Robert Morris & The Problem of Sin Leveling

What do we do with predator pastors? Are some sins worse than others?

Recently, while scrolling through Facebook, I came across a lengthy post by a pastor about why he’s forgiven Robert Morris.

Now, Morris is a former televangelist and celebrity preacher. He founded Gateway Church in Dallas and served as senior pastor for nearly 25 years. In 2024, Morris resigned from ministry following public accusations that he’d repeatedly sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl. Then, just this month, Morris was indicted on five counts of “lewd or indecent acts to a child.”

Upon learning of the charges, the pastor on Facebook posted, “I know that Robert Morris is guilty of horrific crimes. His victim, abused nearly 100 times from the age of 12 to 17, is a friend … My family’s passionate discussion with me revolved around my expressing grace toward Robert Morris. I always give grace to the humbled … I take no pleasure in the death of Robert’s evangelical ministry … [We] Christians should stay humble, gracious, and kind when proud people come crashing down, lest we be the next to fall — for ‘Pride comes before the fall.’ Proverbs 16:18.”

I was aghast that a minster of God’s Word would respond this way to such a horrific case of child abuse. I replied, “I don’t understand how anyone can think that someone who has committed around 100 instances of child abuse and sexual assault can be anything other than a wolf. His ministry didn’t die. It was dead to begin with.”

That’s when a Christian counselor chimed in.

He said, “It’s not the type of sin nor the amount of sin that’s the issue, but the *fact* of sin. God’s children commit 100 instances of sin daily whether they realize it or not. The problem is that in the minds of a lot of people, some sins are more respectable than others, and some are more deplorable than others, based not on how it offends a Holy God but how it negatively impacts other people … My daily sin is as offensive to God as Morris’s.”

Now, I have no idea how this counselor spends his time (and I’m not sure I want to know), but the idea that all sins are equally deplorable to God is a tenet of spiritual abuse.

On the one hand, the smallest, most mundane sin separates us from God. He is utterly and unimaginably holy. He is perfectly just and good. Jesus died for the sin of the child who stole candy from the grocery store, but that does not mean God considers the child to be as evil as a child predator.

You would think this would be common sense. Even unbelievers and complete pagans instinctively know that sin exists on a spectrum of severity.

A poor person who steals a loaf of bread does not deserve the same punishment as a bank robber. A person who cusses in traffic is not as deeply sunk into Hell as a serial killer.

And yet, this Christian counselor wants us to believe that on a daily basis, you and I commit sins just as repugnant to God as the sexual abuse of children.

Unfortunately, this tactic of sin-leveling – this false doctrine that all sins are equally heinous – is prevalent in abusive churches and theological circles. In order to shame victims into forgiving their abusers and not reporting crimes, they point out that the victim is just as evil as their abuser, and therefore the victim should not point fingers or accuse. In order to manipulate witnesses into keeping quiet, they remind them that they’re just as depraved as a sexual predator, and claim that real Christians “extend grace” and “don’t gossip.”

However, if we consider the Old Testament law, we’ll realize that God doesn’t treat all sins equally at all. From the beginning, God has considered some sins to be worse than others. Sins like lying required a sacrifice to atone for the transgression, but sins like sexual perversion or murder require the death penalty.

We see this concept continued in the New Testament. It does not change. God stays consistent.

Of anyone who harms a child, Jesus says, “it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea,” rather than face his justice on Judgement Day.

He does not say this about cussing, lying, greed, or gossip. Harming a child and causing them to stumble in their faith is a sin Jesus considers far more egregious than most others.

In Matthew 12:31-32, Jesus warns, “every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Subsequently, we know that Jesus does not consider all sins to be equally vile. In fact, blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is something he considers so evil, he will never forgive it.

When we encounter men like Robert Morris, charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse against a young girl, we should remember what Jesus said about millstones. We should recognize the depth of depravity and the darkness associated with endangering a child’s faith.

We should also remember Romans 1:21-28.

Sometimes, atrocities like sexual perversion are a symptomatic of God’s rejection. It’s a sign that God has – not extended grace – but removed his grace from the offender.

Paul warns us against sexually immoral pastors and hypocrites when he writes:

“Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. 

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen. 

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.”

Three times, we’re told that God gave them over.

Just as God is “holy, holy, holy” in Isaiah 6:3 – meaning that he is utterly, immeasurably, and eternally holy – so God “gave them over, gave them over, gave them over,” – meaning he has utterly rejected them, left them to their own devices, and condemned them to their rebellion against the Spirit.

When a supposed man of God commits atrocities, it’s a sign that the wrath of God is against him. When a professed Christian is found to be living in serious unrepentant evil, it’s a sign that God has hardened their heart and rejected them. They were likely never saved to begin with. Like the demons in James 2:19, they know the truth about God, but inwardly they hate and work against him in the darkness.

By the time someone like Robert Morris is capable of sexually abusing a child “nearly 100 times” over the course of several years, God has given him over, and given him over, and given him over. As Christians, we are not called to honor him, praise him, or applaud his ministry.

After some back and forth on Facebook, one man told me, “A lot of people came to know Christ in [Morris’s] church over the years. I would never be willing to tell those people that their relationship with God is invalid because of the sins of their pastor.”

To which I responded, “I became a Christian in my dad’s house and he was a child abuser. So what? I was saved by the Holy Spirit, not some pervert LARPing as a man of God.”

Check out my books:

Not Forsake: A Story of Life After Abuse

Defiant Joy: Find the Hope to Light Your Way, Even in the Darkness