Latest / The Mark Driscoll Show / The Quickest Way to Destroy Your Marriage | The Mark Driscoll Show | Ep 31

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The Quickest Way to Destroy Your Marriage | The Mark Driscoll Show | Ep 31 · The Mark Driscoll Show

• 0:21
  Well, howdy, Pastor Mark Driscoll here.
• 0:22
  We're going to do a segment today.
• 0:24
  Going to be a little intense and very pastoral.
• 0:28
  So I met my wife Grace at age 17.
• 0:33
  We have been together since March 12th, 1988.
• 0:38
  And I have been faithful to my wife since she was my
• 0:42
  girlfriend. And what we're seeing sadly,
• 0:45
  tragically, is a lot of pastors not doing well, not finishing
• 0:50
  well. It seems like every week there's
• 0:53
  another adultery of the week being blasted in the headlines.
• 0:57
  Of course, the non Christian media outlets and critics of
• 1:01
  Christianity love to let us know the hypocrisy within the
• 1:07
  ministry and it it leads to an important discussion.
• 1:11
  And that is once you've committed adultery as a pastor,
• 1:16
  let's say particularly a a senior pastor, should you be
• 1:21
  done with ministry as a senior pastor for life?
• 1:25
  And I'm not very legalistic on really much of anything.
• 1:29
  I I do believe in grace and process and we've all got our
• 1:33
  false flaws and failures, but to me, this is a very serious
• 1:38
  matter. I would say that as a senior
• 1:41
  pastor, if you commit adultery, you're done.
• 1:45
  You're done. And this whole 15 minutes of
• 1:49
  time out, send them through a little restoration process, put
• 1:54
  them through some sort of counseling and then bring them
• 1:57
  back. I'll be honest, I don't
• 1:59
  understand any of that. One of the 10 commandments, I
• 2:03
  mean God literally writes with his own finger on 2 tablets for
• 2:08
  Moses, the heart of the Old Testament law.
• 2:11
  The Old Testament's got 613 laws in the five books of Moses, the
• 2:16
  Pentateuch, the heart of which is the 10 commandments that God
• 2:19
  writes gives to Moses, and of the 10 things God writes down.
• 2:24
  Commandment #7 you shall not commit adultery.
• 2:28
  There it is about as plain as can be in Exodus 20 verse 14.
• 2:34
  And so adultery is the great threat to to marriage.
• 2:40
  And when adultery is present, you see an assault, an attack on
• 2:47
  the sanctity of marriage because marriage is 2 things.
• 2:50
  It's covenant and it's consummation.
• 2:52
  Biblically, that's what Christians have always known.
• 2:55
  According to the Scriptures, marriage is it's covenants and
• 2:57
  consummation and when you consummate with someone you're
• 3:00
  not in covenant with, that's adultery and it's undermining of
• 3:04
  the marriage covenant. And it just seems like we're not
• 3:07
  taking adultery serious enough, particularly among clergy.
• 3:12
  In the Old Testament, Leviticus 20, verse 10, if a man commits
• 3:15
  adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and
• 3:18
  the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
• 3:21
  In the Old Testament, you didn't get a time out, you didn't get a
• 3:24
  restoration process. You didn't get, you know, to go
• 3:28
  through a six months of counseling and then get your
• 3:31
  senior pastor job back. Everybody got a rock, probably
• 3:34
  starting with the guys, the husband of the gal you're
• 3:39
  sleeping with, and they stoned you to death.
• 3:41
  They killed you. And so you didn't have to worry
• 3:44
  about whether or not you were going to come back into the
• 3:47
  pulpit because you were instead going into a hole in the ground.
• 3:51
  Divorce is grounds for adultery, rather is grounds for divorce In
• 3:57
  the New Testament there's a big debate as to what constitutes
• 4:00
  biblical grounds for divorce. One thing that pretty much all
• 4:04
  the Christians agree on is adultery is the one thing that
• 4:06
  is grounds for divorce. Jesus says Matthew 19 nine
• 4:10
  whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and
• 4:14
  marries another woman commits adultery.
• 4:16
  So adultery in the old covenant, you could be killed for it.
• 4:20
  It was a capital offense in the new covenant.
• 4:23
  You could get divorced for it. It it rises to that level.
• 4:26
  So I I hate it when I hear oh so and so had a a moral failing.
• 4:31
  I'll tell you what, jaywalking is a moral failing.
• 4:35
  Not using your turn signal in a school zone is a moral failing.
• 4:39
  Being a pastor who grooms A congregant, let's say a young
• 4:43
  gal in the church who has a father wound and you're going to
• 4:47
  manipulate that for sexual pleasure.
• 4:50
  A gal in the church who has trauma and confides in you and
• 4:54
  has a trauma bond and you manipulate that for sexuality.
• 4:58
  Galen, the church who's a single mom and she's needing male
• 5:03
  leadership in her life and you take interest in her and maybe
• 5:07
  help her with her children or her finances, and you manipulate
• 5:10
  that for sexuality. That is not a moral failing.
• 5:13
  That is predatorial abuse is what that is.
• 5:17
  It's disgusting. And the Bible says that adultery
• 5:22
  is the kind of thing that you can actually go to hell for. 1st
• 5:25
  Corinthians 6, nine through 10. Do you not know that the
• 5:27
  unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God?
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  Do not be deceived. And then it goes on to list here
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  in first Corinthians 6. Those who are included include
• 5:39
  the adulterers and the sexually immoral.
• 5:42
  And so God takes it very seriously.
• 5:44
  And sometimes in the church we don't take it seriously enough.
• 5:48
  And in addition, the Bible does give us some criteria for
• 5:53
  leaders. First Timothy 3 and Titus one.
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  All Christian leaders should know this.
• 5:59
  And I'm, I'm speaking particularly about senior
• 6:01
  pastors that the qualifications are primarily your marriage and
• 6:07
  your family. That's what it's about in first
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  Timothy 3 and Titus 1. And it says that you're the
• 6:13
  husband of one wife. In the original Greek, it
• 6:15
  literally means a one woman man, meaning you're committed to,
• 6:20
  devoted to, and sleeping with one woman.
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  That's the job description. That's the qualification.
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  That's that's the criteria for character.
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  And that your children, if they're little, they love the
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  Lord. You raise them in the Lord.
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  Of course, when a child becomes an adult, they get to make their
• 6:36
  own decisions. But you know, your children are
• 6:39
  raised by you and you're pastoring your family and you're
• 6:43
  setting an example in your home. And the question is, well, if
• 6:47
  you've been a senior pastor and you've slept with someone who's
• 6:51
  not your wife as a senior pastor, how in the world can you
• 6:55
  ever meet the qualification of being a one woman man?
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  You've already slept with another woman.
• 7:00
  You've already broken the qualifications.
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  And I'm not talking about behavior prior to Christ.
• 7:07
  Prior to Christ, we've all been drunkards.
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  We've all been fornicators. We've all been guilty of sins.
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  I'm talking about as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ
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  after taking upon yourself the requirements of being a
• 7:24
  spiritual leader. That's where the Bible says not
• 7:27
  many of you should presume to be teachers.
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  You'll be judged more harshly. The the standards are higher for
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  a leader, and they're very high for those who preach and teach.
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  The Bible says that those who labor in preaching and teaching
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  are worthy of double honor. That's because we bear double
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  responsibility in the sight of God.
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  When you get into the pulpit and you say thus saith the Lord, and
• 7:49
  you claim to be a mouthpiece for God, you better be living in
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  such a way that you're qualified to speak on behalf of God and
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  that you're living under the authority of God's Word if
• 7:59
  you're going to open it and tell others to obey it.
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  And so if you're, if you're not living in a way that is
• 8:05
  qualified to be teaching others, in what regard should you ever
• 8:10
  be brought back into that position if you've already
• 8:13
  disqualified yourself from it? And I would say this is
• 8:17
  particularly true if you've been caught there is there is a bit
• 8:21
  of a difference between, hey, I'm tempted and I'm going to
• 8:25
  cross a line. So I want to raise my hand
• 8:28
  before I get there and crossing the line, living over the line,
• 8:32
  having a habitual lifestyle over the line and then getting
• 8:35
  caught. That's not repentance.
• 8:38
  And and that person, honestly, that person is obviously someone
• 8:44
  who should never be restored to the job, not even a
• 8:47
  consideration because had they not been caught, they would have
• 8:51
  continued indefinitely, perhaps for the remainder of their life.
• 8:54
  How is that someone who is meritus of a process of being
• 8:59
  restored and helped? I mean, it's, it's just
• 9:02
  nonsense. And I look at this too.
• 9:05
  Once you've done that, you lose your anointing.
• 9:08
  The Holy Spirit isn't going to bless someone who is cheating on
• 9:12
  their wife and undermining their marriage covenant and disobeying
• 9:16
  their God. And, and in that where is the
• 9:19
  fear of the Lord? I, I, I couldn't fathom sleeping
• 9:24
  with someone not my wife and then climbing into the pulpit
• 9:28
  and pretending that I'm serving God and not having any fear of
• 9:34
  God and doing this as a lifestyle.
• 9:36
  It's, it's just shocking. And for those of you who maybe
• 9:39
  aren't pastors, you're not clergy, you don't teach the word
• 9:42
  of God, maybe it doesn't seem quite so reprehensible and
• 9:46
  scandalous to you, but as a Bible teacher, that is
• 9:51
  terrifying. That is horrifying.
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  I, I would literally be afraid that God would literally strike
• 9:58
  me dead in the pulpit. That would be my, my earnest
• 10:01
  fear. I have a profound fear of God
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  and I have a deep love for my wife and the thought of
• 10:09
  undermining all that I've taught and all that I've done and what
• 10:13
  that would do to my wife and to my children and now to my
• 10:16
  grandchildren and all the men that I've had the opportunity of
• 10:20
  teaching, and all the damage and carnage that would be done.
• 10:24
  I couldn't even fathom the horror of all of that.
• 10:28
  And then to think that I'd be brought back.
• 10:31
  What kind of example would that be that that would be showing
• 10:34
  everyone, Well, I guess you can do this and then pick up where
• 10:37
  you left off. There's No Fear of God in that.
• 10:40
  There is no warning in that. There is no, there is no
• 10:45
  sobriety, there is no holiness and reverence for God in any of
• 10:49
  that. And yeah, there is grace and
• 10:52
  Jesus did die for our sins. And you can be forgiven of
• 10:55
  anything and restored to the church in Christian faith.
• 10:59
  But we're talking about leadership and we're talking
• 11:02
  about leadership being held to a higher standard and biblical
• 11:06
  qualifications. Well, howdy Pastor Mark here,
• 11:08
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  That's Gold code.com/real Faith and in this as well, you lose
• 12:15
  your moral authority. Who would possibly follow you
• 12:18
  after that? And as a, as a man, if you do
• 12:22
  that, particularly with someone in your congregation or we're
• 12:25
  still somebody on your staff, you're either paying someone to
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  be your mistress, which is a form of prostitution, or you're
• 12:35
  bringing someone on staff to be your mistress, which is also a
• 12:38
  form of prostitution. How can you ever be trusted to
• 12:43
  have spiritual oversight of a woman ever again?
• 12:46
  I'm a, I'm a dad and a grandpa. There's no way in the world I
• 12:52
  would ever let a man who has groomed and used and abused and
• 12:57
  slept with a woman, usually a younger woman, to then have, you
• 13:02
  know, spiritual oversight or direct report of one of my
• 13:05
  daughter's or granddaughters. You can't trust that man to ever
• 13:09
  have spiritual oversight of a woman, particularly a young
• 13:12
  woman, ever again because the risk is too high.
• 13:16
  And he's already proven that he is not trustworthy and he is
• 13:20
  dangerous in the same way. You know, if someone is abusing
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  a kid, I wouldn't let them babysit.
• 13:28
  If someone proves their character to be untrustworthy, I
• 13:32
  don't care how gifted they are. I don't care how much good they
• 13:35
  have done. I don't care what degree they
• 13:37
  have. I don't care how much you know
• 13:40
  good has come from their life. That is disqualifying.
• 13:45
  And trust is earned through character.
• 13:48
  And once you've proven you don't have character, then you don't
• 13:52
  get trust because trust is earned.
• 13:56
  And you know, there is a process.
• 13:58
  I was looking at it. Let's see, 20 to 25% of couples
• 14:06
  do admit to adultery. Usually it is the men 20 to 25.
• 14:11
  Usually there's more men than women who actually commit
• 14:14
  adultery. It's 20 ish to 25% of men. 13 to
• 14:19
  15% of women commit adultery. For women it's usually
• 14:23
  emotional. For men, it's usually physical,
• 14:26
  but here's the process that the counselors and the therapist
• 14:29
  will tell you that upwards of 62% of adulterous affairs, they
• 14:33
  happen at work. That's where they begin.
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  Number one, you meet someone in a social environment, most
• 14:40
  likely work. At work, you're on your best
• 14:43
  behavior, you look your best and especially if you're working in
• 14:46
  the church, you're praying together, you're worshiping
• 14:49
  together. And so there is an opportunity,
• 14:53
  if you don't maintain closed boundaries, to get into
• 14:57
  emotional connection that is unhealthy and unwell #2 for like
• 15:03
  I said, for most women, the attraction is emotional.
• 15:05
  For men, the attraction is usually physical #3 you then
• 15:09
  look forward to seeing this person and you enjoy time with
• 15:12
  them, conversing with them, checking in with them.
• 15:14
  And again, if you're a senior pastor or, or ministry leader on
• 15:20
  staff, you can manipulate this, Hey, how can I pray for you?
• 15:24
  What is God showing you? Oh, you can put a lot of
• 15:28
  religious language around this, trying to get an emotional
• 15:31
  connection. So it sounds spiritual, like
• 15:34
  brother and sister in Christ, but you've got to know what's
• 15:38
  going on in your own heart. Jesus talks about adultery of
• 15:41
  the heart and, and you got to check your own heart.
• 15:43
  Like, why am I having this conversation?
• 15:45
  Why am I checking in? Why am I spending time
• 15:48
  conversing with them? Heaven forbid.
• 15:51
  Why are we going out to coffee, right?
• 15:53
  Why am I not maintaining good boundaries?
• 15:55
  Why are we having private communication?
• 15:58
  Why are we texting? And then four, your conversation
• 16:01
  moves from the professional to the personal.
• 16:03
  As emotional intimacy grows, it goes from work related to
• 16:06
  personal matters #5 unmet emotional and or practical needs
• 16:10
  in the marriage start to be met by this relationship.
• 16:14
  You're talking to each other, you're praying for each other,
• 16:16
  you're supporting each other. And if you're in a senior pastor
• 16:20
  position, this could be someone that you're counseling, this
• 16:23
  could be someone that maybe they're struggling and so you're
• 16:26
  helping them. This could be a woman who's
• 16:29
  struggling in her marriage. So now you're coaching her with
• 16:32
  how to be with her husband. Maybe she's struggling
• 16:35
  financially. So now you're getting her, you
• 16:37
  know, some support from the church.
• 16:38
  Maybe she's having a tough season with her kid.
• 16:41
  And so now you're giving her parenting advice.
• 16:44
  Maybe she's a single mother, so maybe now she's starting to
• 16:48
  emotionally lean on you a bit like head of household, and
• 16:52
  she's looking at you more like a husband and a father.
• 16:55
  And now you're getting yourself in a very dangerous position.
• 16:59
  Number six, you start hiding your relationship from others,
• 17:01
  especially your spouse, opening private lines of communication,
• 17:05
  scheduling time together intentionally.
• 17:07
  This is where technology allows privacy and secrecy and
• 17:12
  anonymity, which contributes to adultery.
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  You're texting, you have DMS on your social media.
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  And now you're talking to each other.
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  And, and now your spouse doesn't know and you don't confide.
• 17:25
  So what happened at church today?
• 17:27
  You know, when you went to the office?
• 17:29
  Well, you don't say, I had lunch with them late at night.
• 17:32
  You say, oh, I got to take a call.
• 17:34
  It's a counseling matter. You don't say.
• 17:35
  And it's them again. And then #7 in a period of
• 17:39
  vulnerability or stress, the line is crossed from adultery of
• 17:43
  the heart to adultery of the hands.
• 17:45
  And so, you know, there is a process in all of this.
• 17:48
  And if you are a pastor, you're supposed to be a spiritual
• 17:54
  father. And as a spiritual father, you
• 17:57
  are to take as a sacred trust all of your relationships, but
• 18:01
  especially relationships with women.
• 18:05
  And you need to err on the side of caution and safety in those
• 18:10
  relationships so that you don't have emotional adultery of the
• 18:15
  heart that then leads to physical adultery of the hands.
• 18:19
  And so Jesus is right. The, the, the problem starts in
• 18:22
  here before it manifests itself out there and within this as
• 18:28
  well. Yeah, we're seeing it over and
• 18:31
  over and over. And to me it's heartbreaking
• 18:35
  because if if a senior pastor has been committing adultery,
• 18:38
  here's a few things I know. Number one, they they're
• 18:43
  permitting an adultery culture in their church.
• 18:46
  They're not teaching on marriage.
• 18:48
  They're not teaching the men to love their wives as Christ loved
• 18:51
  the church. They are not promoting marriage
• 18:55
  and fidelity and family because of their hypocrisy.
• 18:59
  So now they're weakening all the marriages in their church.
• 19:03
  In addition, they're creating an adultery culture in their own
• 19:08
  staff because if the senior pastor isn't loving his wife and
• 19:14
  being faithful, certainly not going to encourage and enforce
• 19:18
  and model that through the through the church staff because
• 19:24
  leadership starts at the top. In addition, if you're going to
• 19:28
  restore a person like this, what are you doing to the poor wife?
• 19:34
  I mean, see, here's what I know about ministry.
• 19:38
  It's a husband and wife serving together.
• 19:41
  My wife Grace and I. She was a pastor's kid.
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  Now she's a pastor's wife. She's literally been in ministry
• 19:45
  her entire life. She runs the women's ministry at
• 19:48
  our church. We make all the decisions
• 19:51
  together. We founded the church together.
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  We do everything together. She's my dearest friend.
• 19:59
  We actually make all the decisions together at the
• 20:02
  church. And I vote on behalf of our
• 20:03
  family. This may shock some of you.
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  She actually sits in on the board meetings.
• 20:08
  And I only believe in men as board members at the church, but
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  the Bible says that we're one and it's not good to be alone.
• 20:16
  So we make all the decisions together.
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  And I vote on behalf of our family.
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  And let's say I get sick or injured or something happens.
• 20:22
  Grace temporarily votes on my behalf for our family and
• 20:29
  represents us because she will know what my desires would be if
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  I'm incapable of voting for the well-being of our church.
• 20:37
  So we do everything together and we do it together because we're
• 20:41
  one and it's not good to be alone.
• 20:45
  And that's what the Bible says. And so imagine a poor woman if
• 20:50
  her husband is a pastor or senior pastor, and then he
• 20:54
  commits adultery honor and he does so most likely, and most
• 20:58
  often with a woman in the church, maybe even a younger
• 21:01
  woman on staff that the pastor's wife knows and maybe she was
• 21:07
  most likely friends with and had a relationship with.
• 21:10
  And then all of this dirty laundry is aired in the church
• 21:14
  and it's scandalous and it's it's embarrassing and it's
• 21:17
  mortifying. And then the guy's brought
• 21:19
  through some process and then they're brought back and she's
• 21:23
  supposed to do ministry with him for the rest of her life.
• 21:27
  She's supposed to stand on the stage and smile and go to donor
• 21:31
  dinners and sit in on counseling meetings and go to weddings and
• 21:36
  host baby showers and, you know, do premarital counseling and do
• 21:42
  crisis counseling. And she's supposed to be at his
• 21:45
  side providing emotional, spiritual support and guidance
• 21:50
  for other people with this guy for the rest of her life.
• 21:55
  To me, I couldn't imagine doing that to that poor woman after
• 22:02
  all that she's been through. We're going to, we're going to,
• 22:06
  we're going to make her do that for the rest of her life.
• 22:10
  Just forgiving that guy, healing from that betrayal, doing the 70
• 22:17
  * 7 forgiveness process, that's hard enough.
• 22:22
  Doing it publicly with everybody knowing your business, that
• 22:27
  seems almost impossible. Your children now being a part
• 22:32
  of this and your whole family and all of its dirty laundry
• 22:36
  being aired in the church, you know, that seems additionally
• 22:40
  overwhelming. And now requiring her on top of
• 22:45
  all of this to just do great ministry and to pour herself out
• 22:52
  alongside of this guy for the rest of her life so that he can
• 22:57
  keep his job, to me, that just seems exceedingly cruel.
• 23:03
  And if you're looking at the guy saying, oh, he's got a lot of
• 23:06
  talent, who cares because he doesn't have any character.