In being honest with you, if there’s any crime involved, you can’t cover it. You can’t cover crime. If there’s a sexual abuse situation, you can’t be committed to be secret about that. You know, the person says to you: “I tell you what’s happening, but you must promise you’ll never tell anyone!” “Whoa, you say - wait a minute. I want to help you, but I won’t agree to that. I will keep confidence, but if there’s something really serious, I will remain free to talk to someone over me - to get their advice and help.”
If you don’t do that, you could be drawn to something terrible. Person might say: “I’ve been sexually molesting my younger sister.” Woah! Or it could be: “I’ve been involved sexually with a leader in the church.” Wow! You just can’t have a secrecy thing sit over your counsel in this area. Confidential? Yes, I’m not going to talk about you in any kind of way to anyone. Secrecy – I won’t promise I won’t tell someone. You have to keep open the option, that what you’re going to encounter, you need to talk to someone above you.
You’re not an expert, and you may need someone else to advise you. If someone tells you a terrible secret, you’ll be left in a very condemned state if you don’t talk to someone about it. In other words, when they say: ‘You must keep this secret’, they’re about to bring you into the secrecy and darkness that they’ve already had for years. Don’t be tricked into making that kind of commitment, because you may need to tell someone else.
I had one person who came to me, and they had married this woman who had two boys. He began sexually abusing the boys. It came out to me - the man came and confessed his sin. He confessed his sin because he’s in turmoil, absolute turmoil. So I said: “Well, it’s good you’ve become honest. It’s good you brought this to the light; but what you’ve done is wrong. There are many consequences of it.
The first is your relationship with God; we’ll talk with you about returning to the Lord again.” I said: “You’ve betrayed your wife’s trust, and breached your marriage by abusing her children. Secondly, you’ve committed a crime. This is against the law, you’ve broken the law. This kind of crime cannot be hidden - I cannot hide it, neither will I attempt to.” So I said: “There are a couple of options. You need to report to the woman what you’ve been doing. Separate yourself. Inevitably, she will make a complaint to the police. You may choose to go to the police first, and make a confession.”
I said: “I will not be party to anything being covered up. So I’ll give you a season to decide how you’re going to respond. This is a crime. It’s a crime against children; and by law, we have to report this. So I’ll give you an opportunity to take initiative to put the thing right. You will face the consequences. However, the Bible’s very clear – if you confess and forsake, you’ll find mercy. By coming upfront about what you’ve done, will mean there will be leniency in the outcomes. I’ll give you a week, and I’ll ask you at the end of the week what’s happened - I’ll check up.”
Of course, it all came out into the open. Just understand: I refused to be kept in a place of covering a crime. These things come out in the open anyway. I don’t want to be party to concealing something that should be dealt with by proper process.
Can you imagine the reproach on your ministry, if someone was abusing a child, they told you, and you took no action? Your ministry will be discredited - totally discredited! You would be seen to be agreeing with a child molester. This is where churches get confused - they feel sorry for the criminal, they feel compassion for him. That’s okay to feel those things; but you must follow due process, or you become party to this whole issue. You have to be really clear about this.
You need to do it like this: tell them they need to confess their sin to the Lord, and ask for His forgiveness. Assure them their forgiveness will come, but they must turn away from the sin. Repentance is not just saying ‘sorry’. Repentance is: realising I’ve hurt people, and turning away from it because I’ve hurt them.
You need to explain the area of forgiveness – that the person must forgive the people who’ve hurt them. There may be some anger and grief in this area. So, you may take a little bit of time, helping the person face and admit their grief and anger, and being willing to forgive. Forgiveness must come from the heart. From the heart, forgive.
You may say: “Look, you’re still very angry at these people. Why don’t you just do an exercise, and over the next week, you write an anger letter. Write a letter to the person, you’ll never send it to them. It’s to put your anger out of your heart and on paper, where you can see it and resolve it before the Lord. So the person needs to let go of anger about the things that have happened and forgive the person.
Forgiveness is twofold: first of all, forgiving the people who’ve hurt you; second, receiving forgiveness and forgiving yourself. Some people have trouble forgiving themselves. It’s important. Particularly girls often feel great shame - they find it hard to forgive themselves. So you’ve got to talk about that and encourage them: “You need to release yourself from this demand, because God’s already forgiven you.”