Yes, Some Sins Are Actually Worse Than Others

As a college football fan, I remember how jarring the Jerry Sandusky scandal was at Penn State. Sandusky was their long-time defensive coordinator who stayed associated with the school after his retirement, and he ran children’s camps on campus. He would use those camps as opportunities to rape young boys and was finally caught after years of doing so. It was a horrific scandal, and it took the Nittany Lions’ program years to recover from it. I looked through some Penn State blogs to see how its fans were dealing with the fallout, and they had the usual combination of denial, horror, anger, sadness, etc. One set of comments caught my eye: There were some Christians trying to argue that we should not condemn Sandusky so harshly because at the end of the day, “all sins are equal” or “sin is sin,” and unless we ourselves do not have sin, we should not be quick to cast a stone. I do not think these comments helped people process the situation, judging by the angry reactions that followed.

Similar comments have been made recently about the Ravi Zacharias situation, which I discussed in the previous post. Some Christians have argued that, yes, Ravi sinned, but his sin is no worse than any other sin, so we should not be so quick to judge. As I briefly mentioned in that post, I find this claim to be very counter-intuitive and unbiblical, and because of that, I think it is ultimately unhelpful. Still, it’s actually fairly widespread, even among pastors and seminarians, so it’s worth taking some time to discuss why many Christians believe it and why it’s wrong.

Ravi Zacharias Exposed: Was He Really a Christian?

Recently, I’ve written about the sexual sin of Carl Lentz of Hillsong, NY and had a podcast with a couple of friends about what we should learn when leaders fall, particularly famed Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. At the time, the full details of an ongoing investigation had not been released, but what was already out was bad: Multiple women had come forward to give consistent testimony about his sexual misconduct. While I do not own any of Ravi’s books and have not read them since my training in philosophy normally led me to other authors, I still respected him because people who bring apologetics to the layperson are very important and he seemed genuine in his efforts. It was very disappointing and alarming to hear that he had used his position to take advantage of several women.

Well, the full investigation by his ministry has been finished, and the details are even worse than previously thought. You can read the linked Christianity Today article yourself, but to summarize, Zacharias pressured several women employed at spas that he owned to do him sexual favors, made them dependent upon him by using hundreds of thousands of dollars of ministry funds to pay them, had hundreds of pictures of young women on his old phones (including nude ones), and used spiritually manipulative tactics to get women to comply and keep his secret:

She said Zacharias “made her pray with him to thank God for the ‘opportunity’ they both received” and, as with other victims, “called her his ‘reward’ for living a life of service to God,” the report says. Zacharias warned the woman—a fellow believer—if she ever spoke out against him, she would be responsible for millions of souls lost when his reputation was damaged.

That is some bullcrap from Ravi right there, to be put it mildly. The breadth of Zacharias’ sexual misconduct and leadership abuse is staggering and far outstrips a typical story of a pastor who falls into adultery (though that of course is still bad). It is so bad that it has raised this question from believers and nonbelievers alike: Was Zacharias a sincere follower of Jesus Christ? Can we really call him a Christian?

I am normally someone who dislikes speculating about a professing Christian’s salvation because I firmly believe that God has the final judgment. Even if I think parts of someone’s theology are atrocious or that they’re showing terrible character in certain moments, I usually try to grant them the benefit of the doubt if they claim to be Christian, especially if I do not know them well enough to observe their lives. I reserve openly questioning people’s faith if they stubbornly espouse rank heresy, clearly don’t understand Jesus or the gospel, or do something so horrendous that it’s hard to make sense of them being Christian (like being a serial killer). The question here is the last one: How bad does sin have to get before we start really doubting that someone is saved when his professed theology is orthodox?