Since admitting his affair and resigning from his pastoral position at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Tullian Tchividjian is undergoing “dark nights of the soul.”
Billy Graham’s grandson isn’t the first pastor to be caught in adultery, but as he tells William Vanderbloeman in a podcast, he understands how the consequences of that sin can be suicide.
“I could never really fully understand why people would take their own lives and while I have not been, thankfully by God’s grace, tempted to do so, I for the first time understand why,” Tchividjian says. “I get the desperation, I get the despair in a way that I never have.”
Tchividjian says having an affair really forces a pastor, a person, to look at themselves and ask, “What kind of person did I become for me to do what I did, my wife to do what she did, where did I fail? Did I become something, someone I didn’t see I was becoming?”
It’s this thought process that could have caused both Seth Oiler and Isaac Hunter to take their own lives after being caught in affairs.
Charisma News previously reported that 70 percent of pastors constantly fight depression, and 71 percent are burned out. Meanwhile, 72 percent of pastors say they only study the Bible when they are preparing for sermons; 80 percent believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families; and 70 percent say they don’t have a close friend.
But for Tchividjian, while the past few months have been a nightmare, they’re forcing him to re-evaluate the gospel and dive deeper into the love of God.
The primary lesson the former pastor has learned throughout the ordeal is this: “Jesus plus nothing equals everything.”
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