Perfect Scandal: Why Good Role Models Are Bad
Put simply, Christian purity culture penalizes honesty. There’s a very specific style of testimonial that we are supposed to offer: one in which we are former sinners saved by the love of Jesus. We experience no doubt, no confusion. We have no questions. We’re humble enough, of course, to realize that we will sin again and that we stand in constant need of God’s grace. But our sins are either in the past, or in the future. For the present, we’re basically saints.
This is fine if the only kind of witness that we hope to have in the Church is the “fifteen minutes of fame” kind. Everyone goes through occasional periods in their spiritual life where they really do fit the bill, and if we just wait for those moments to get up in public and give our testimonial then we can both tell the truth and achieve a very high standard of edifying perfection.
There’s only problem with this plan, which is that it involves our entire community behaving in a fundamentally dishonest way. It means silencing our communal struggles, erasing our communal sins. And of course it doesn’t work. Cover-ups are one of the best ways of making a scandal really blow up in your face.
