Seminary president Albert Mohler addressed the controversy over his friend Steven J. Lawson during a chapel service Tuesday, labeling it a "moral catastrophe" and urging men to adhere to a principle of never being alone with a woman who is not their wife.
"Make certain there are protections and policies in your life, which means the avoidance of certain patterns in your life that would expose you to this kind of vulnerability and this kind of temptation and this kind of sin," said Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Lawson, 73, was removed from his pastoral duties at Trinity Bible Church in Dallas, Texas, due to what elders said was an "inappropriate relationship that he has had with a woman." Lawson is the founder of OnePassion Ministries, a teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries, and a professor of preaching at The Master's Seminary.
"The fall of this house is very great," Mohler said.
Mohler never used Lawson's name but acknowledged the news was shocking.
"I want to share with you that I did not see this coming. …When a catastrophe like this falls upon us, you can look backwards and connect some dots," he said. "... They didn't form a pattern until you look backwards. And I would say one of those patterns is just an awful lot of time traveling alone and the exposure of being all over the world alone."
The dots, Mohler said, "ought to teach us something."
"I want to speak more bluntly than I have ever spoken from this chapel before, from this pulpit," he said. "And I want to share with you a word that was shared with me by a man I won't name -- a very, very honorable name in Christian ministry. And his words were these: You will not have sex with a woman, not your wife if you are never alone with a woman, not your wife.
"The moment we allow something to happen, we expose ourselves to something that may be a temptation greater than we resist."
The principle, he said, is "not just for pastors."
"This is for every man," Mohler said
Such a principle often is labeled the "Billy Graham rule," named after the late evangelist. Graham, in his autobiography Just As I Am, wrote of the "danger of sexual immorality."
"We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel," Graham wrote of him and his team. "We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet, or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul's mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: 'Flee . . . youthful lusts' (2 Timothy 2:22, KJV)."
Meanwhile, Mohler said he does not sense that pastors are failing more in number than the past but, rather, it is "immediately communicated everywhere with social media and the digital revolution."
"I have no sense that there is an increase in number, but there is an increase in public damage to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the ministry of the church, the wounding of little lambs and disrepute upon the gospel," Mohler said.
Mohler encouraged students and pastors to remain humble.
"Rather than feeling some kind of moral superiority, the Scripture tells us that we should look at this with 'there but by the grace of God, go I.' And no man at any age in any situation is beyond temptation and the risk of falling."
"... I want to suggest that we need to pray for all concerned."
Photo Credit: ©AlbertMohler.com
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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