Gunpowder trails

One of the favourite scenes in many pirate movies is the "blow up the ship" by igniting a hold full of gunpowder. You know how the scene normally unfolds; depending on whether the good guy or bad guy sets the powder trail, there is usually a sword or fist fight and the protagonists normally manage to stomp the flaming gunpowder trail out once or twice, before successfully destroying the ship/fort/building.

This scene, and its variants are used by many movie directors to build tension; it's usually accompanied by dramatic music and an impressive explosion that sends the ship/fort/building sky high in a climactic moment, calculated to cause the most damage possible.

Sometimes, in a plot twist, the powder trail is set by the "bad guys" and the good guy inadvertently sets the trail of doom alight, racing to a hidden cache of explosive, which he must find before "all hell" breaks loose.

Our mortal enemy, the dark lord, is a great one at finding our "powder trails" and igniting them just when the resultant explosion will cause maximum damage.

What do I mean?        

The little "hidden sins" (more usually, big sins) that lie in wait, lurking like undetonated gunpowder ready to explode without warning.

For the 4th time in as many decades, in churches that I have been associated with,  I have witnessed a powerful and popular ministry completely destroyed by hidden sexual sin, exposed in a manner that resulted in maximum carnage and destruction.

It was John Calvin who said “There remains in us a smoldering cinder of evil, from which desires continually leap forth to allure and spur to commit sin.”

There can few other falls from grace more damaging than when a leader of a congregation is exposed, when the lies and deception come home to roost. One may as well set a bomb off inside the church building.

The leadership is devastated, the congregation is shattered, faith is often destroyed, and if the story is followed by the secular media, the enemies of Christ have a field-day.  In my experience, the pain and hurt caused "in the spiritual realm" is often felt deeper than temporal pain and hurt; certainly its effects can last longer, and often become inter-generational.  

We expect our leaders and brothers and sisters to be above and beyond the snares and pitfalls of "the world" and when they fall, not only do they remind us of our own foibles and faults, but we feel betrayed.

 

We place trust in their leadership and advice; we take their failure as a personal insult and betrayal of that trust. It's but a shadow of the betrayal the Jesus himself experienced, but it's none-the-less real.

How we deal with that betrayal and loss of trust is the key to our long-term survival as Christians. We can become bitter and twisted about God/the church/believers; I have met many people over the years who have walked away from "all things God" because of exposed faults in leaders, or just "church-people" generally.

Or we can take "the higher road" and forgive, help to restore the fallen, and take a degree of personal responsibility to ensure their on-going "walk" with the Lord.

We must also ensure that we don't have any gunpowder trails of our own laying around for that "bight spark", the dark lord to find!

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