My hunch is that our society is divided down the middle on this issue. Half think the private lives of leaders should not matter if they do not affect their work performance. They cite many good historical examples to bolster their case. The other half have only one big counter point: if the leader can cheat on his spouse, what is to prevent him from cheating on us? I want to go under the surface to examine this. It is a heart versus behavior issue.
Humans are first class hypocrites and liars. If we weren't so good at his art, we would never choose the wrong person for the job. May be you can see it from the other end, which is more common: we are poor judge of characters including our own.
If you want to play it safe, get only people with good hearts to be leaders. Problem is the sort of moral education we have been receiving in school and at home deal only with the superficial behavior or show level. Children master the art of concealing motives as they grow up. Some of them make leaders later.
I am in the heart school but to be practical that is a loser. You can't see the heart. You can only observe the behavior. Given my reading of the tea leaves, the half that emphasize behavior will grow. Sexual mores are getting more liberal. Adultery will carry less shame. In fact the word might even disappear because of the sin baggage it carries. Even extra marital affair is making way for personal indiscretion. Shame is being exorcised from the act. The Christians are holding out but they fight a losing battle as they also do against gay rights. They are losing because they are guilty of the pot calling the kettle black. YSL is a Christian, anyone know if Palmer is also?
But without sin where is the place for God's grace through Christ? I know I would be misunderstood here. Go read Romans. If you don't get it, well you have a heart problem. Without the tens of thousands of slave deaths there would be no Newton's Amazing Grace.
Through defeat the heart school will eventually triumph. The capstone must be rejected first. As in many other issues the Church refused to use Jesus' methods to fight this as it doesn't have his heart.
I would like to end this by quoting from Philip Yancey's, 'What's so Amazing about Grace" You will know why the Church is losing. At least for now.
I told a story in my book The Jesus I Never Knew, a true story that long afterward continued to haunt me. I heard it from a friend who works with the down-and-out in Chicago:
A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter—two years old!—to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable—I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
What struck me about my friend’s story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift? Evidently the down-and-out, who flocked to Jesus when he lived on earth, no longer feel welcome among his followers. What has happened? The more I pondered this question, the more I felt drawn to one word as the key. All that follows uncoils from that one word.
Yancey, Philip (2008-09-09). What's So Amazing About Grace? (Kindle Locations 120-132). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
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