Dr. Jekyll is a fascinating fictional character who has captured the imagination of generations of readers and movie goers. By day, the good doctor was a healer bringing medical treatment to the people of his day, a day that was rife with injury, sickness and disease. He was well respected and rightly so, a pillar of the community, a professional man in a blue collar society.
There was another side to Dr. Jekyll, however, a dark side, for when the sun went down at the end of a day of care and healing, the good doctor changed, becoming a very different sort of man, a sinister man with a thirst for murder. The motives of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were quite similar, both wanting to eliminate the world’s diseases, but unlike Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde’s attention was not riveted on bacteria and viruses, lacerations and broken bones. His passion, his lust, was to eliminate the human disease that he thought was infecting the world.
I’m sad to say that there is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde dichotomy alive in the church today. I call it the Dr. Jekyll and Rev. Hide Syndrome. Sometimes the man that is seen in the pulpit on Sunday mornings is not the man that is seen Monday through Saturday behind the scenes. A mild version of this syndrome is seen in the simple disillusionment of church staff, particularly among first timers. Upon taking on that first assignment on a church staff, the new staffer steps into a spiritual Neverland where everyone is loving and kind, prays all the time and floats through the workday on a fluffy spiritual cloud. It comes as a shock to discover that church staffers are people, too, plagued with a sinful nature that shows itself all too often.
This kind of disillusionment is self-induced, the product of naive and unrealistic expectations. Usually what’s being seen is not hypocrisy but weakness, the result of regular folks not being able to live up to what they truly believe. The witness of the church would be okay of that’s all there was to the DJRH Syndrome, but it’s not. It’s just the first level.
The second level crosses a line into serious character flaws on the part of pastors that lead to abuse, lies, power leveraging and manipulation. Self-important and often paranoid pastors wield their authority like a club, verbally, emotionally and psychologically berating their subordinates and perhaps even congregants to get their way. The ends justify the means, and the vision or will of the pastor is the law. To question is to become an enemy and there’s only room for one at the top of this ecclesiastical hierarchy. Oddly, churches led by such overbearing and aggressive pastors often grow numerically, proving to the pastor that he is right while everyone else is wrong. Of course, this side of the pastor is only seen by those closest to the action, the everyday staff and perhaps a few lay leaders. The rank and file only see the pulpit persona, and Dr. Jekyll is a delight.
There is yet a third level, immorality. This deadly weapon, handled with great skill by our enemy the devil, routinely destroys pastors, their families and their churches. Immorality occurs as the conflation of all of the above – human weakness, character flaws, abuse, lies, power plays, manipulation, and self-importance leading to self-indulgence, the antithesis of self-discipline, the antithesis of Great Commission ministry. Dr. Jekyll moves out of the pulpit and into the darkness of Rev. Hide’s world. Pastor after pastor falls into immoral thoughts that give way to immoral action. Such a pastor takes his family and his church with him, all to the glory of the Evil One.
I wish that this was an unusual occurrence, but it’s not. I’ve heard of many and seen more than I can count, one in the past few months.
O Lord, our God, save us from ourselves!
