The intimacy fix

It was the fourth one of the day – a disclosure from a pastor related to Internet pornography!

I was working as a spiritual director at a national pastor’s conference, seeing nine pastors a day, an hour each, to introduce them to the practice of spiritual direction. I had worked at three previous conferences, and a number of themes were emerging. First, I was listening to confession more than providing spiritual direction. Second, about four out of ten pastors disclosed a struggle with Internet pornography.

I found myself asking, why the necessity and freedom of confession? And, what are the underlying dynamics luring clergy into this seedy, false world of “pseudo intimacy”?

Why confession?

Perhaps the main reason pastors were confessing in my presence is that I was safe. I wasn’t connected with their denomination; they would never see me again; I worked in a discipline that assured them of confidentiality. The sense of relief, the tears, and the catharsis of having a safe place to share the totality of their experience, were palpable. They felt known!

And somehow, feeling known seemed a beginning step towards wholeness and integrity. As Susan Howatch in her telling series of novels about clergy says, they were able to let go of the burden of their “glittering image,” even if just for an hour.

A 2001 survey by Leadership magazine (see box below article) revealed that the number of pastors who struggle with pornography is only slightly less than that of lay people. While reactions to this fact may range from judgment (it’s a sin, just stop it) to compassion (there but by God’s grace go I) or even to acknowledging our own struggle (God be merciful to me a sinner), there is no doubt that the issue of pornography is more complex for clergy than others. We have higher expectations for our pastors, perhaps rightly so.

The ideal and the real

This can create a dilemma for the pastor, however. Erving Goffman, in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, speaks about the gap between a pastor’s virtual social identity (ideas about what the pastor ideally should be), and the pastor’s actual social identity (who the pastor is in reality). This dilemma, he writes, is a “moral stigma,” for the clergy-person is “obliged to symbolize the righteous life and live it more than normal.”

Scripture and psychology support one another in suggesting that our ideal self has a tendency to overtake or obliterate our actual self – a “sin that so easily besets us” (Hebrews 12:1). As this obliteration occurs, a “glittering image” is increasingly the only reality the pastor’s self will allow. (If I can’t live up to my ideal, I can at least appear to.)

When this occurs, the ideal image has become god. Appearance replaces reality! Scripture calls this sin. Psychology calls this split between the ideal and actual, neurosis. Karen Horney writes, “if he allows [the idealized self] to be undermined he is immediately threatened with the prospect of facing all his weaknesses, with no title to special claims, a comparatively insignificant figure or even – in his own eyes – a contemptible one.”

Trigger times

Reverend E. was one of those pastors who needed to confess. As we spoke about his growing addiction to Internet pornography, I asked him when he noticed the greatest temptation. His answer surprised me. Occasionally, he said, it came during times of overwhelming stress. But the greatest temptations, he went on, often came after great success, especially on Sunday afternoons, or Mondays as he began his day off. Listen to his words.

My temptation was often the most present right after I had preached that great sermon. I felt great about how I’d preached. God had genuinely used me. Church members praised me and thanked me. My spouse and children said, “You did great this morning!” My ministry and ego felt massaged. But then, in the privacy of my office, I somehow began to feel false, phony . . . unreal.

There was a whole side of me that wasn’t known. My church members . . . my children . . . my spouse didn’t know all of me! Even I was beginning to wonder who I really was. God knew, but God and I hadn’t talked much lately! It had become hard to talk to God, because that only reminded me of how far away and inadequate I had become.

The difference between my intention to be close to God and my experience of God had created an intimacy vacuum. I felt far away from myself, others, and God. . . . I needed an “intimacy fix” to continue. Pornography was private, accessible, and instant – intimacy for sale. How ironic. . . . It always increases my guilt and shame, which in the ministry I must hide at all costs. Consequently I’m driven back to a dishonest appearance of goodness. I’m so tired of it!

This irony is at the heart of Paul’s letter to the Romans. His understanding of the ironic tension between our actuality and our idealized “glittering image” is illuminating. “Sin simply did what sin is so famous for doing: using the good as a cover to tempt me to do what would finally destroy me . . . if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes . . . I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight . . . I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope! Is there no one who can do anything for me?” (excerpts from Romans 7:7–25, The Message).

Chapter 8 of Romans continues Paul’s suggestions, with verses 4–5 most pertinent to our discussion. “The law always ended up being used as a band-aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.”

Paul suggests that redoubling our efforts without embracing what the Spirit is doing in our lives is doomed to failure, and will only increase our guilt and shame. Guilt and shame tend to make us avoid both God and our actual selves. So we defensively work to maintain our idealized image, only to fail again. What a wretched cycle. But isn’t that Paul’s point? Living a law-obeying Christian life is impossible!

God-given intention

I asked Reverend E. where his intention to be close to God had come from. He answered, “I don’t know. I’ve always had it.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I meet a lot of people who don’t have that intention.” We both began to realize what Thomas Merton so wonderfully stated when he said, “Even the intention to be close to God, is God!”

I’m not suggesting we give up trying. I’m suggesting that our higher calling is to listen to what the Spirit is doing in us, even, or perhaps especially, when we fail. The Spirit is telling us that we are the beloved – always, whether our “glittering image” is intact or not.

Yes, we need to engage our willpower. Yes, we definitely need to find places of accountability and confession. However, unless we increasingly discover what it means to “simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us,” we are doomed to a cycle of shame, avoidance, denial, and pseudo-intimacy fixes. As the “beloved” we are invited to embrace what the Spirit is doing in us – a much higher music than our doomed-to-fail willpower. Oswald Chambers calls this Spirit-power, “The expulsive power of a new affection.”

Other music

In Greek mythology, there were beautiful island-dwelling winged creatures called sirens whose singing lured unwary sailors onto the rocks. When Ulysses passed the Isle of Sirens, he had himself tied to the mast, his ears stuffed with wax to keep himself from hearing their singing. This is a picture of our legalistic attempts at negative goodness.

When Orpheus passed the Isle of Sirens, he sat on the deck, indifferent, for he too had become a musician. He had heard and made melodies so much more beautiful than the sirens, their alluring songs were discordant to him. This is a picture of positive goodness.

It is born out of the music that comes when we always, even in times of failure, go beyond the shame of not being able to live up to our intentions. We honour our God-given intention by simply and continuously noticing and embracing what the Spirit is doing in us.

This is ultimate intimacy. It’s not for sale. It’s a gift!

Garry Schmidt is a member of Northview Community Church, Abbotsford. He is completing a D.Min. degree at San Francisco Theological Seminary and works as a Spiritual Director and Pastoral Counselor at The Lloyd Center Pastoral Counseling Service, where he has received a two-year grant to complete his dissertation research on “Developing and Sustaining Pastoral Wholeness through Preventative Care.”