Story of a pastor and his love

Jack A. Schaap was the revered pastor of a Baptist church in Hammond, Indiana that averaged 15,000 attenders every Sunday. Now he is a convicted felon serving a 12-year prison sentence for sexually abusing a teenage girl who came to him for counseling. His church fired him, his wife divorced him, and his reputation and his life have been utterly ruined.

After initially taking full responsibility for his crime, which included transporting a minor across state lines for sexual purposes, Schaap sank to even greater depths of moral degradation. In a doomed attempt to have his sentence reduced, he tried to shift blame from himself to his 16-year-old victim, ui her to the court of aggressively pursuing and seducing him.
What a horrible and excruciatingly painful story! There is absolutely no excuse or palliation for the egregious offenses former pastor Schaap committed.

Yet I don’t believe there was ever a morning when this respected, and to all appearances devout, spiritual leader got out of bed and thought to himself, “this seems like a good day to take advantage of a child’s trust in her pastor, betray my wife and the sanctity of our marriage, subject my church to ridicule and shame, and totally destroy my own life.”

I suspect that when Jack Schaap thinks back over the events of the last few years, he is utterly astounded to have ended up where he is. How could this possibly have happened to him?
None of Us Is Safe

Actually, it could happen to anyone who fails to set proper boundaries for their own behavior. None of us is so strong or so holy as to be immune to temptation. That’s a lesson Scripture teaches over and over, and one that we all would do well to heed before we find ourselves in some unforeseen predicament of our own making, wondering how we ever got there.