Can people acquire guilt when their minister or clergy sin? What about their worship leader or pastor, their organist or music director? What sounds like ‘transmission of guilt’ is a difficult concept to grasp, let alone explain.
Leviticus 4:3-4. The high priest represents God’s people, intercedes (to God) for them, and worships God to obtain God’s promised forgiveness for them (from God) individually and corporately (as a church).
Maybe in those days they did not yet have privacy laws or “best practice”; unless people agree to not tell the truth (or tell lies) and so the truth of a sin is not revealed to others, the lie might never see light of day – of course, except God and he chooses to reveal this at his time.
Truth can be painful
What tends to happen today is we don’t interfere with people’s “private” lives; and people in church might choose not to cast prying eyes on an aspect of their minister’s life that suggests it is sinful. We tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Truth can be very painful. On the other end of the scale, when truth is discovered, we might very quickly feel the urge not to return to this community again. It seems we are exercising a choice in distancing ourselves from the sin and sinner. In some ways, we experience guilt. Or anger and confusion, but underlying that might be a sense of guilt.
Leviticus deals with this situation. Read on in the next blog.
