Pain, Secrets, and healing:
Where do we go for healing from our inner pain and secrets?


The meeting
Gathered in the relatively small meeting room were some of the most prominent and influential names in the Christian community. Some of the ministers had been featured in Time Magazine's list of most influential Evangelicals in the country. But this meeting was not a forum to gloat or seek ways to expand their flourishing ministries. They were all here because they were hurting and needed a safe place to express some of the challenges that they faced in their everyday lives. The gathering was more like a support group for ministers, one that had not been made public, and one where they could share without fear of their troubles making it into the media.

Vanessa was the first to get up. Vanessa was a popular Christian author and hosted several women's conferences all around the country. She was considered an expert on the subject of forgiveness and God's love because she had written numerous books on the subject, stemming from a life of overcoming the trauma of sexual abuse. But a very public divorce had rattled her world and she had decided to take some time off from ministry to gather her bearings.

Vanessa was nervous, but she spoke first, "I'm Vanessa, you know who I am in ministry, but today I am here because I must confess that the last few months have been really hard for me. Since my divorce, I have had several serious bouts with depression, I know I should not be feeling this way, and I know that God loves me. But it gets really tough, there are days that I just don't want to leave the house, and to be honest with you, if it were not for my 24 year old son David who comes over to check on me, I would really not want to see anyone on some days. I guess what hurts the most are the nasty things that many in the media have been saying about my family since the divorce. Some think that I am not "committed enough to the Lord" and others have speculated that we grew apart because I was too focused on ministry and not my family. Yes, my husband did cheat, but I was willing to forgive him and try and make it work. We did everything, counseling with some of the best names in the "Christian counseling world", we prayed, fasted and did all we could to seek God's will and make it work, but the stunner came when my husband said he was no longer in love with me and wanted us to go our separate ways. I am here because I just need to be around some other leaders who are willing to help and console each other through our challenges. Sometimes putting on the facade that is required in ministry is too much for me. Thanks for letting me share!"

John got up next, John had recently lost his church and ministry after it was revealed that he had been involved in a bitter and violent domestic dispute with his now estranged wife. John was once considered to be the heir apparent to names like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar in the African-American mega-church community. A very bright and charismatic minister, he had built a church from about 25 members in his loving room to over 15,000 members in less than 10 years. Today, he was wondering what he would do with the rest of his life.

John started to speak, his eyes barely able to look directly at anyone in the room: "you know, I almost did not come today, but when you have lost practically everything, what else is there to lose? I used to always preach that "pride" is one of the most insidious of sins, because a proud person is barely ever able to admit weakness, and I am seeing the degree to which this sin has affected my life. If you had asked me prior to the now public incident with my wife if I had a problem with 'deadly sin', I may have denied it, because I always tried to emulate Jesus' humility, but I now realize that I was just being delusional. This incident has broken me in ways that I didn't think was possible. I must admit that what really hurt at first was the loss of my reputation, the loss of my church, many of my prized possessions, and the loss of my social standing and the realization that I did not have as large a circle of friends as I thought I did, these people only liked me because of my standing in the world of ministry. But when I think about it now, what really hurts the most is the fact that at the height of my "success" in ministry, I didn't feel that there was a safe place to express my pain. Many of you may not know this, but I used to be an alcoholic. I stopped drinking before I entered the ministry, but I never really dealt with the issues that fueled my drinking. I guess you can say that I was a dry-drunk, and the rage that simmered underneath the surface was just waiting for the perfect opportunity to come out. I used this rage as fuel for my success and channelled it into a workaholic spirit, but it never really went away. I could tell that I was a walking disaster waiting to happen...I did some things and witnessed other things while in the army and in war that still make my stomach churn when I think about them, things that I don't even think I can share with you in this setting. That was when the bottle became my mistress, that was when the anger began to brew in my soul..There were so many nights when I wished I could pick up that bottle again, and the night of the incident with my wife was one of them, I needed some relief for my soul..... I know what I did to her wrong, and there are no excuses...." John began to sob..he could barely continue speaking...David came over and gave him a hug..John concluded, "I'm sorry guys, but I am glad to be here, thanks for letting me share."

One by one, each of the 16 ministers in the room opened up their hearts to their struggles. There was Bobby's struggle with pornography, Stephen's struggle with greed & the lusts of power and influence. Many talked about the pressures of ministry and the bickering that goes on behind the scenes in their respective churches. Thomas expressed his never ending desire to just "quit" and enter the secular world because of some of the negative effects that ministry was having on his kids. Amy, a pastor's wife, confessed that while she still loved her husband, she had become emotionally involved with someone that worked in their church. Overwhelmingly, however, there was a general consensus that being involved in professional ministry, you are almost never allowed to be human; "Your fallibility must be covered at all times", commented Bobby, "It is an unbearable amount of pressure and a very lonely existence. It seems like other people are allowed to bask in God's grace because they know that they are not perfect and never will be on this side of eternity, but for us, one slight error and we are sent to the gallows. Aren't we also recipients of God's grace? We are after all not their savior. Jesus is!"


The healing
"Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works – but our lives refute our faith. By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived. Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love."
~Brennan Manning (from "The Ragamuffin Gospel")

"The meeting" story I told in the last segment above is actually a fictional one, but it might as well be a real one, because it is inspired by some of the real struggles that ministers, especially those of large churches or ministries, face on a daily basis. For some reason, we tend to forget that no matter how "anointed" a leader is, he or she needs our prayers, our support and most importantly a showing of God's grace and love, the kind that we desire ourselves. The fact is that we are all in need of some kind of healing and ministers are no exempt. God's grace is the balm that is vitally necessary to soothe our souls.

Earlier this week, Ted Haggard made a media blitz on TV. He was on Oprah, Larry King, and his documentary "the trials of Ted Haggard" was shown on HBO. Ted Haggard used to be the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and the pastor of one of the largest churches in the nation. But after some of his sexual struggles outside of his marriage came to light, he was forced to leave the ministry and seek a career in some other avenue. As I watched his tale on HBO and listened to him speak, I was struck by one statement that he made, where he confessed to Alexandria Pelosi (the director of the documentary) that when he was still a pastor, he always feared sharing his struggles and secrets with anyone because he was scared that he would lose his career, his friends and maybe even his family. Fortunately, he did not lose his family and was so delighted that his wife decided to stay with him through thick and thin, but he did lose all the so-called friends that he thought he had. Isn't it for people like him that Jesus came to show compassion? Ted Haggard was excommunicated from the church and even had to leave his state for a while. He said that when he had tried to confess his struggles to other church leaders before, but they told him that his problem was probably due to the fact that he was not working hard enough in ministry - as if "hard work" alone is all that one needs to exorcise one's demons.

No, I am not excusing what Ted Haggard did, but I wonder, how many more "Ted Haggards" are out there suffering in silence, because the pressure of keeping up the image of the "good Christian" is keeping their secrets in check? How can we ever really appreciate the message of God's grace and get the healing that we so desperately need if there are no safe haven's where we can be real and authentic about the real issues that we face every day. Believe me when I say that no matter how charismatic or gifted your pastor or favorite minister is, he or she needs prayers, needs compassion and needs understanding. In a world where temptation is all around us, expecting a life of sinless perfection from anyone is unrealistic. What about holiness you say? Holiness is supposed to be an expression of how we love one another, not so much a function of personal morality. What good is it if I don't drink, don't smoke, don't listen to secular music, don't dance (not even to Gospel of Contemporary Christian music) and have a long and strict list of moral standards if I am a demon when it comes to how I treat others? This was the essential message on the tale of the "Good Samaritan".

To be fair, there are more and more avenues, like "Celebrate Recovery" that have been adopted by many spiritual circles, where people can be real and authentic sans pretense about their daily struggles. If we are to embrace the message of grace, the rare but radical message of grace, it will free us to stop comparing score cards, stop judging and condemning unfairly and start being real with one another. Only then will we get the healing that we need.

Grace and Peace to you!!

Stephen Oladotun Akinduro

Obama, our stories, & "race in America"

It has truly been a delight to see Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th president of these United States. This moment in history is just one more step in along continuum that stems from the time pre-civil-war era when the whole debate began with the question of whether blacks were fully human and deserving of the same rights as white people in this country. We have truly come a long way, and although Obama being elected does not automatically solve all of our problems when it comes to race-relations or the conditions in Urban America, it is a symbol of tremendous progress and opens another door for tremendous possibilities in the future.

I was born here in the United States in 1971, but after 1977, I grew up during my formative years in Africa and Europe. When I returned to the United States in 1994, I had a very naive view of how far we had come in regards to race relations. I was shocked to see that churches were still mostly described in terms of racial make-up, "white-church", "black-church", "Latino-church" etc. I began to realize what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said that Sunday morning church services represented the most segregated hour in American life. To be fair, there are more and more multicultural churches out there, especially in this age of the mega-church, but these tend to be the exception and not the rule, and generally speaking we tend to go to churches or hang out with people who look like us.

As I started reading more into American history, and realizing how systemic racism and white supremacy is and how it is embedded into the American psyche, I started to understand why some black people tend to embrace notions of black-supremacy that are offered by groups like the nation of Islam. When you have tried your best to be accepted by the popular white culture and yet continue to be rejected, some see no other alternative than to return the hatred and bigotry that has been directed at them with similar hatred and bigotry. This is how fear and hatred beget more fear and hatred, just as violence tends to beget violence, and this is why Dr. King remains one of the most beloved world icons till this day; he asked us to use a different paradigm, one rooted in the Gospel of Jesus, an ethos of love and not hatred, because only love is capable of shattering the chains of hatred and bitterness that often cripple the human soul.

When I returned to the States I was also shocked to see the wealth gaps that still exists between the races and the achievement gaps manifested in our school systems (which are practically segregated again like they were before the civil rights era of the 60s). I was shocked to see the unfairness of the justice system as manifested by the fact that majority of prisoners are either black or latino, many of them in there for non-violent crimes when they really need help or mental health treatment. I was shocked to know that the State of Alabama as of 2000 still had the archaic law in their books banning interracial marriage, reflecting the reluctance that some still have to this taboo subject; fortunately this law was rendered obsolete in the 2000 elections in a ballot initiative which surprisingly did not get overwhelming support, but passed anyway). In debates with some of my white friends and colleagues whom I worked with, I came to see that generally speaking, blacks and whites do not see America through the same lens, and this is why the controversial words of Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, did not come as a shock to many in the black community, but seemed to stun white America, especially the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. And while I do not condone some of the language that Rev. Wright used in some of hose sermons, I understand his sentiment and where he was coming from. Too often when discussing American history, we tend to gloss over those unpleasant truths detailing the effects of white supremacy and what impact it has had on the psyche of many black Americans.

If you really want to know why so many black people have cried and been so delighted in the past week and are so appreciative of this moment in history, it is because for the first time, many black Americans are really feeling that they truly have a real place at the table when it comes to American life, that they truly BELONG. For too long, we have felt like people who were enjoyed for what we could do in entertainment, sports, music, theater, films etc, but never really felt that America really embraced us because we were perceived as "less than" because of the color of our skin. This is the ugly legacy of white supremacy. It is no so much that it implies that you can't "hang out with us" something that integration laws more or less took care of, but that it says "you are less than I am". No better evidence exists than the results of those tests that were done on kids before the historic Brown v. Board of education decision that showed that most blacks kids preferred playing with white dolls or saw the white dolls as better than the black dolls. Ironically, even though the test was repeated again recently, the results were almost identical. When being "black" as been deemed as something wrong or inferior, it takes a long time to get rid of these erroneous notions.

My dad is an Ivy league educated man, a brilliant man who could have easily risen through the ranks of corporate America to be the CEO of a fortune 500 company, but after graduation in the 60s and working and living here for a while, he never felt that he would be truly accepted in corporate America, even if his being one of the only black people at his level would probably afforded him many opportunities if not for anything but creating the illusion of diversity. This is why he decided to go back to his homeland of Nigeria where he still lives today. He is just as pleasantly surprised by Obama's election as many people are around the world.

It is easy for us to assume that Obama's election is the cure all to all of our ills, that we are now in a post-racial society. I don't buy into this line of thinking. People who say that they are color blind in my opinion are deceiving themselves. We all see color, the question is how do we react to what we see? Do we buy into the myths, the stereotypes, the lies and the elements of fear that prevent us from having honest and respectful dialogue. Do we hold back Agape love from others because they do not look like us or embrace our culutral preferences?

Some wonder why is it that even though many black Americans are morally conservative, they tend to vote for Democrats, even though the Democratic Party is seen as the party of "lascivious liberals" especially by Republicans? Republicans will tell you that it is their Party that freed the slaves under Abraham Lincoln, but they often fail to mention the shift in the Parties that occurred during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the Southern Strategy which led to most blacks fleeing the Republican Party for the Democratic Party..

There is still lots of work to do, and it must proceed as we now have a renewed hope in our country. It was so beautiful to see the coalition of Americans from every race and creed at the mall on Washington for the inauguration. Maybe now we can start a conversation with each other rooted in love and not self-righteousness, as we realize in these hard times that we are our brother and sister's keeper.

The most memorable speech of Obama's for me, was his speech on race that he gave in Philadelphia. I encourage you to watch it again. I have included the youtube link below. Let's get out of our comfort zone and talk to one another..........

Obama's speech on race:

CHEAP GRACE: HOW GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH?

The term “God’s grace” is one of the most overused and yet least understood in spiritual circles. John Newton's hymn “Amazing Grace” is arguably the most famous hymn of all time that has been covered by secular and religious artists. But what is “grace”? What does it really mean? We use terms like “unmerited favor” and “undeserved love” to define grace, but do these terms really capture the essence of what God's love & grace really is? In a world where the word love has been so perverted, how can we even comprehend what undeserved-love really means when we are so used to being "loved" because of some inherent quality that we bring to the table?

We say things like "I love Tiger Woods", "I love Halle Berry", "I love my house", "I love Big Macs" etc But when we use the word love in this context, we are saying that we in essence admire the object of our love because of some admirable quality that we get from that person or thing. I have never met Tiger Woods, but I admire his golfing skills. I have never met Halle Berry, but she is a phenomenal actress who is also very beautiful. When I say that I love Big Macs, it is because I like the way the famous hamburgers taste. So in each case, there is something in the object of my love that makes me say that I love him/her/it. When God says that He "loves" us, however, it is not because of any inherent great quality in of ourselves. This is where our definition of "love" differs from God's. God's grace is "one way love" that God gives or extends to us regardless of how worthy or unworthy we may seem. The fact is that when you are talking about God's love or grace, the term "worth" must be thrown out of the equation. The biggest objection to grace is always that if you teach absolute grace, people will use it as a license to do evil things, they will abuse it. But therein again lies a fundamental misunderstanding about grace. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Considering our mode of thinking, I don’t think it is actually possible to understand "God's grace" in full because it is truly beyond anything that we would come up with. There is something mysterious and indeed mystical about grace, because it defies all sense of logic. At its core grace deals with being loved, not only inspite of ourselves, inspite of our gifts, talents, charisma etc But grace is especially most poignant when thinking in regard of how much we have messed up. In a world where we demand perfectionism and “reward-for-performance” is the order of practically every daily transaction, grace not only does not make sense to us, it is almost heretical. Sadly, even in Christian circles, where grace is supposed to be the order of the day, grace if often absent. if you think I am lying then you have never paid attention to the people who have been so wounded by the sense of judgment and condemnation that they felt in "Christian" circles.


The performance test
Let’s use our imagination for a moment. Say an angel walked up to you and said “God has only one requirement for you so that you can not only be accepted by Him, earn your ticket to 'heaven' and receive every conceivable blessing that you want from Him: All you have to do is take and pass this math test in 30 minutes.” First you look in amazement and then after realizing that this is a “for real” situation, you decide to take the test. One of two scenarios then follows:

Scenario 1). As you start taking the test, you realize that the questions are extremely easy, basic arithmetic questions like "If you have two apples and someone gives you one more, how many would you then have?", "what is 9 take away 3?".. You can't believe it, basic addiction, subtraction and division. You answer all twenty questions and are delighted because you know in your mind you have aced the test and got 100%. God must be delighted, you have passed the test.

Scenario 2). As you look at the first question, you know you are in for a huge challenge. This is not your run of the mill basic math test, this is some, "I-need-a-PhD-in-math" just to understand the question. The questions are ones that would take math geniuses hours if not more just to understand, let alone solve. You are in trouble, you barely passed algebra in high school and now you have to answer questions that are meant for a super computer, and you only have 30 minutes to do it. Without even looking through all the questions, you know you have failed before hand. Unless there is some kind of second-option or God pardons you for failing the test, you are doomed.

Scenario 1 above describes the way we have interpreted Biblical law and ways to become accepted by God. We have reduced the severity of the law, cheapening it by cherry-picking from the Bible and making it appear that it is something that we can really obey. Comments like "I may have flaws, but I am not as flawed as John Doe" come from this mentality. We think we are better than others and thus deserve more because maybe we may think to ourselves that because we have never done anything as bad as say "killing" someone, we are in good standing with God, negating the fact that Jesus said "hatred" and unforgiveness are just as bad as murder. You may have never slept around, but we forget that Jesus equated "lust" as adultery, a fact that is hard to negate in a world where pornographic images are so rampant. We cheapen the law to make it appear that we are better than others whose performance we love to judge.

Scenario 2 above is the humbling realization that if are going to live based on this "I-deserve-because-I-perform" game with God, we are in real trouble, unless we accept God's grace and eventually extend it to others. Biblical law serves one purpose and one purpose only - to convict the soul (Romans 3:20). I will type that again, the only thing that Biblical law can do for you is convict you. You may think that it can teach you how to live, but the problem with that is that it does not give you the ability to keep it. The law cannot give you the motivation to obey it and it is viciously merciless. Think I am wrong? Then think about all the laws that we pass in society in attempts to curb crime or lawlessness and ask "how is that working out for us?" In the 1980s, stiffer anti-drug laws were passed when crack cocaine use started to explode in inner cities. The result of these laws was not necessarily an annihilation of the drug culture (au contraire, my friends), but an increase in the number of prisoners and people being incarcerated, many whom needed treatment from drug use. This is how the "law" works, it can only do one thing - convict lawbreakers. But somehow we have the notion that emphasizing law gives people the ability to obey it; this is not true.

We are often told in Christian circles that if you would just obey the Bible, you will live a fruitful Christian life, but this is not only Scenario 1 living, it seeks to diminish the law into elementary principles like: "do you read your Bible, give to the church, not curse, not listen to bad secular music? etc If so, congratulations, you are good, and God accepts you and will bless you." But reducing the entirety of the law into elementary principles not only negates the seriousness of the law and how much we all fall short of its requirements, but it creates the illusion that "God loves me more because I obey the law better than John Doe". This is why some people who have tried in all earnestness to obey Biblical law become disillusioned when bad things happen to them. We have a hard time accepting the message of God's grace because we do not see the extent to which the law is like a test in Scenario 2. The law is much harder than we are called to imagine. If we knew this and saw that God accepts us in Christ even tough we don't remotely come close to obeying the Law, we would accept grace and unconditional love for God and one another more often.


Rules without relationship leads to rebellion
One of my favorite quotes is "Rules without relationships leads to rebellion". I got that quote from author Bill Gillham. We are so busy trying to get people to obey laws, that we are indirectly spurring rebellion, because what as people want more than anything is to be loved in our souls as we are, and to spread that love to others. You see this in families all the time; try raising a child by simply trying to enforce dogmatic rules, without that child realizing that they are loved no matter what. That child will not only be looking forward to the day when they leave home, but will most likely have a fractured relationship with his or her parents...

The question is not whether we have cheapened "grace", we have cheapened Biblical law to give ourselves a false sense of security so that we don't need to appreciate grace. We cannot appreciate grace in a vacuum. Compassion stems from identifying with the fallibility that exists in each of us, yes, even for the worst amongst us, there is hope, because for the "best' amongst us, we are who we are not because of our "wonderful gifts" but because of God's "one-way" love that has nothing do with us, but more to do with Him....


Stephen Akinduro



Recommended reading: Grace in Practice ~ by Paul F.M. Zahl