Posts tagged ‘The Hill’
Mike Pence and Dining with Your Spouse
It can be fascinating to watch which stories bubble to the top of our cultural conversation. In a news cycle where the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act, a battle royal over a Supreme Court nominee, questions about the surveillance of political actors, terrible chemical attacks against Syrian civilians by a feral Assad regime, and ominous sabre rattling from the North Koreans have dominated the headlines, a heated debate has arisen over a profile piece in The Washington Post on Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, which cited an interview with The Hill from 2002, where the vice president, following the lead of the vaunted evangelist and pastor Billy Graham, explained that he would never eat alone with a woman who was not his wife or one of his close relatives. Writing in a separate article for The Washington Post, Laura Turner warned:
It will be difficult for women to flourish in the White House if the vice president will not meet with them. Women cannot flourish in the church if their pastors consistently treat them as sexual objects to be avoided. The Billy Graham Rule locates the fault of male infidelity in the bodies of women, but “flee from temptation” does not mean “flee from women.”
I agree with Ms. Turner that it is important not to confuse fleeing from temptation with fleeing from women. Sin is what is to be feared. Not women. Nevertheless, because of my vocation as a husband and because of my position as a pastor, I have chosen a practice that echoes that of the vice president. I will not dine alone with a woman who is not my wife or close family member. I will also not meet alone with women after hours at the congregation where I serve.
Why do I maintain such a practice?
It is not primarily because I am terrified that if I were ever to be alone with a woman, I would not be able to restrain myself from sexual immorality, though I am not nearly so naïve as to believe that I could never fall prey to a compromising situation. I know far too well from Scripture that my heart is woefully depraved and deceitful and I have seen far too many marriages and ministries wrecked by sexual immorality to believe that I am somehow so spiritually privileged to be above certain kinds of sin. I also know that merely jettisoning private dining appointments will not expunge me of my sinful nature. No pious-looking constraint, no matter how carefully contrived, can regenerate a sinful heart. Only Jesus can do that. Sin avoidance is not the primary reason I have the practice I do.
I have the practice I do primarily because I respect women, most especially my wife. I know that if another woman were to invite me to dinner, one on one, that would make my wife – as well as me – uncomfortable. I also know the people with whom I work well enough to know that if I were to invite a female staff member at our church to dinner one on one, that would more than likely make her feel extraordinarily uncomfortable. I do occasionally meet privately with women in my office when personal pastoral care needs call for such meetings. But even then, there are other staff members right outside my office door working through the daily flurry of church activities. And I have never had any trouble meeting with everyone I need to meet with on campus with others around rather than off campus in one on one settings.
I also I maintain the practice I do because I do want to do my best to remain “above reproach,” as Scripture asks men in my vocation to be. An unfounded accusation of immoral behavior with another person would not only compromise the credibility of my ministry, it would compromise that other person’s credibility as well. As much as I desire to protect the integrity of my ministry, I also have a deep desire to protect the reputations of those I know and care about. Protecting others’ reputations is simply part and parcel of being not only a colleague and a pastor, but a friend.
Ms. Turner appeals to Jesus in support of the stance she takes in her Washington Post piece:
Jesus consistently elevated the dignity of women and met with them regularly, including His meeting with a Samaritan woman in the middle of the day. Scholars suggest that the woman would have gone to the well in the noon heat to avoid interacting with her fellow townspeople, who would have gone at a cooler time of day. Samaritans and Jews were not particularly fond of each other. Yet this Jewish man met this Samaritan woman in broad daylight, asked her for water from the well, and in turn offered her eternal life. The woman, widely thought to be an adulteress, had been married five times and had no husband when she met Jesus. Yet He didn’t flinch from meeting with her. He didn’t suggest that His reputation was more important than her eternal soul. As a result, she lives on as one of the heroes of the faith, a woman who evangelized to her entire city.
All of this is completely true. But evangelizing someone in broad daylight when Your disciples do not seem to be far away is a far cry from having dinner alone, away and apart from any accountability. The latter can be a coup de grâce to one’s integrity. The former is just a coup of grace for a weary soul.
There may indeed be times, as the case of Jesus and the Samaritan woman illustrates, when it is necessary to spend time with someone of the opposite gender privately, especially for the sake of the gospel. But there are also many more times when it is good not to, especially if a task at work can be accomplished just as well with others around.
May we have the wisdom to discern which times are which.
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