Who are We and Who do We want to Be?

I recently posted on Facebook an article from the Houston Chronicle about sexual abuse and sexual harassment from ministers within the Southern Baptist Convention. The author provided solid research that spanned the last 20 years involving pastors, youth workers, deacons, and volunteers within local SBC churches who sexually used, abused, or assaulted teens and women in their congregations.

We have seen how pervasive this problem has been within the Catholic Church, but the truth is, it has been going on for years in churches across all denominations.

Ministers have easy access to vulnerable teens both male and female, and, to women in their churches. Some come for counseling and end up in some sexual relationship with a pastor or youth minister. Church leaders are often so revered they are considered above reproach and this can create manipulation and taking advantage of a person’s trust by them. It is something some morally weak ministers fall into, and, something unscrupulous ministers look for.

Obviously, the majority of church leaders are decent, ethical, self-disciplined individuals. They take their calling to ministry seriously and keep themselves from compromising situations or from allowing themselves to get personally involved in a church member’s sexual needs, frustrations, or dysfunction. They refer them to other professionals who are trained to deal with those issues.

Still, it is deeply troubling and inexcusable, that any minister would twist an act of help, counsel, love, or care, as a way to manipulate a vulnerable child, teen, or adult for sexual pleasure.

I don’t know whether more of this kind of sordid behavior is happening within the Church now, or if it has always been this way, only now it is more easily revealed and discovered. But either way, it is a disheartening phenomenon.

The reality of this brings us back to that age-old question about who we are as human beings and what is our essential nature. Are we the product of original sin, the whole Garden of Eden belief? The idea that we were born perfect but supposedly our first parents Adam and Eve disobeyed God and humans were then forever cursed and doomed. And so Christ had to come and die for our sins to save us. It’s an ancient biblical belief. But is it valid? Or have we misinterpreted it? Don’t ministers all claim to be “saved,” to be Christian? Does that mean salvation doesn’t work since many ministers do terrible things to others?

Buddhism does not believe in original sin but rather in negative seeds. It teaches we all have negative seeds within us--rage, jealously, lust, hatred, and so on. But those seeds can be crowded out by the seeds of wisdom and love. Buddhism encourages us to think more wholesome thoughts, to meditate on the good, to live in peace and to let those seeds bloom.

In Islam, the great sin is forgetfulness, dismissing or failing to keep focused in one’s mind, on the truths that lead to God.

Christian feminism has the unique concept that in the Garden, Eve ate the forbidden fruit in order to have more knowledge, while Adam ate it out of greed, simply because it tasted good. And so they say we all have these desires in us—to know more and to selfishly want more. One enhances life, the other diminishes life.

And so, if our essential nature is sinful, or if it is neutral and open to good, are we then, in our daily living, moving closer to or farther from, our essential nature?

That question faces all of us, and not just ministers and church leaders.

The sexual abuses by ministers in all denominations leave a space in society left empty by the loss of the divine. It is a fundamental betrayal that makes church nothing more than a secular enterprise.

The wise mystic, Thomas Merton, wrote, “The matter of who we are, always precedes what we do.”

If the Garden of Eden is our place of origin, then give me Eve’s thirst for knowledge over Adam’s greed for pleasure. I want to learn who I really am.

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