Why Most Pastors Live a Lie

It is not good for man to be alone.........a statement we all seem to agree with until it comes to the men and women who proclaim it from their pulpits.  Of all the lonely people in this world, there are few who tend to live a lonelier life than that of a pastor or minister.  These individuals, although often surrounded by people, tend to live their lives in a secret solitude few will ever understand.  But why?  Why is it that people who are supposed to make a living at relationships seldom have any that are completely real?  Well.....I suppose it is probably because we won't let them.  

We love our pastors to be funny and intelligent, we like them to be warm and kind, but the one thing we don't like them to be is REAL, and boy do they know it.

Pastor's aren't allowed to struggle with the things with which the rest of us deal.  They aren't allowed to be tempted, to lust, to deal with pornography, or doubt, or anxiety.  We don't let them speak their true thoughts about what they may or may not struggle with in the Scriptures.  Pastor's aren't allowed to have rocky patches in their marriages or problems with their finances or to have a potty mouth when they stub their toe.

You see, we claim that pastors are called to be examples to the rest of us but in actuality, that's exactly what they are not.  We don't want them to be examples, we want them to be perfect.  And if they are not.....we fire them.

Who in their right mind is going to come out and admit to someone that they have a porn addiction or that their marriage is on the rocks or that they are doubting God when they risk their very livelihood and the livelihood of their families?  Who isn't going to be able to resist the temptation not to tickle the ears of their congregations with the traditionally safe theologies of their denominations?  Especially when this is their full time job?  

But what kind of an "example" can a person be when they aren't allowed to even be human?  If we are to learn from our pastors how to follow Christ, will we learn more by watching them run or by watching them get back up after they fall?  Ideally, shouldn't pastors be the most transparent and real among us?  Shouldn't it be by allowing them to publicly grow and wrestle with their demons that we learn how to do the same?

But instead we have conditioned them to hide and suppress their challenges, forcing them to try to overcome their issues in secret, which often leads to a festering mold that we don't learn about until they have a massive collapse with devastating consequences.  Who is really the greater hypocrite, the pastor who pretends to be perfect or the flawed people who demand perfection from their spiritual leaders?

Perhaps if we would like to get the most out of our pastors we should consider allowing them to lead by example rather than by perception.