Double, Double Toil and Trouble

The contradictions in the hearts of human beings

Sculpture of Janus’ double-sided head in the Vatican Museums. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen

I wish I had been more surprised.

There I was approximately one month ago, glancing at my phone with bleary eyes, for I had just awoken. Before me in black and white was the sad, infuriating news: the pastor of a prominent church, a man I considered a friend, had in fact been living a lie for years. He had engaged in what seems to have been a long-running extramarital affair with a female congregant, a fact that only came out when some interested parties examined relevant court records.

Immediately, I began parsing my memories of every conversation between this pastor and myself. Were there any red flags that I missed? Did he ever act inappropriately toward me? Exactly how many times had he lied to me? Was he sincere when he spoke of wanting to rid the Church of abuse? Did he mean it when he said he cared about the concerns of women?

After a day or two of consideration, I satisfied myself that I simply did not have a close enough friendship with the person in question to have seen the warning signs. My own conduct was appropriate, and his conduct toward me seems to have been appropriate as well. There was really nothing I could have done to help matters, even as there is nothing I can do now. Even so, it is deeply disturbing to see a pastor behave one way on Sunday mornings and another way behind closed doors.

Yet, I was not fully surprised by the news. True, I had not suspected him of having an affair: I generally wait for hard evidence before concluding the worst. But by this point in my life, I have seen so many pastors fall into serious sin, there is little that truly shocks me. Indeed, this pastor’s sin seems to have been almost pedestrian in comparison with the misdeeds of people like Ravi Zacharias and Bill Gothard, or even figures from the wider culture like Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, or Jeffrey Epstein.

I wish I could be surprised by hypocritical behavior. Truly, I do. But I doubt I ever will be again.

It was therefore most auspicious that at the very time this terrible news was poisoning my holiday season, I was listening to the audiobook version of David Zahl’s Low Anthropology. Zahl’s argument can be boiled down to the following: we as human beings are not as great as we think we are.

Our overestimation of our own abilities (What Zahl calls a “high anthropology”), particularly our moral abilities, has devastating effects for our strivings toward personal betterment, our relationships with loved ones, and the way we view society. We expect ourselves and others to behave in a rational, ethical, upstanding manner. When that does not happen, we either sink into despair or become extremely judgmental. Pretty soon, we have thrown a large portion of humanity into a “basket of deplorables,” as Hilary Clinton famously quipped. The self-help industry is based on high anthropology. Both Democrats and Republicans fall into it. Even many churches essentially tell people to “do more and try harder” in the hope of achieving perfection.

In the first part of the book, Zahl looks at three main problems that give the lie to high anthropology: limitations, doubleness, and self-centeredness.

By happy accident, I was listening to the chapter on doubleness around the time I learned of the pastor’s hypocrisy. Zahl argues that all human beings possess contradictions. Some of our beliefs conflict with one another. Our morality can be overly situational. We say one thing and do another. We have competing desires that war within us.

The word integrity can indicate either a character trait or a physical characteristic. A structure that has integrity is well balanced, solid through and through, its elements working in harmony. Even so, a person of integrity would not say one thing and do another, hold two beliefs that cannot be harmonized, or give in to baser desires. Sadly, by this standard, no human being can truly be said to have integrity, for we all contradict ourselves at various times, compromising the very structure of our existence.

To use the example of the pastor caught in adultery, he may have been telling the truth when he said he wanted corruption in the Church to end. Even as his actions toward me were not inappropriate, 95% of his actions throughout life might have been ethical. But it is the 5% that reveals his doubleness: he is a proverbial house divided against itself, acting in contradictory ways. His integrity has been compromised, so severely in this case that he is no longer fit to serve as a pastor.

However, Zahl does not promote a low anthropology to turn us into misanthropes, but to engender our compassion. For if I have a low anthropology, I must admit that I too am a doubled individual. The integrity of my being has been compromised by the many times I have failed to practice what I promote. To be human is to be hypocritical in one way or another. Acknowledging this prevents me from putting a certain type of sinner in a special category far removed from myself. “I would never do such a thing!” The fact is, absent the grace of God, I surely would do such a thing.

This is the point Zahl ultimately makes, and we would do well to heed it. A low anthropology prepares people to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ by forcing them to acknowledge that they cannot save themselves. It also helps them to love their neighbors by realizing that we are all fundamentally similar: even those who have been united with Jesus Christ still struggle against the desires of the flesh. Our souls are the plain on which the forces of the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven do battle.

Viewing the disgraced pastor through the lens of low anthropology, I was able to see his sin not only as something he did, but as something in which he became trapped. How many times over the years must he have worried that his secret was about to be revealed? He surely knew it would end his career and possibly his marriage: that institutions would disassociate themselves from him and everything he had preached would be called into question.

What a tremendous burden to carry! Did he want to confess and could not find the strength to do so? I do not know how many lies he told to himself and others, but on some level, it was a tortured existence. That is something I can pity.

By no means does that excuse his actions! There were moments where he could have taken a different path, and I would not condemn those he has wounded more severely for lacking the pity I am able to generate from a distance. The question of how much free will human beings possess has been debated since time immemorial. If it is only the grace of God that allows us to avoid sin and pursue righteousness, do we hold any responsibility for our actions at all? This is certainly not a question I can fully answer, particularly not in this medium.

Nevertheless, two things are clear: 1) we hold some responsibility for our actions, and 2) there are numerous factors influencing our actions. Doubleness is something we will never fully escape in this life, but we do have some potential to grow in integrity if the grace of God is ours. So, we must hold people accountable for their decisions while also treating them with compassion.

No, I am not surprised by doubleness, but I have a source of ultimate hope. For there was one man born of a virgin, free of the corrupting influences of sin’s curse. He alone lived a life of true integrity. He alone is completely trustworthy. The anger I feel over the doubleness in myself and others is a crying out for his righteousness. In him are my deepest longings satisfied.

The disgrace of the Church’s shepherds can only be rectified by the grace of the Good Shepherd himself: Jesus Christ.

Happy New Year!

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