Mark Roberts has a fascinating series over at his blog titled, “The Lure of the Dark Side.” I particularly enjoyed his post today, 2 Corinthians, The Lure of the Truncated Gospel.
The dark side, in relation to ourselves, is not something we talk about very often. We will quip over things that we see as dark, or things that are dark that come up against us, but hardly do we think about the dark sides of our own personality. In fact, you may not even believe the notion of having a dark side, or of being tempted, or lured to darker things.
The famous psychologist, thinker, writer, Carl Jung researched a lot on what he termed our shadow side, where the darker side of our ego existed. Some Christians may mark that up to being a bunch of hog wash, or something like that, but I think we are mistaken as people when we fail to recoginze our own allurement to the darker,or more seductive things in life.
I still remember writing one of my research papers in my Practical Theology Class on the topic of pastoral ethics. In this, I took a real life example of a pastor who had recently been caught up in all kinds of scandal, and in the process was forced to leave the church, along with hundreds of staff. And the one common denominator that seemed to continually arise was the inability for those in powerful positions to recognize their own struggles, or struggle with the “dark” side.
Mark’s series on these issues is a must read, especially for those in positions of leadership, not only in ministry, but in whatever area of life you are working.
