to reckon with his commitment to the glory of his name. To forget God is holy. You thought I was just like you.
No, the Lord declares, justice will be served. “I am about to attend to you because of your evil acts,” thunders the Lord to the bad shepherds of Jeremiah 23. His anger “will not turn away until he has completely fulfilled the purposes of his heart” (vv. 2, 20). Whether on this side of eternity or after, no atrocity committed against the little ones loved by the Lord will go unpunished.
The Lord will judge. The Lord will clear his name. The suitors will be called to account.
Dark Times and the Light of Faith
The church’s history is filled with dark moments. Sometimes God’s people aligned with imperial power, and soldiers massacred civilians in the name of the Lord. There were times when greed and corruption led priests and bishops to give their blessing to injustice, to the fleecing of illiterate peasants in the centuries leading up to the Reformation, as people desperate to rescue their relatives from purgatory gave what they could from their meager savings and funded the opulent churches and palaces of higher-ups in the church.
There were centuries when Christians colluded with racial classifications in society, creating a caste system that propped up an unjust economic structure. Throughout our history, Christians have found ways to justify great evil, to defend the indefensible.
But in these same dark times, there were always Christians who recognized the melody of Christianity was being mangled. There were believers committed to calling out these atrocities as evil, to making amends, and to rebuilding and restoring the witness of God’s people. Christians were the ones who challenged corruption, violence, greed, and slavery. Christians were the ones who looked at the church in all its messiness and said, “With God’s help, we will wipe away this stain.”
The same must be true for our generation. We must not grow weary in doing good. We look to the promise the Lord makes in Jeremiah 23: “I will gather the remnant of my flock. . . . I will raise up shepherds over them who will tend them. They will no longer be afraid or discouraged, nor will any be missing” (vv. 3–4). Christ the Good Shepherd initially fulfilled this promise in his ministry, and he’ll fulfill it finally when he returns.
The Groom is returning for his Bride. The suitors who ravage the household of faith will receive their comeuppance. If the One coming to judge the living and the dead finds a plundered house on his return, he will expose and eradicate every false shepherd responsible for the rot.
The way we respond in this era matters. We care about the testimony of Jesus Christ and the moral witness of his people. We long for the day when the understandable cynicism so many harbor toward the church will be diminished by the palpable realness of countless churchgoers passionate about holiness and justice.
After one of his parables, Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). On days like this, I wonder, When the Son of Man returns, will he find any faith left in the church?
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