Why Do We Keep Failing and Falling?

copyright Dave Wiedis 2025 originally published on New Growth Press’s blog

A few months ago, a well-known and deeply respected pastor, author, and teacher posted a heartbreaking confession on his social media:

“It is with a shattered heart that I write this letter. I have sinned grievously against the Lord, against my wife, my family, and against countless numbers of you by having a sinful relationship with a woman not my wife.”

“I am deeply broken that I have betrayed and deceived my wife, devastated my children, brought shame to the name of Christ, reproach upon His church, and harm to many ministries.”

Sadly, this wasn’t an isolated case. Every generation of believers has seen once-trusted spiritual leaders fall—pastors, mentors, ministry heads—bringing heartbreak, confusion, and sometimes even the loss of faith to the body of Christ. Whether through sexual misconduct, financial scandal, narcissistic leadership, or spiritual abuse, these failures ripple through communities with devastating effect. The problem is so severe several states, such as Texas, have enacted laws criminalizing sexual misconduct by clergy, which can include “any sexualized behavior (verbal or physical) on the part of a religious leader toward a person under his or her spiritual care.”

So we’re left asking: How does this keep happening?

Some might respond—“That could never be me.”

But a wiser response is more profound: Could this happen to me? What resides in the deep recesses of my own heart that might lead to self-sabotage? Why do so many who love God still find themselves trapped in sin, stuck in shame, and repeating patterns they long to break? Is true heart transformation truly possible?

These are painful, courageous questions. Answering them begins with recognizing a deeper issue beneath our behaviors: the ruling passions of our hearts.

WHAT DRIVES US?

Many believers gauge their spiritual health by superficial signs: consistent prayer, Bible reading, church involvement, or theological knowledge. These are all good things—but they don’t necessarily reflect the true condition of the heart.

Over years of counseling ministry leaders, reflecting on public failures, and examining my own weaknesses and sinful tendencies, I’ve come to believe that spiritual health is more accurately measured by what truly rules our inner life—our “ruling passions.”

A ruling passion is a deep, sometimes unconscious desire that governs your decisions, shapes your responses, and fuels your pursuits. It may be a hunger for affirmation, success, safety, comfort, control, respect, or belonging. Often, these desires aren’t inherently wrong.  But when they become ultimate—more important than obeying or loving God and others—they become functional idols.

THE REAL BATTLE WITHIN

Most Christian leaders believe they are most passionate about Christ and His lordship. But if you peel back the layers, what often drives their decisions is something else entirely:

• “I will be liked.”

• “I will be in control.”

• “I will avoid pain.”

• “I will be admired.”

• “I will make an impact.”

• “I will be respected”

• “I will be unique.”

These inner vows—which often develop early in life through painful or pleasurable experiences—guide thousands of our daily choices. They also foundational to developing “meta-narratives” for our lives.  And when these ruling passions take the throne of our hearts, they quietly dethrone Jesus—no matter what our mouths may say.

Timothy Keller put it this way:

“Sin isn’t only doing bad things—it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things.”

That’s the essence of idolatry: not always loving the wrong things but loving good things too much—more than God. When we build our lives around anything other than Christ, even ministry itself, we walk the path of self-destruction.

A BIBLICAL CASE STUDY: PETER

Consider the Apostle Peter. Few people had a more impressive spiritual resume—personally called by Jesus, one of the three disciples closest to Jesus and a leader among the disciples, a powerful preacher at Pentecost, a miracle worker, even given direct revelation from God instructing him not to discriminate against Gentile believers (Acts 10). Yet in Galatians 2, Peter compromises his integrity and the gospel itself by withdrawing from Gentile believers out of fear.

Why? Because his ruling passion—self-protection—overpowered his calling.

Despite all his spiritual experiences and knowledge, Peter’s fear of judgment led him to sin against the Gentile believers, offending them deeply, creating deep division, and betraying the very gospel he preached. His abject failure shows that even the most devoted can fall when their passions are not fully surrendered to the lordship of Christ.

WHAT RULES YOUR HEART?

So let’s bring it home:

• What are you most passionate about—really?

• Where is there a gap between what you say you believe and what actually drives your choices?

• Are your longings for affirmation, power, impact, connection, security, or control quietly steering your life—even your ministry?

We may tell ourselves we’re building a church to serve the community, but deep down, we might just be chasing approval or admiration. We may say we’re training leaders for God’s kingdom, but we might be driven by a need to feel powerful or indispensable. We may say we are committed to the gospel, but we might be driven by a ruling passion to get relief from loneliness. Even our best intentions can become idols when they replace the centrality of Christ in our affections.

THE PATH TO TRANSFORMATION

Our hearts are battlegrounds of competing passions. The solution isn’t to suppress our desires but to reorder and redeem them. That begins with surrender.

God calls us to live coram Deo—before his face, fully exposed and fully loved. He invites us to name our ruling passions, bring them into the light, and place them under Christ’s loving lordship. This is not a one-time event, but a daily process of yielding and realigning our hearts.

We must learn to live as Jesus lived—with a heart fully submitted to the Father. Jesus’s ruling passion was obedience to God’s will and love for us. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, not for self-preservation or power, but for the glory of God and the redemption of our wayward hearts.

OUR ONE TRUE PASSION

Ultimately, the only way to overcome this perennial problem of failing and falling is to make Jesus our ruling passion.

Let your deepest desire be to know him, love him, and reflect him. As we grow in awareness of our internal idols, let us respond not with shame, but with grace-fueled honesty and humble surrender. Surround yourself with a community that will lovingly hold you accountable and point you back to Christ.

When Jesus rules our hearts—above every longing for acceptance, success, impact, approval, or control—then we will walk in true freedom. We may passionately pursue many things in life, but if Christ is not our main pursuit, we will always be vulnerable to failure.

But when he is at the center of our lives, we will stand. Not perfectly. Not without struggle. But with hearts increasingly shaped by his love, and lives that reflect his glory.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” —Luke 10:27

Let that be your ruling passion.

Loving Well Through Mediation

“’But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.’” – Matthew 5.44-45

Jesus’ call is a hard one. Personally, I have a hard enough time loving people I love, much less my enemies. Why would he command us (and it is most definitely a command) to do this? There is a very practical reason why we are told to love our enemies. How well does retaliation usually work? Ask Israel and Palestine. Ask the Capulets and Montagues. Ask participants of messy divorces. Evil for evil and violence for violence and anger for anger only builds evil, violence, and anger. It results in both parties bowing down to the god of being right, or the power of human might. The only way to disarm the power of evil is to not play the game. But, ultimately, it is not the utilitarian nature of active love that compels us to follow Christ’s teaching. We’re not merely called to “just get along.” We’re called to conquer the world.  

And how did God conquer? Through brute force? Violence? Destruction? A rhetorical, argumentative beat-down? No, though in his perfect justice that would have certainly been his wont. It was actually through the sacrificial death of His Son. It turned everything upside down. Life through death. Victory through defeat. Christians are called to follow their humble King, Jesus. We are called to proactively love those who set themselves against us. Because that’s exactly what he had done for us. While he was hung on the cross, he prayed “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” Paul writes in Romans 5.8 that “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” So, we are called to imitate God as we interact with our enemies. More than just refusing to retaliate (mercy, which is not giving people what they deserve), we are called to love (grace, which is giving people what they don’t deserve). C.S. Lewis wrote that “Love is not (merely) affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” To desire good for others, even our enemies. 

This requires humility, and a recognition of our standing apart from Christ. Yale theologian Miroslav Volf encapsulated this ethos in writing: “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.” We distill people into those who are like— minded who are for us, and those who are not. Those who are not for us are against us and therefore our enemies. Sinners and saints. And, of course, I am the saint.

What is a person, what is a Christian, to do? This is where Christianity gets tough. Christ’s call is to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” How do we look on those we disagree with in a compassionate, kind, and humble way? Again, Volf: “[N]o one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long… without transposing the enemy from the sphere of the monstrous…into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness.” We give them, the others, the enemies, what they don’t deserve: grace. Because while we were enemies of God, that’s what He gave us. The second we say, “Well, they hurt me and were wrong and they’ve got it coming!” Meaning they are deserving of my scorn and anger— we are confronted by the words of Clint Eastwood in the movie Unforgiven: “Kid, we all got it coming.”

Do people actually do this? Christians not only are called to love their enemies, but are given the Holy Spirit to enable and equip them to do so.

Theologian Frederick Buechner wrote: “The love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured one’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.”

Maybe it’s not a torturer…not even really an enemy…but someone a dear friend or family member with whom I conflict. Maybe that someone is my brother in Christ or my sister on the Church leadership team. And that loved one becomes, even for a moment or a season, an enemy. How do we respond?

___________________________

In my family, there occasionally comes a moment when one of us is on the razor’s edge of saying something that will “set things on fire” (James 3.6a). Those words may be true, or merely provocative, but said out of anger or frustration, they burn. By God’s grace, most of the time we swallow those words and temper our anger with grace and mercy. However, sometimes, regrettably, the words come out. I fight with the one I love the most. And while it may be seldom, there are times when those words are so hurtful that the breach is not easily overcome.

This can happen in a family, and often does, but maybe just as often within the Church. A ministry staff, an elder board, or congregants who get sideways with each other and are stuck in their conflict. One word, or a pattern in the way they communicate and relate to each other, can create a rift wherein each party digs in their heels and won’t budge. Who was once a brother or sister in Christ becomes an arch-nemesis…who shares the same pew.

Sometimes we need help. And while, if I’m a party to the fight, I’d like to include someone who will take my side and let the other party know they were wrong…I realize that most of the time it isn’t “the other” who is the problem. I am, too. What is going on in my own heart that plays a part in the conflict? Why do I get set-off, angry, frustrated, unable to bridge the gap of conflict? Often-times I don’t really know. ServingLeaders wants to help heal the conflict, but also help each of the parties acknowledge what is going on in their own hearts that led to the conflict in the first place. We want to point them back to the Gospel of grace. My wife and I, when we are on the verge of saying something hurtful out of frustration, will often articulate, out loud, “We are on the same team.” A way of affirming that we aren’t enemies. Rather, we are both fighting against the same thing. And we are for each other.

In mediation, ServingLeaders works with each side of the conflict to honestly express their frustration honestly (rather than sweeping it under the rug), but also by fighting “cleanly,” expressing themselves with respect and humility. In doing so, we are trying to lower the temperature in the room when the parties do finally come together. I’m always amazed when a conversation goes from a pattern of anger and accusation to a pattern of humility: “This is the part I played in our conflict, and for that I am sorry.” We want to get to the longing under the longing. What does the individual really desire? Maybe it is control, or recognition, or to alleviate loneliness. Maybe there are un-articulated expectations that haven’t been agreed to. If we can begin to explore those deeper issues with the parties, we can move from anger at the enemy to a shared human condition and the tenderness that comes with recognizing our own frailties.

Humility, forgiveness, restoration. We want to point the parties in conflict back to the hope of reconciliation that ultimately comes through Jesus Christ.