Archive: David Seamands and Mark Rutland on the Church’s Integrity Crisis

Does the Church have an integrity crisis? If so, is there hope that this trend of immorality will reverse? Here, Good News interviews David Seamands and Marie Rutland about the Church’s present and future conditions. David Seamands is a well-known author. His most recent book, God’s Blueprint For Living, was published in June by Bristol Books. Mark Rutland is a contributing editor to Good News, a UM conference-ap­proved evangelist and author of Launch Out Into The Deep. Mark’s second book, The Finger of God, is being released in July by Bristol Books.

Good News: Do we have an integrity crisis in the church? (And I’m talking about the whole Church, not just the United Methodist Church.)

Seamands: Yes, and I think because of the media it’s a crisis like we’ve never seen before. Jesus’ words have literally become true in that that which is done in secret is now broadcast from the top of the roof (meaning the TV and radio aerials) and sent around the world. This exacerbates the crisis. Maybe we’ve always had this much moral decay, but we’ve never had the media to make it worldwide news within a matter of minutes.

Good News: Mark, how do you account for the fact that some of these leaders of reform, of conservative biblical living, are some of the ones we find in the headlines guilty of moral faults? Isn’t that incongruous?

Rutland: The incongruity is startling. However, that’s the human condition—what we say and what we do don’t always go together. To me the problem is the big television bucks, the high profile and the hugeness of ministry actually seed the most base and carnal appetites in the people that are involved in it.

Seamands: I agree. One of the words that’s come to me in the midst of all this is a Greek word for pride—hubris. Hubris is a special form of pride which means a person overreaches his ability. He wants something he has no business wanting.

For example, all through Greek mythology the gods got jealous when they discovered a human being who wanted to become like they were, and they always saw that he was put in his place.

In Hindu mythology a man could get too powerful by being too good. He’d pile up merit and thereby earn his salvation. The gods would say to each other, “This guy will soon want to be one of us. So they would destroy the man by appealing to his sexual desires. They would send a beautiful, voluptuous woman to bathe in the river. She would get a little careless with her sari, and the man would fall morally.

Similarly, some of our TV evangelists never know when to quit. They’ve got to build one more building. They’re over-reaching their grasp. I think there is a sense of non-accountability that naturally accompanies this overreaching, and that results in a moral collapse. These things are always linked together in some way.

Good News: It’s interesting that when you start talking about sexual immorality the conversation tends to work its way to pride. At least that’s happening here.

Rutland: I think it’s the same hubris principle at work that causes young married couples to get in debt. They don’t have any patience; they won’t wait on God; they won’t go through any suffering. They’ve got to overreach. They have to have that new couch and the new car and the new condominium—and they’ve got to have it now.

They run up a bill they can’t pay because they’re too proud to live with a broken-down couch and to drive a beat-up car for a while. So their pride is really more compelling than their materialism.

Good News: Why are the people who seem to be the most against vice the ones who are falling? Or is that only an illusion?

Rutland: I think it is an illusion myself. It’s the man-bites-dog thing. If you have a homosexual in the gutters of Houston there’s no press coverage. But when a Methodist bishop dies of AIDS you’ve got a front-page story. However, there is the other part of it; maybe God is pruning the tree a bit.

Seamands: Maybe this press attention is actually a backhanded compliment to the Gospel. I don’t see anybody writing articles on the failure of the leaders of Hinduism. I don’t see anybody saying the Islamic priests have let us down. I don’t see anybody saying the Buddhists have done this to us, that they’re failing. Why such a hullabaloo about Christian failure? The answer is, obviously, because people expected more.

Rutland: That’s right. When you start talking about real Christianity an ambiance of holiness is implied no matter what your particular theology of sanctification is. There is something concomitant between the Christian message and holiness of life.

Good News: We’ve talked about pride. We’ve talked about sex. How about materialism? Some of these moral scandals in the Church have nothing to do with sex; they have to do with money.

Have we in the American Church run after wealth, position, buildings and salaries, and has that begun to wear on our integrity?

Rutland: I saw a bumper sticker the other day that was one of the most flagrant expressions of the connection between materialism and pride that I’ve ever seen. It said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” In other words a Mercedes Benz may not necessarily be a better car than a brand new Chevrolet, but having a Mercedes indicates that you are ahead of the other guy. And if you die with a Mercedes, and he dies with a Chevrolet, you’ve won.

Good News: David, do you think we’ve got too much money in the Church?

Seamands: I just read an article about Jimmy Swaggart. It said long before he fell morally he had already committed his great sin, and that was that Jimmy Swaggart made money from preaching the Gospel. When you choose to make money from preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ you’re going to fall somewhere. There is always a connection, I think, between money, sex and power.

I remember hearing Jim Bakker preach a sermon on the rich young ruler. Bakker said, “Now this guy was a millionaire. Jesus told him to give all that up, give to the poor, take up his cross and follow Him.” And Bakker said, “The rich young ruler went away sadly and he never came back. What a fool he was! He didn’t realize that if he’d have done that, Jesus would have made him a billionaire.”

I almost fell right out of my easy chair. I said to my wife, “Helen, did I hear—did he really say that?”

You can’t emasculate the Gospel that way and turn the whole system upside down without ultimately turning the moral system upside down.

Rutland: I was preaching in a huge church in Australia—the second or third largest church in the nation—an independent church. My spirit and the spirit of the staff there just seemed to jangle. After only the second worship service the pastor called me aside. He paid me and said, “Let’s finish this now. You’re just not going where we’re going.”

I said, “It’s up to you, but what’s the problem?”

And he said (to give you an example of the kind of spiritual confusion we’re living in), “You have the spirit of Jesus, and we have the Holy Spirit.”

I said, “I don’t make a distinction between those theologically. What distinction do you make?

And he said, “I had the spirit of Jesus when I first got saved. I wanted to preach on the street corners and win people to Jesus and do good. The spirit of Jesus tells people to give their car away. The Holy Spirit tells them how to have a better car.”

I didn’t even know what to say to him. I was so flabbergasted, I just stared in his face!

This kind of confusion, to me, is not only the breeding ground of theological error but also of moral excesses. When you’re confused spiritually the result is going to be outward sin.

Good News: Another thing that occurs to me is that it’s not just theological liberalism that makes people fall. You may believe all the right things, but if there is something wrong in your spirit sin will overtake you. Isn’t that true?

Seamands: It’s very true. We get all excited about the first chapter of Romans where Paul speaks to the homosexual issue, but that’s the tail end of the chapter. The first part of it tells how past generations substituted God with a false god. The creature took the place of the Creator. Irrational thinking followed. The people started believing lies, then they slipped morally. That was the tail end.

It all begins by getting off-center; God becomes no longer your god. Then you begin thinking upside down. Finally, you become morally perverted. It’s in that order. Immorality doesn’t come first; it’s the ultimate consequence.

Good News: It seems as evangelicals we’ve been able to isolate our belief systems from our lives. We don’t even realize that we’re really secular creatures because we’ve got orthodox beliefs. How do we undo that?

Rutland: I don’t know. I comfort myself by believing that in every time of moral and spiritual decline God will bring revival. And if the revival is genuine it brings a fresh longing for righteousness on the part of the people. The priests repent; the people repent; everybody turns. You can’t have an enduring revival based only on power. You’ve got to have holiness.

Good News: That’s the theme of your new book.

Rutland: I’m so happy you said that. My wife and I talk about this all the time. The wealthy TV evangelists didn’t start in a two-million-dollar house. How does one gradually rationalize living in such luxury? I always look at myself and ask, “Am I gradually going to drift to the place where I can feel comfortable in a two-million-dollar house?” God forbid!

Seamands: And how do I work into my theology that God only wants me to have the best? That’s what I’m hearing preached—that prosperity is proof of God’s blessing. I saw an evangelist once on TV actually use the illustration of God as a vending machine. He said that prayer was like putting in a quarter and getting a candy bar out. Prayer becomes like room service with God as a celestial butler saying, “What do you want? Tell me, and I’ll supply it for you.”

Rutland: I was at a meeting where some college people were praying about a certain need. I felt that the prayer had reached an arrogant level. Suddenly a young girl stood up and said, “I feel the lord is saying, ‘Am I a hound, that I come when you call?'” She sat down. The whole meeting was stopped dead in its tracks.

I really feel that somebody’s got to say that kind of a prophetic word to this entire evangelical movement.

Good News: So you think it gets back to theology again?

Rutland: I know that theology never brings revival. But I also know that bad theology sure won’t bring one.

Seamands: And you can’t think wrongly and live rightly, according to Scripture. This health, wealth and prosperity theology is bound to result in immoral (in a broad sense of the word) living. It has to do that.

Rutland: The problem in all this is, of course, balance. I don’t want to be a part of this conspiracy that we had in the latter part of the 19th century that said there is something particularly holy about being broke all the time. But I don’t know how to teach balance. For example, when I go to India I sleep on a reed mat on a dirt floor, and then I come home to my $120 thousand house. I don’t feel that I need to build a stick hut and sleep on a reed mat in the dirt here in the states, but there’s got to be some way that we keep a reasonable check on ourselves.

Good News: That’s something the whole Church needs to concentrate on. Is there a note that we’ve left unsounded?

Seamands: Well, let me say this. Billy Graham wrote an article 15 or 20 years ago on the theme, “Can we evangelicals stand success?” He was afraid that now that we were becoming sort of popular and powerful we’d eventually self-destruct.

Before the Reformation the Church was undergoing a similar thing, and people were pointing this out. An ancient saint said, “God allows these times so that we’ll get our eyes totally off of instruments and get them back on Jesus.”

It’s time we stop elevating human instruments and fix our eyes on Christ. He’s the only one that can withstand such publicity and praise. We can give Him all the honor and glory that’s possible, and we can’t overdo it. It’s not going to go to His head.