When heroes fall...

How do you navigate the moral failure of a respected leader?

When I was eighteen , I read a book called What’s so Amazing about Grace and it changed my life. I grew up with a very legalistic understanding of faith, thinking that maybe grace got me in the door of salvation but only just. If I truly wanted to go to heaven, if I wanted God to be pleased with me then I had to earn my keep. Reading What’s so Amazing about Grace, was like a title wave washing over me, scrubbing the muck of legalism off my soul, and telling me that yes grace is real, it is unearned and unearnable, yet given freely to all who are in Christ.

Since reading that book, I have read many others by the author Phillip Yancey and have grown to deeply appreciate his writing. His works were always readable, enjoyable, and each helped me to see faith in a new practical and beautiful way. I deeply resonated with his story of growing up in legalism, and having to dig through the muck of cultural christianity to find the true gospel underneath. Most recently I read his memoir Where the Light Fell and was very impacted by what he had overcome in his life, the way he had fought through his confusions about what the church had told him and ended up on solid ground again. Since I first read Yancey’s work when I was eighteen, I have thought highly of him, spoken highly of him, and been influenced by his works even to the point where I have named What’s so Amazing about Grace, as one of the books that has had the deepest impact on my life so far.

Then last week I read that Philip Yancey confessed to an eight year long affair with a married woman; during which time he himself celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. Reading that was like a punch in the gut, knocking the wind out of me, and sending my mind reeling. This man, who had changed my life with his books, who had spoken the truth about the Gospel to cut through the lies of legalism, in the end betrayed the very truth he portrayed so clearly and graciously.

In a daze my mind was prompted again to consider a question that I have had to wrestle with too many times in the past: What do we do when our heroes fall? How do we reconcile the message with the messenger? This man, who wrote so well of the gospel of God, acted in a way for years that was contradictory to the very message he proclaimed. What then do we do with his books? Even though his books have been so impactful for so many, do we now cast them aside and work to expunge them from memory?

It is tempting when a public christian figure has a moral failing to sit in judgment over them because their actions clearly contradict the gospel they are known to be proclaiming. It is easy to “cancel” them, to quietly remove their books from the church library, or any record of them ever having spoken at the conference. We fear the impact this sinful person might have on the gospel. When things like this come to light, we feel the need to distance ourselves from them, to point out where they went wrong and to emphatically say “that could never be me”. We cast our stones with the crowd to show we are different from them. I wonder if that impulse is not so much righteous anger, but embarrassed hurt, fearing we put our trust in the wrong person and now look the fool.

How do we bridge that gap between the person we thought they were and who we now see them to be? After they fell from the idolized picture we had of them, do we then in reaction demonize them? Instead of immediately labeling them as an “other”, is it possible to look at them apart from their accolades and their failures, and see them firstly as human?

In therapy, the most important indicator of success is the relationship between the therapist and the client; not modality, not methodology, but the connection of one human soul with another. That relationship is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to build unless you are able to empathize with the client on some level. You cannot lift someone up if you’re holding a stone. No matter how heinous the crime, no matter how much the details boil your blood, you cannot help them if you cannot find some part of them you can empathize with, some place for your souls to connect however small. When faced with a client who lives their life or acts in a way that is completely counter to the values to which they personally hold, it is the therapist’s job to find that part of the client’s heart, a drive, a desire, a fear, that they can connect with and honestly say “I feel with you”.

Empathizing does not mean you agree with what they did, but that you can understand at some level the drive, desire, fear, or emotion that prompted their action. For not all of us murder, but all feel anger. Not all commit adultery, but all of us have experienced lust. It is finding the root of their action in your own heart, and being able to say, “but for the grace of God, there go i”; if it weren’t for God’s grace, I could easily be in the same position. In that connection, we find our shared humanity. Without that connection, we place the other in a different sub-human category called “them”. When they are in that category, we feel justified in our judgment and our anger because we in the “us” camp could never do what they did.

Philip Yancey’s actions contradict the message of the gospel, and his failure to live up to his own preaching feels a personal affront to everyone who has read his books. And yet, Yancey’s failure to live out the message does not negate the truth of the message itself. In his sin, Yancey showed us that he is human, made in God’s image, but just as fallen as all of us since Adam. In his sin, he showed us that he is in need of his own message of the gospel just as much as anyone who read his books. Is what he did wrong? unequivocally. Did he cause pain? immeasurably: foremost to his wife, family, and community, then to all who have read his books and found solace in the gospel he preached. But does the failure of the messenger negate the message? No. The message stands of its own volition, and indeed the essence of the message of grace Yancey wrote about is that we are frail sinful people, but God loved us anyway and came to die in our stead so that, in Christ, we can be with Him in eternity.

Though Yancey is just as much in need of the message of his books as the rest of us, what now do we do with those books? It is undoubtable that we can never again read them with the confidence we had in them before, their words are tainted in some way; but that does not mean they cannot be read, or even that God cannot still speak through them. If perfect men were the only ones allowed to pick up a pen, then we would have no use for the written word. But it does mean that when his books are read, they will require a larger pinch of salt than before, they will be read with more skepticism, and require more discernment. Not because the words or the message have somehow changed, but that we now know the writer of those words went on to live a contradictory life in secret for eight years. It is only natural caution to wonder if the roots of his diversion don’t go back further.

I am still working through the implications of Yancey’s failure for myself, as I reconsider the place his books have held in my life and philosophy. Indeed, even today I had a situation that gave me pause. In my job as a Christian therapist I work with a lot of clients who are navigating their understanding of the gospel, helping them to sort through what they learned from church as a child and measure it against who they now know God to be. Just this morning a client asked how they might begin unraveling the roots of legalism that have infiltrated their thinking about God, and for the first time since I was eighteen, I hesitated to recommend What’s so Amazing about Grace. This experience saddened me deeply, because I do believe it is a wonderful book that could do much good in this client’s life, but now, under the shadow of Yancey’s sin, I cannot recommend it without a heavy caveat. Such a heavy caveat in fact that I may as well not recommend it at all.

As a Christian author and leader Yancey’s sin has had a far reaching impact, much further than most people. Which is why James warns not to desire to be teachers, as those who are teachers “will incur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1). They are judged harsher because the impact of their life, for good and for evil, is larger. Therefore we cannot just act like Yancey’s sin is no big deal. We must be clear in calling out sin as sin, lest others be led astray, especially when we see it crop up in those who lead the church. Yet on the other side, we cannot treat him as anathema, an outcast, as someone who is now beyond the grace of the gospel. The grace he spoke of so tenderly must be extended to him as well; even in the midst of his own brokenness. For if he is beyond grace, then so are we.