The recent Ashley Madison hack leaves us watching marriages within the Church crumble before our eyes. But the betrayal of an affair doesn’t just affect husband and wife. Children too are devastated by the unfaithfulness of a parent.
An affair drove me and my unsaved family to the Cross. For kids whose families are entrenched in the Church, an affair could drive them the opposite direction.
Josh Duggar, who formerly served as Family Research Council Action’s Executive Director, admitted to cheating on his wife Anna after it was discovered he had two separate accounts on Ashley Madison. The young Duggar couple have four small children. No doubt the Duggar children will be tainted by the rejection of their father, not to mention the public scrutiny and devastation of their mother.
Yesterday, Tabletalk Editor R.C. Sproul, Jr. was suspended from his teaching fellowship with Ligonier Ministries. Christianity Today reports that Sproul’s suspension was a consequence of the ministry leader’s visit to the Ashley Madison website. On his blog, Sproul admitted, “In August 2014, in a moment of weakness, pain, and from an unhealthy curiosity, I visited Ashley Madison. My goal was not to gather research for critical commentary, but to fan the flames of my imagination.”
Sproul explained on his blog that he did not sign up for Ashley Madison’s services and promised he was always faithful to his wife while she lived. Sproul’s wife Denise died in 2011 after battling cancer. He has seven surviving children.
Josh Duggar and R.C. Sproul, Jr. merely scratch the surface of prominent ministry leaders exposed by the Ashley Madison hack.
In his Christianity Today article, “My Pastor Is on the Ashley Madison List,” Ed Stetzer, the Executive Director of LifeWay Research, estimated 400 church leaders, including pastors and lay leaders throughout the United States and Canada, were looking for an affair through the Ashley Madison website.
However, you don’t need Ashley Madison to have an affair. And you don’t need a website hack to expose infidelity.
For my family, my father’s extramarital affair brought my broken-down parents crawling to the doors of a local church. They were craving just about any help they could get. Here they were introduced to Jesus, who provided their healing and total transformation.
I vividly remember life without Jesus. I remember the screaming and fighting. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night, carried to the car by a crying parent, and driven to grandma’s house because an affair came to light.
As the child of an unfaithful parent, you too feel rejected by the affair. Though the level of rejection is different than your mother’s devastation and rejection, you as the child go through a type of grieving period. You wonder that if only you were smarter, better behaved or prettier, then your parent wouldn’t have temporarily left your family in search of someone else. It might sound strange, but this is the raw emotional devastation that occurs when a parent’s cheating is uncovered.
Thank God of Heaven that the affair did drive my family to the cross. Because I then experienced life with Jesus in our family. It wasn’t perfection, but I finally knew peace, stability and the accountability that the Church provided my family.
The opposite effect threatens to occur for parents who commit affairs, yet ensure they and their children are at church every time the doors are open. I was devastated, deeply wounded, and developed distrust and commitment issues because of a lost parent’s affair. I can’t imagine how a child whose parents knew Christ yet still had an affair would feel.
Already we see a burgeoning trend among young Evangelicals raised in the Church who have grown callous towards the traditional Christian teachings of their parents and reject the Church. Hypocrisy has certainly played its role. Because they see failure within the Church, many young Evangelicals have turned Jesus Christ into something of their own making.
In his article, “10 Counterfeit Jesus Figures,” Daniel Darling, Communications Director for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, explains that the Believers who accept Christ, but reject the Church, are worshiping a “Post-Church Jesus.” Darling writes:
Burned out by the overly political, legalistic church of your youth? The Post-Church Jesus allows you to worship him without all the trappings of the institutional church. In some ways, this Jesus is attractive for those who’ve grown tired of a gospel that sounds more like traditionalism than the gospel of Christ.
But the real Jesus doesn’t offer his followers the option of following him without being part of the church. The very act of regeneration by faith baptizes the believer into the body of Christ. Christ loves his bride and offers no fruitful path of faith outside of the community of faith.
Pastors and youth ministry leaders need to prepare themselves now to minister to worshipers of a “Post-Church Jesus.” They will be wounded by the infidelity of their parent and, in turn, distrust those in ministry leadership. They will develop bitterness towards others and live with the expectation of others to eventually betray them.
We recognize that the Church is not perfect nor can it ever be on its own. Sin still affects us all and, as Darling points out, the community of faith is not optional. But the impact of the Ashley Madison hack and infidelity as a whole, are further reasons why it is imperative for the Church to prove ourselves trustworthy. As Philippians 2:15 instructs, “above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.”
There is good news after an affair. The Good News can and must still be shared with those inside of the Church impacted by infidelity. This will not be easy. In some ways it will be even harder than witnessing to those unfamiliar with the Gospel. But, thank God, our job is simply to share the truth in love. Then we let God take care of the heart-transforming. Trust me, He will.
Comment by Patrick98 on September 1, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Thank you Heavenly Father that your Son Jesus is the friend of sinners. Amen.
Comment by Willem on September 15, 2015 at 8:02 am
Please cut out that offensive jezus/god BS
Comment by JClarke on September 1, 2015 at 12:29 pm
Thanks Ms. Vicari for this article.
Comment by Terri Kinney on September 1, 2015 at 12:41 pm
All these episodes ought to remind us that one of the great heroes of the Bible was David, who got a married woman pregnant, then married her after arranging to have her husband killed in battle. By that standard, most adulterous flings are relatively harmless – I emphasize “relatively,” as there is no such thing as harmless adultery, even if the spouse never finds out. It isn’t easy to be faithful in a sex-saturated culture. Maybe “blessed are the merciful” ought to be emblazoned on every marriage license.
Comment by JClarke on September 1, 2015 at 1:24 pm
That David affair should teach another lesson. Get in the battle! David fell into sin when he should’ve been at in the fight ” in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle”.
Comment by MarcoPolo on September 10, 2015 at 8:51 am
Thank you, Chelsen for your fortitude to share your personal testimony of an adulterous episode that nearly destroyed yet another family…YOURS!
Personally, when I first saw a television advertisement this summer, for the Ashley Madison website, I couldn’t believe what I read in their tagline: “Life is short, so have an affair!” That’s DISGUSTING!! I assume many here think I’m indifferent to such salacious suggestions, but I’m not! Fidelity is something I take very seriously, as I vowed before friends, family and God, that I would be devoted exclusively to my wife… and I always will be! My FIRST wife was an adulterer, and thus, is no longer my wife.
I’ll admit, marrying at twenty-two years old, was just too young for either of us.
On the other side of this scandal, is the opportunity for me to restate my opinion that before one ever marries, they should (safely) ‘play the field’ in order to discover what they might otherwise suppress. Yes, we are only human, and with that comes responsibilities. But before one ‘settles down’ they’d do well to experience the world as it can be, in order to better understand both sides.
Marriage IS meant to establish the family unit, whether it’s the traditional child rearing atmosphere, or the commitment of same-sex coupling, it is intended for the dynamic of two people coming together to make a single unit for furthering societal cohesion.
Nice article, Chelsen. I’m sorry for the pain you suffered, but I’m happy for your deliverance.
Comment by Willem on September 15, 2015 at 8:00 am
You forgot to mention that Duggar also fingerfushed his 4 little sisters.
Comment by jjgrndisland on September 15, 2015 at 11:55 am
Moderators, can you please show “Willem” the exit. This kind of juvenile vulgarity is uncalled for.
Comment by Carverelle on April 12, 2016 at 10:50 am
Thank you for your very thoughtful article. Adultery is a destroyer of families, which just makes it all that much more strange that champions of “family values” would get caught up in it. Though I’m disgusted by Josh Duggar’s conduct I can at least accept the sincerity of his confession. Time will tell if he’s actually repentant though. However, I can’t accept the sincerity of RC Sproul Jr’s confession. It’s an obvious sham.
I’m so disappointed by the way the Christian press has handled it. They’ve pretty much just parroted what Sproul put out as nothing more than a carefully crafted press release. The only blog that posted an actual investigative report at the time was RC Sproul Jr’s Ashley Madison Scandal. Last week Brent Detwiler went far further than that and has shown that not only did Sproul lie through his teeth but his Presbytery and his father’s Ligonier Ministries has covered up for him and given him what amounts to a six figure income paid vacation that they call a “suspension.”
RC Sproul Jr may not have committed literal adultery (or maybe he actually did arrange some hookups and just lied about that too?). But the effect it’s likely to have on his children will be much the same as if he had. Making matters worse they will ultimately figure out their dad lied about it to the entire Christian world.
Comment by Thomas on March 5, 2020 at 7:58 pm
I find myself now circling back around to this Ashley Madison debacle of RC Sproul Jr because of recent allegations that Sproul also engaged in a coverup of the predations of a serial pedophile in his church, Steven Sitler. There’s been much ado of Doug Wilson’s coverup of Steven Sitler in Moscow Idaho. Somehow Sproul managed to escape discovery, at least until recently. I see a direct correlation between Sproul’s apparent sexual deviancy and his complacency in seeking criminal prosecution against Sitler, and I find that all very disturbing.
Comment by Sam Adams on January 26, 2021 at 12:31 pm
I wanted to believe RC Jr when he said he “only visited Ashley Madison.” But after taking a little time to examine the evidence it becomes obvious he’d done far more than just “visit.” Of his own admission he “left an old email address.” You can’t just visit Ashley Madison and do that. Only registered account holders can give them an email address. He continues lying about his Ashley Madison account to this very day. For example in an interview just last month he said, “Sometime in 2014 I had visited the Ashley Madison web site. I was there long enough to leave an old email address but left within minutes. I didn’t sign up for their service.” He’s repeated this lying narrative many times since 2015. Why is the distinction between “visitor” and “registered account holder” important? Because when you register for an Ashley Madison account you have to give far more than just a name and email address. You also have to check off a long list of sexually explicit boxes such as “Sexual Preference,” “Affair Limits,” and other lecherous things to match you up for the ideal sex affair. No doubt he’s embarrassed and humiliated by having checked off those boxes. But his entire focus has remained on saving face with his supporters rather than honestly confessing his sins.
Continuing his pattern of lechery RC Jr soon after his Ashley Madison account scandal sexted penis pics to a 3x divorced woman to lure her into marrying him.