Last week we learned that best-selling and beloved author Philip Yancey confessed to an 8-year affair.
He announced in a statement he was stepping back from ministry, as he was now disqualified. His wife Janet issued a statement too saying that she was devastated, but that she would stay with him after 55 years of marriage because of their vows. (You can read both statements here).
This news obviously rocked the evangelical world. Many have read Yancey’s books and have been affected by them; I personally loved The Jesus I Never Knew.
And quite frankly, evangelical women are so, so sick and tired of evangelical men betraying them. So sick of it.
Rather than talk about Yancey specifically today, since we don’t know all the details, and I don’t think it’s fruitful or kind to Janet to talk about them specifically, I’d like to talk about the commentary that I’ve heard about how we should respond to news like this.
So much of that commentary has been atrocious, and we need to inject some sanity and some Jesus back in this discussion.
I ran this post on Substack as well! Subscribe there so you don’t miss the discussions!
“This could have been any of us…”
One of the most common responses I’ve seen from pastors especially to the news goes something like what I saw one pastor say on Facebook:
“If Philip Yancey is capable of this, you and I are capable as well.”
It’s interesting that we don’t do this with other sins (although I remember Owen Strachan reacting to the discovery of Ravi Zacharias’ sex trafficking with “there but for the grace of God go I…”). If we hear someone murdered, we don’t say, “it could have been me.” If we hear someone robbed a bank, we don’t hear pastors say, “it could have been me.” But when it comes to cheating on your wife? Oh, yeah, that could have been me.
I’m going to share a piece by Tullian Tchividjian, the disgraced grandson of Billy Graham, who has been credibly accused of clergy sex abuse, destroyed several families, and forced to leave his PCA denomination before starting his own ministry:
Somewhere along the way, we’ve come to believe there is a fundamental difference between certain people and the rest of us—that some are less broken, less fragile, less capable of failure. But while there are functional differences between roles, statuses, and responsibilities, there is no fundamental difference at the level of human nature. The idea that some people don’t struggle with the same fears, temptations, and contradictions as everyone else is a myth. Human beings are human beings, carrying the same flaws, anxieties, and sinful tendencies across the board. No one lives outside the bounds of reality or human nature.
I have a friend who once said that all of us are three bad days away from becoming a tabloid headline and most of us are already on day two. All have fallen short, across every culture, vocation, ideology, and persuasion under the sun. Sin is a shared, ever-present reality, something that clings to all of us. All of us.
So if our theology leaves us stunned by human failure, it may be worth asking whether we’ve quietly believed in ourselves more than we realized.
What’s so amazing about grace? It covers both the sin of adultery and the sin of the one who looks down on the adulterer. (emphasis mine)
Let’s start with the idea that all of us are equally vulnerable; that all of us are “three days away from becoming a tabloid headline”, or that all of us carry the “same..sinful tendencies across the board.”
Actually, no.
When it comes to infidelity, we are all not equally at risk.
Infidelity is not like a virus that can hit just anybody; specific types of people are far more likely to have affairs.
In terms of men vs. women, in our study for our book The Marriage You Want, we found that men were about three times as likely to cheat as women were, consistent with other numbers I have seen in other studies of religious populations. Also, the rate of infidelity among churchgoing faithful evangelicals is relatively low.
Keith and I covered the reasons for affairs at length last year in episode 282 of the Bare Marriage podcast on “Why Do Men Cheat”. We looked at a number of new studies about the predictors of affairs, and here are a few things to know:
- Frequency of sex in marriage is not a good predictor of having an affair. In other words, men don’t cheat because they’re not getting sex.
- Power differentials and a sense of entitlement is highly linked to affairs. Men who exhibit signs of entitlement, and who have power differentials in their marriage, are more likely to cheat.
- Hostile and benevolent sexism are linked to affairs. Men who think women are beneath them in some way are more likely to cheat.
(all studies are linked at the podcast).
I want to highlight one of the sentences from one study:
The decision to be unfaithful is solely an individualistic quality in which zero culpability should be directed toward one’s partner, as having more sex and developing a deeper bond with one’s partner did not serve as a deterrent for infidelity.
Affairs are due to an individual person’s choice, and certain individuals are more likely to have affairs—it is not the same propensity.
Evangelical teaching, unfortunately, stokes men’s feelings of entitlement towards their wife’s body (she’s not to deprive him), and stokes sexism (that he needs unconditional respect and can’t be corrected or critiqued). Men like Tullian have lived right in the middle of these types of beliefs.
“We shouldn’t judge because we are all equally guilty…”
Tchvidjian really drove this one home. In response to one woman questioning his stance in the comments, he responded:
“ask God to help you see that your own heart is as adulterous as Yancey’s, mine, and every other human heart that has ever lived.”
So we can’t judge Yancey, or anyone who has had an affair, because we are all equally guilty.
Except that Paul did say that we are to judge those within the church, and that church leaders must be above reproach? I guess Tchvidjian ignores that part!
In the comments, Tullian also brings up Jesus’ take on the Sermon on the Mount, claiming that when Jesus said that lust in your heart was as bad as adultery, or hate was as bad as murder, that he was saying that we aren’t to judge.
Quite frankly, this is an infantile and deceptive interpretation of Scripture, because elsewhere Jesus gives us plenty of places where He says that some will be judged more harshly.
Tullian also ignores the reasons for Jesus’ comments in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was defending the vulnerable. He was defending the vulnerable in the case of lust, putting the blame at men’s feet, not at women’s. And he was defending the vulnerable in other places in the gospel when he said that those who sin against children will be judged more harshly.
Pastors who are so quick to say that we are all equally guilty are not defending the vulnerable but giving succor to the oppressors.
Would a woman who was the victim of sexual abuse be safe in a church that believed we are all equally sinners? Sin levelling always benefits those in power, and never the vulnerable.
Of course those who commit infidelity can be redeemed (though never restored to ministry, as I’m glad Yancey acknowledged), but to say that we are equally guilty is a sloppy reading of Scripture.
“The only reason we can stay faithful is God’s grace…”
I saw another pastor on Facebook complaining about how the secular world was reacting to the Yancey news. He wrote:
Grace, sadness, disappointment, and hopeful for reconciliation in his 55 year marriage, yet understanding if his wife leaves him, in the Christian publications.
Snarkiness, giddiness, celebration, mocking and triumphant hatred in the Times.
What a stark difference in fellow humans.
This difference is caused by unbelievers lack of understanding of what a Christian is, and isn’t. We are a people who, from the earliest of Christian writings, admit who we are:
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16…(Romans 7:16-20)
We are as weak in temptation as anyone, and only made strong in Him. But for the grace of God go we, and making it through this life unscathed and untainted is a miracle we can only attribute to God, not to ourselves.”
Look at that last sentence again: not having an affair is a “miracle we can only attribute to God.”
Would you want to be this man’s wife?
I don’t want to be married to someone whose only reason for not falling into bed with another woman is that Jesus performed a miracle. I often wonder, too, do these pastors know any nonChristians? Most in the secular world aren’t having affairs either. Most people are faithful to their spouses.
Honestly, this man’s excuses remind me of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:1, that such things aren’t done even among unbelievers! When Christians seem to have fewer morals than the secular world, we’re doing something very wrong.
“Satan attacks men in power, and aims for their marriages..”
Whenever someone with a large platform falls, we always hear some variation of this. We even hear it before they fall— “pray for your pastor/marriage ministry person, because Satan wants to target their marriage.”
Is this true? Perhaps.
But what is the effect of this teaching? If a leader falls, it’s because “Satan targeted him.” But if you, a mere plebe, fall, it’s all on you.
Anything that takes agency or responsibility away from those in power is not of God. Scripture is so clear that those in power will be judged more harshly, and yet so much of our teaching is designed to excuse those in power while condemning those without.
Who does all of this benefit?
That’s the question that I kept coming back to, over and over again, in the last few days. When pastors give all of these excuses, who does it benefit?
Does it benefit women? Of course not. It hurts women, because we’re told that no matter how secure we are in our marriages, how much we love our husbands and they love us, how long we’ve been married, our husbands are only a few bad days away from throwing it all away. We can never be secure in our husband’s love or faithfulness.
In our survey of 20,000 women for our book The Great Sex Rescue, we examined the result of the teaching that “all men struggle with lust, it’s every man’s battle.” That’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s close. And when women believe that this is a universal struggle men have, so they can never fully trust their husband, their libido drops; their orgasm rates drop; and marital satisfaction drops. Telling women they must be hyper vigilant and can never trust their husbands hurts women. Full stop.
Does this teaching help your average man in the pew? No, because when men are taught that they will inevitably struggle with sexual sin, their marriages do worse too, as we discovered in our survey of men for our book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex. Telling men that they were made to sin sexually, and that this is a particular area of their lives they will never recover, makes porn use more likely, is associated with worse marital outcomes, and makes men far worse lovers.
So who does this message serve?
It serves those who want to cheat and get away with it. That’s it. It’s that simple.
And it serves pastors who want to groom their congregation to overlook the sin of the men in power in their church.
Let’s not overlook that.
Do pastors ever think, “what is the effect on the women in my congregation?”
One of the pernicious effects of having all male leadership in churches is that pastors can totally miss what women are thinking and experiencing, and discount women’s voices.
In my social media posts about this, overwhelmingly both men and women agree with me, but when someone does disagree, it’s almost always a man.
And I wonder, do these pastors understand how the women feel when they hear, over and over again, you shouldn’t expect that your pastors, elders, or husbands will be able to stay faithful?
So let me end with this:
It’s okay to expect your husband won’t have an affair.
Scripture tells us that when we are in Christ we should put sexual sin to death (Colossians 3:5), not that we should normalize it. So if you’re sick and tired of these messages excusing infidelity, I hope this is a comfort!
What do you think of the sin levelling that’s been happening with Philip Yancey’s affair? How should we be talking about this? Let’s discuss it in the comments!
>> “This could have been any of us…”
Only in theory. Physically I could do this, but I won’t. While I cannot guarantee that I will never fall in any way, I pretty much CAN guarantee that there are some things that I will never do, such as infidelity.
Exactly. That’s why I was so upset when Owen Strachan responded to stories of Ravi Zacharias’ sex trafficking with “Only by the grace of God go I…”
Like if you think you’re the type of person who can sex traffic, why are you in ministry?
Sometimes we really do sound worse than unbelievers, as Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians.
i.e. “I have X Problem, so Everybody Else must have the Same Problem.”
And beside which, sex makes people stupid in general and Christians especially.
What do you think of this series of articles on Forgiveness by Paul Tripp:
https://www.paultripp.com/wednesdays-word
Something feels off to me?
Sometimes I wonder if people comment in these bad, predictable ways because we don’t know how to implement judgement and grace AT THE SAME TIME. We’re too harsh, we’re too easy; what would “just right” look like in this situation of leadership and infidelity?
Could we all –speaking to the USA here– please just go to some really good marriage counseling together?!
This anonymous pastor’s take is so strange. He’s seeing schadenfreude in secular responses to Yancey’s behavior, and he thinks it’s because people don’t know what a Christian is? Well, whose fault is that?? If Christians as a whole were so good at humbly admitting their faults, maybe we wouldn’t have such a reputation for hypocrisy. If culture war Christians weren’t out there weaponizing the “sanctity of marriage” against people who live differently, maybe folks wouldn’t be so catty about a prominent Christian having an affair. If the Christian patriarchalists weren’t yapping about how women don’t need the right to vote because men could take care of women by being in charge of everything, maybe people would not be so snarky about a Christian teacher betraying his wife. I’m not saying Yancey is some culture warrior Christian dominionist (as far as I know he’s nothing of the sort). But I do think if we want non Christians to understand “what a Christian is,” we, at least in the US, are about a hundred years late in cleaning house. Paul’s warnings on that point seem much more relevant here than his musings about his own internal struggles, imo.
Very well said!
“Satan is moving against you”. Okay, this may be true, although I agree with what’s been pointed out here. Satan tempts us, but there’s a not a demon hiding behind every bush and rock waiting to tempt us. We can fall into sin all on our own.
And this is also reminiscent of the old days of the witch trials. I’ve heard that sometimes men caught in affairs would say that the woman was a witch who cast a spell on him to FORCE him to cheat.
“Satan is Cheez Whiz”
— Backwards Masking track on Weird Al Yankovic’s “Nature Trail to Hell”
And the Malleus Maleficarium (Witchfinder’s handbook during the Burning Times) went on and on about witch-demon sex and how witches steal and hoard men’s penises. Like the guy who wrote it was indulging his own sexual fantasies and appetites.
I think it was Martin Luther who said, regarding temptation: “You can’t stop birds flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
Yes!
The very first comment I saw on Yancey’s affair was from a man saying that Yancey’s wife needed to spend time in ‘self reflection and repentance’, because if she had fulfilled her ‘marital duties’ adequately, he would not have ‘fallen’ into sin. And it’s made me think of how often people attempt to cast the blame for a Christian leader’s sin on those around him (because it usually is ‘him’) and how often a man’s sin is blamed on his wife.
If adultery is so ‘expectable’ from Christian leaders, how come we don’t see it being explained away in the New Testament as being no big deal? Oh, that would be because New Testament Christians expected that the Holy Spirit’s power would enable them to live Christlike lives. Not that they could point the finger of blame at any and everything else to excuse their lack of Christlikeness!
It really is crazy this normalization of infidelity.
He didn’t Fall into sin, he walked in, sat down, and got comfy.
I really dislike all the passive language that gets used. It removes agency from the sinner. This affair was something that was actively chosen for 8 years, he didn’t passively fall anywhere. This language also makes it seem like there is nothing you can do, like a bomb went off in your foxhole and you can’t do anything to not get hit, which is not how sin works. Sin isn’t some infectious disease where you have to worry that someone a few feet over sneezes on you and you get sick…it is a thing that you choose to do.
This… is exactly right.
I kind of want to print this out and frame it.
Absolutely!
If a child misbehaves, people often ask why the parent did not stop it (or take the child into a time-out, etc).
If a manager misbehaves, people ask why that person’s manager and HR didn’t put a stop to it.
So if a husband misbehaves and we ask the wife to take responsibility, that’s because she’s the actual leader.
That’s such a good point!
They’re already blaming the wife, eh?
Odd that they should accuse her for not keeping her vows, when she’s staying with him BECAUSE of her vows…
I’m guessing ‘marital duties’ is a euphemism for not giving him enough of/the right kind of sex.
And these guys are probably the same ones who are complaining about the way Christian girls are so reluctant to get married.
Like in Porn, the female only exists to service the Man whenever he wants, any way/kink he wants.
“Just like the Manosphere, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
Something that popped into my brain this week – we often talk about the bit in the Sermon on the Mount that talks about gouging eyes and cutting off hands as a sign of how seriously God views sin. But this week, my attention was drawn to a word that precedes those phrases. “If your eye CAUSES you to sin” and “If your hand CAUSES you to sin”. Which doesn’t make sense, because it’s not our body parts that make us sin. It made me wonder if Jesus is giving a slightly tongue-in-cheek response here to the people who were trying to deflect blame for their own actions “Oh, so it’s not your fault you are lusting, it’s your eyes that are to blame for making you do it? Better take them out then. And you’re not really a thief, it’s just that you can’t control your hands? Better get rid of them and then the problem is solved.”
And of course, right back in the beginning, the man blames the woman and the woman blames the snake. Seems like we never learn to take responsibility.
I think that’s exactly what Jesus is saying. He’s expecting the response “but it’s not my hands/eyes that cause me to sin…”
“Exactly…”
I think the point is we should be as ruthless with the actual causes of sin in our life (selfishness, pride, laziness, entitlement etc) as he describes with eyes and hands.
It’s also particularly grotesque when you consider that these men want women to be stay at home mothers, without career options, and to limit no-fault divorce.
My brothers in Christ, if you want women to be that vulnerable, you need to call on men to higher levels of conduct, self control, and responsibility.
I’m too tired to articulate this properly, but I sometimes see people erroneously conflating “Grace” with “No consequences ever”.
The “It’s a miracle that I’m not doing the same thing RIGHT NOW” lines up well with the teachings of extreme total depravity I grew up with (Everyone is evil and selfish and bad, no one has morals inherently, only God can make you not a hideously selfish monster, etc.)
Idk, there’s a connection to be made there, but it’s Monday. I’m tired. I agree, Sheila, that it removes accountability, and that’s awful.
Importantly though, poor Janet! How awful it must be for a spotlight to be placed on her like this, in such a troubling time, through no fault of her own. I’ll be praying for her for sure, though I wish I could do more for her.
Kit, I was thinking the same thing about the total depravity theology. If you’ve been taught, and believe, that humans are the worst scum of sinners except for the power of the Holy Spirit keeping you in check, then it makes sense that the outcome is an expectation that even the best people could participate in murder, sex trafficking, and adultery. When you add in the unclear interaction of human will combined with Spirit transformation, it also makes sense that a person feels they are at least a little not to blame for their actions. Even for people who aren’t full-on TULIP, the concept has infiltrated and has devastating consequences. Theology matters! (We could start by stopping reading Augustine and the Pear as admirable theology.)
Don’t forget that One-Upmasnhip game among today’s Disciples of Calvin, “More Totally Depraved Than Thou.”
“(We could start by stopping reading Augustine and the Pear as admirable theology.)”
Or at least acknowledge that Augustine had a load of baggage from his past, some of which slipped into his theology. He wasn’t a plaster-statue Saint, all theological, nothing physical.
The Bible lists some fairly horrendous behaviours as being carried out by believers BEFORE they were saved. Many of the NT Christians were not ‘nice’ people before they encountered Christ. But the expectation is that a believer – any believer – has the Holy Spirit living in them, and so has the power to avoid these behaviours from now on. So no, total depravity does not give anyone a get-out clause, even if they are fully paid up ardent supporters of TULIP
Yes, that whole analogy of Augustine with the pears is problematic (as I explained here). I totally agree–the whole TULIP theology does tend to lead in this direction.
I think it could also be related to the “salvation message” that is so core to evangelicalism?
You’re coached to tell someone who practices, say Judaism or unitarian Universalism, that they need to accept Jesus to be saved from their sins. If the response is, “I’m a good, moral person. Yes, I’m human and imperfect, but I’ve never cheated on my spouse, stolen, or seriously hurt anyone. I do much good to my fellow humans. I think God will look at my good heart and good actions and allow me to be with him in heaven.”
The correct evangelical answer is: did you ever hate? Take anything that wasn’t yours? Look at pornography? If yes, then you are, according to God’s standard, a murderer, a thief, and an adulterer. So you better accept Jesus if you want to be forgiven.
So, in terms of our standing before God, it doesn’t matter if I’m Mother Theresa or Bernie Madoff— I’m so bad that my sin requires Jesus’ death to atone for it. So, not only is it, “I *could* be just as bad as someone who carried on an 8 year affair” it’s worse— I actually AM that bad without actually doing the bad action. Especially if anything in my thoughts or desires leans that way, I am just as guilty as if I had acted it out.
Yes, I think the emphasis is just so misplaced in so much of evangelicalism salvation theology. We’ve missed the bigger picture of what salvation is. I really appreciate N.T. Wright’s books (all of them) on this. Really helped me see things differently and understand what Jesus meant by “the kingdom of God.” When I was deep in evangelicalism no one ever had an answer for what that phrase meant.
“When I was deep in evangelicalism no one ever had an answer for what that phrase meant.”
Except maybe “Whatever I Am THAT YOUR’E NOT!”
Or Fluffy Cloud Heaven — During my time in-country, Heaven was described as a never-ending Compulsory Bible Study. Or an MP4 loop of “WORSHIP! WORSHIP! WORSHIP! WORSHIP!” My reaction was “Heaven’s supposed to be better than Hell — but not by much.”
P.S. Over the weekend, YouTube’s Sacred Algorithm flooded my feed with a LOT of The Collapse Is Starting, Nuclear War, and Private Revelation Visions/Guided Tours of HELL, all in Graphic AI slop CGI.
It’s wild how these statements about “it could have been me”/ “it could have been any of us” mean that it could have been any of us *having the affair* (or sexually abusing people, or whatever the case may be), rather than “any of us could have been a victim of this, so we should support the victims.” It really says a lot about who they think is the person in the situation that we can relate to and we should have empathy for.
YES! Exactly.
“The only reason we can stay faithful is God’s grace…”
O.K. God’s Special Pet, Define “Grace”. In a way other than “What I Have THAT YOU DON’T”.
If the only reason Christian A has stayed faithful is by God’s grace, that must mean that God gave less grace to Christian B who didn’t stay faithful…
We all have the same access to the throne of grace – it’s up to us if we choose to go there or not!
Yes, exactly! It’s saying that God chooses who will sin, which is just crazy.
More like “is Just CALVIN.”
“I often wonder, too, do these pastors know any nonChristians?”
In one word, NO.
Can’t risk that Heathen Cootie Contamination.
“Honestly, this man’s excuses remind me of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:1, that such things aren’t done even among unbelievers!”
Not even in Furry Fandom.
There’s a problem with a finding that men cheat three times more often than women.
A man normally cheats with a woman so the vast majority of times that a man cheats there is also a woman cheating at the same time. They are both cheating on his wife.
A man could often successfully lie in pretending to be not cheating in a one night stand. But it would get exceedingly difficult for a man to convincingly lie about not cheating in an ongoing affair.
But evangelical men can cheat with women who are not committed evangelicals. That’s the gap. When we’re looking at our population of interest (committed evangelical churchgoing believers) there’s many reasons to see how that stat works.
The woman isn’t cheating on the man’s wife. She didn’t make any promises to be faithful to the wife. The man did. The woman may be acting outsides the bounds of our culture’s social contract with the wife, but it isn’t cheating.
I’ve known more than one woman who found out months or even years into a relationship that her other half was married. If they don’t live in the same area, it’s perfectly possible for someone to carry on an affair for years without either partner knowing about the other.
“There’s a problem with a finding that men cheat three times more often than women.
A man normally cheats with a woman so the vast majority of times that a man cheats there is also a woman cheating at the same time. They are both cheating on his wife.:
This doesn’t make any sense. So Marla Maples and the porn star are equally responsible as Trump when he cheated on wives 1 and3? Get real! The women went along for the ride, especially Marla Maples, but no one broke Trump’s vows but Trump.
Wow! Not a good wow. Sad to say that I’m not surprised at this. These pastors like Owen and Tullian want to make excuses for the bad behavior of famous Christian men. I’m afraid to say that if a famous Christian woman did what Yancey did, these men would bash her.
I believe we all fall short and are human, but I don’t think anyone falls into an affair. It was a choice. Christians are supposed to display the Fruit of the Spirit which includes self control. When I got married, my husband and I made vows to commit to one another and I expect both of us to keep those vows.
Another thing that seems weird is that it seems obligatory to affirm, when publicly admitting a big, disgraceful sin, is that the offender is still covered by Jesus’ grace and mercy (or has the potential to be, if he has believed correctly). As if they’d be betraying their final value if the didn’t affirm “once saved always saved” and “saved by grace alone” in their public statements.
If asked, I think they would say that it’s better to be an adulterer who is “saved” by grace (correct belief), than to be an unsaved person who never committed adultery. Because at least you’re going to heaven. What you believe is ultimately more important than what you do.
Personally, I think it would be refreshing for someone to say, I’ve made light of God’s grace and abused it and maybe my sin can’t be forgiven. I can’t presume that it is. I hope God will be merciful to me, a sinner, but I don’t have any guarantees.
I’m Catholic and so much of this discussion reminds me of why we distinguish between mortal sin (which separates you from God) and venial sin.
For Protestants, I would refer to the Ten Commandments. God chose to specifically call those out as “commandments,” on the same list as to not have other gods.