Whose business is it if people are sleeping around? Or not sleeping? Within the church, accountability is different than in the neighborhood.

     When my friend's husband left her for an internet friend he had never even met, her humiliation was public.  They were church members and Sunday school teachers. He sold everything possible and left.  He dumped all the bills on her.  He would not listen to reasoning from his friends or grown chidlren. It took a lot of support and even some money to help the grieving wife to keep all together in his absence.  When he returned, all the people that he hurt in the process did not get one word of explanation from him.  He just moved back into his wife's life.  "It's nobody's business," he said.  He expected to take up all his church positions without missing a beat.  However, the folks at church--the elementary aged children he had taught, the guys he went fishing with--all felt up in the air.  He had no wish even to say, as his pastor suggested, "I made some mistakes.  I'm back now with my wife, God has forgiven me, and I'm making a fresh start."  He simply maintained, "It's nobody's business."  It sounded to people like, "I may do it again one day.  I'm keeping all my options open." 



     We live in a new age of sexual mores in the United States.  Scandals infiltrate church life almost as easily as they rock the political world.  The wise Christian will seek to love his fellow Christian sisters and brothers in an appropriate, accountable manner in order to give glory to God. 

Are you new to church life?  Or perhaps a Christian from way-back trying to  figure out the Biblical values applied to modern life?  Here are some guidelines my husband  and I follow:

If a couple is living together but not married, bring them to Jesus and get 'em married.  However, if they will not accept Christ, they are on their own anyway.  A church wedding will not sanctify an ungodly heart.

Sexuality is alive and well.  Don't deny it, thinking you are invincible.  Feed the romance in your marriage, and nowhere else.  Don't get into tempting situations.


Leadership--the leaders of the church must be above reproach.  This means no clandestine counseling sessions by members of the opposite sex, no "ministry" to youth that involve phone calls and car trips of just two people of the opposite sex way into the wee hours.  Or the same sex, at times....in general, we are accountable to each other.

Insurance companies now require background checks of all who work in church finances or with children up to the age of 18.  Anyone who tells us, "No background check on me!"  does not get to work in those areas.

Marriage and divorce--God grants divorce in the case of unrepentant infidelity.  However, my husband will not wed two people who appear to have frivolously discarded prior partners.  He feels too much responsibility in joining lives together to treat the whole matrimony thing as a mere ceremony.

Open adultery--if cheating is open, the pastor and deacons must confront it with an opportunity for repentence.  Dirt swept under the rug encourages more dirt.  We have seen where unaddressed immorality spreads like gangrene.

Immorality in a leader--disqualifies a pastor permanently, and disqualifies a deacon or other leader for a long, long time.  The more public the sin, the more public should be the apology once repentence is reached.  Otherwise, a whole host of people feel that they can take any expedient course and answer only to God.

Sometimes, folks begin relationships with spiritual friendship in mind.  Then somewhere, a detour takes place and the friendship is a romance, or some other sort of romp.  For two single people, a romance is fine, but the lines are clearly drawn in scripture that sex is for married people.  However, if two people are diverse in age (one is a minor) or one is married, the relationship must be submitted to the scrutiny of the congregation. 

What are the danger signs that a relationship is subtly approaching a wrong turn? 

1.  The "meetings" increasingly take place with no one else around.

2.  The two people wouldn't like the pastor to sit in on the discussions.

3.  One of the parties states, "our friendship is no one else's business." 

4. They cannot be apart for more than a couple of days, even when requested by church elders or parents to "cool it." 

5. There is an emotional intimacy that could easily become physical.  

     In twenty-five years of ministry, we have known men who molested their daughters, ministers who ran off with their one of their youth, a minister's wife who ran off with another woman (?!!) and many other sordid tales of pain and disgrace.  We have seen the signs.  Women have thrown themselves at my husband with delusions about pastors.  When an inappropriate relationship runs amuck, lives are ruined.  The church is disgraced, and the devil laughs. 
 

     However, when relationships are out in the open and marriages are held in high esteem, the right sort of romance flourishes.  Love has always been God's idea.  So is sex, within the context of marriage.  Wise counselors could prevent Christians from permanent "heart damage" if they only submit to one another in prayer and counsel. 

     I have been so pleased that my eldest daughter surrounds herself with Godly Christian friends of many ages.  It is amazing at the consensus of voices when she asks friends to pray with her about dating so-and-so.  God will speak to us and lead us to wonderful relationships when we walk with the wise.


     On the other hand, there are a few times when it truly is no one's business what has happened in the past.  We know people convicted of crimes long ago who have totally left their former path and now walk with God.  There is no need to dig up that decaying carcass of a scandal.  A sin that really only involves an individual and God can simply be rectified.  However, when sin is ongoing and involves God and two people, the sin likely touches families, classes, and our witness to the lost world.  It is such present and ongoing indisgressions that threaten to interrupt the life-flow of the gospel in Christ's body.  Only as we submit to one another in humility can we keep purity in love. 
I Cor. 6:12-20
¹²"Everything is permissible for me"--but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"--but I will not be mastered by anything. ¹³"Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"--but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. ¹⁵Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." ¹⁷But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
¹⁸Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.