The Pastor & the President – Reflections on the Implosion - Brad Jersak

The Pastor: A Crisis

Paul Young and I have just released our novella, The Pastor: A Crisis (Capella Books 2020). The story features the dramatic meltdown of a fundamentalist pastor whose ministry of condemnation and moralism turns out to be a mask for his own deep wounds and their shameful consequences. Forced to face his ‘demons,’ the question is whether this tragic figure can yet find redemption.

When asked if the central figure represents Paul or I, the answer is No. The Pastor is actually a fictional composite that reflects real situations we’ve encountered, but we can certainly both relate to the damage done by religious abuse, harms we’ve experienced and the hurt we caused others in our own unique brokenness. And really, doesn’t that describe the human condition? In the great cosmic bus crash, we were all on board—it’s just that some folks (like me) found themselves in more privileged seats as others went through the proverbial windshield face-first.  

Back to our story: egoism and self-will love to flow through religiosity, inevitably expressed in the oppression of others. Of course, that’s contemptible. What’s less obvious in the headlines is how perpetrators may be projecting and paying forward their own traumatic backstory at others’ expense. That doesn’t make it okay, but neither does ignoring that reality solve the problem. Cycles of abuse aren’t arrested through retribution—true justice that restores lives and societies only comes via the hard work of pursuing restorative paths for everyone involved.    

The President: An Implosion

By unhappy coincidence, The Pastor is being released the same week as Jerry Falwell Jr.’s scandalous implosion splashed its way across the front pages of every news outlet in America. The parallels to our story are significant – fundamentalist religion, moral hypocrisy, sexual deviance—the juicy stuff that feeds our craving for karmic blowback. The sad truth is that while you can make this stuff up, it’s a gut-punch when fiction is revealed as truth. But what is the truth? What are we meant to see through the swirling haze of another tabloid-worthy scandal? Here are a few takeaway reflections viewed through my study of the Gospels, my experience as a pastoral burnout and as co-creator of The Pastor.

1. “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:1-2 KJV).

Jesus’ ominous warning (doubly so in ye olde English) should have been sufficient to humble his followers for all time. We should note that he is not issuing a divine threat so much as describing the nature of reality and the structure of society. In other words, I don’t read these verses as Christ’s intention—as in, “I’m going to pay you back in kind, you rotters.” He’s already rejected eye-for-an-eye payback earlier in this very sermon.

Rather, I hear Jesus talking about what typically happens in real life to those who are heavy-handed in their condemnation of others. Those who apply harsh standards inevitably break their own standards and then get judged by those same standards, whether by the culture or their conscience.

In the world we live in, the same activities Falwell is being condemned and cancelled for are continually normalized and even glorified on my Netflix menu. So, in our post-monogamous, anything-goes hook-up culture, why should he be singled out for condemnation?

Jesus explains it perfectly—Falwell was not so much judged for his actions but for his judgments and by his judgments, in the same measure as his judgments. That indicates to me that authentic repentance could start with his judgments and hypocrisy, rather than the ways he embarrassed his school or church’s image.

The irony is that our first temptation is to pick up the same stones Mr. Falwell has just dropped and feel justified in our heady new role as his judges. I stand warned by the same words of Christ. Which leads me to my next reflection.   

2. I need to examine my schadenfreude

^3 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ⁴ Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? ⁵ Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”

Schadenfreude is a German term that literally means “pain-joy.” It is the odd feeling of satisfaction people derive from seeing someone else’s misfortunate—usually someone we hold in contempt. It’s that twinge of pleasure we feel when the proud man falls.

My son Stephen told me about a scientific study that suggested all but two of our emotions are experienced in one region of the brain: the exceptions are envy and schadenfreude. It made us wonder if they are emotions at all—and how the two vices are related.

I found myself instantly face-to-face with schadenfreude at the news of Falwell’s demise. I also knew from hard experience the importance of immediately resisting it. My greatest failings have been consistently treated with empathy and mercy—how dare I play the role of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35). But I also felt it necessary to examine the temptation instead of burying it in denial. Whence comes the schadenfreude? What is it about? What is it up to?

I saw how my truest self—“the better angels of my nature” or my true self-in-Christ—instinctively prayed, “Lord, grant Mr. Falwell the same mercy I’ve received.” After all, I can’t expect to live in the land of grace while consigning him to the land of the law. I can’t expect God to correct me with a feather while demanding the hammer drop for the other.

Simply and selfishly put, “Release him with the kindness I want for myself.” Or in a more Christlike vein, “Father, forgive him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” But Brad, his sins were not in ignorance. They were deliberate. Deliberate yes, as are mine, but do we truly know what we do? We rarely understand the breadth of shrapnel and depth of damage we inflict when we entitle ourselves to transgress others and imagine we’re getting away with something. And no, that doesn’t disqualify us from forgiveness or exempt us from forgiving. But I won’t impose forgiveness on others who must live with pain they continue to endure. I’m only examining my own beam here.

I wonder too if schadenfreude is the shadow side of something right gone wrong. Is the satisfaction somehow also related to the exposure and expulsion of something we already intuited as rotten? When we know fundy-guilt-alism is a toxic counterfeit of authentic faith that has sabotaged millions of ex-vangelicals, we feel in our bones a certain rightness when the curtain is pulled back and the fraud is revealed.

The Psalmist, inspired by the Spirit, invokes curses against such men, even beseeching God,

¹² Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children… ¹⁵ Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Are these verses a revelation of God’s heart? Christ rejects cursing our enemies when he calls for blessing and prayers for them. Maybe the true inspiration here is that in God’s presence, David’s schadenfreude is honestly expressed so it can be thoroughly expunged, and all malice neutralized. Nevertheless, we are grateful when deception is finally seen for what it is and comes to a terminus.

3. “Moral outrage is a form of confession.” –Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

Finally, for a seasoned confessor like the monk Lazar Puhalo, nothing that went down with Mr. Falwell and Liberty University (as a multi-generational fundamentalist system) was a surprise. To Lazar, the moralizing message and ministry of condemnation is the surest sign and symptom of deeper, repressed passions Mr. Falwell was suffering. Those briefly released IG photos and videos were a confession dying to happen—‘dying’ because Falwell’s sloppiness signals the wear and tear of chronic guilt. Beneath the licentious behavior, Lazar saw (years ago) a soul who was suffering the corrosion of his own corruption and who projected his affliction in escalating xenophobia. The secret pain that energized his attacks is now public.

At least that’s how Abp. Lazar would diagnose him from afar (because who in his inner circle is up to it?). I’d call his assessment generous, because he’s seeing past the acting out behavior to the troubled heart of a real person. In confession, Lazar never asks, “What sins have you committed?” He always, always begins, “What is troubling you?” And his agenda is to bring the gospel to the heart of that trouble. That’s the mercy I’ve known throughout my own troubles. I hope that kind of love will penetrate Jerry Falwell Jr.’s heart and extend to all those damaged by the same system he both propped up and that became his cruel millstone.

In that sense, though Paul Young and I wrote the first drafts of The Pastor: A Crisis some years ago, I do see our book directly addressing both the dark shadows of this moment and, Lord willing, shining a healing light into it.

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[Dave Robinson]

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