Bending and Breaking

While I was living in Orlando in 2009, I attended Summit Church, founded and pastored by a man named Isaac Hunter.  When thinking about people who have had a significant impact on my spiritual life, it's hard to know the full extent, but Isaac Hunter will always be on the list of people who helped my love of God grow deeper.

Last year it was revealed that he had been having an affair with a staff member and his wife had filed domestic abuse charges against him.  He resigned from his position at Summit and decided that the affair was more important than his family, and left them.  On December 21st he committed suicide and his death was covered nationally because his father is a spiritual adviser to President Obama.

This news was very hard on me - partially due to the great love I have always felt towards Isaac, and partially due to the great pain that suicide has already inflicted on my heart over the last two years.  As I think through what integrity means, and the immense pressure those in the public eye must feel, I can't help but think of King David.

David was the King of Israel, and was called a man after God's own heart, despite his own affair with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband.  David had an elastic repentance - he messed up, more than most people, but when he was confronted with his sin, he was quick to admit it and repent.  This put him in great dependence on God and great humility before people.  

I do not care that Isaac Hunter had an affair - that is primarily a sin against God and his wife and family, not against me.  People are constantly failing and being forgiven by a gracious God.  People will always mess up - but what I want, and what I think God wants, is for people to be quick to make right their wrong.  Isaac Hunter chose not to bend, either from pride, blindness, or a small view of God's capacity of forgiveness.  Because he did not bend, be broke - and it his is breaking, not his failure that breaks my heart.  Breaking is not sinning - breaking is not repenting of the sin.

A man's failures do not negate the great good that God accomplished through them in the lives of others.  God is glorified within and often despite my failures.  My sadness is not due to someone I respect failing - that will always happen.  My sadness is due to a man not seeing the redemption possible after such a failure.  God is so much greater than our sin and so much better than our badness.