It was a case of "he said, she said" where everybody sided with him. She accused him of having an affair with her. He denied it. She took it to the church and they thought on balance he was more believable than she was. They agreed with his reasons for why she was lying.

He was middle age and a leader in the church. She was 26 and had worked for him. The situation was messy and disagreeable. Her reputation went down in flames while he Facebooked the masses.

As it turns out, he had a history of affairs and she had a trove of text messages and emails to back her version. As time passed, his secrets began to leak out. It reminded me of a pastor who applied to work with AIM back in our early years.

I did the usual background checks and the more I looked into it, the more sordid the accusations that I uncovered were. If you believed the people I talked to, he was a sex addict. And of course he denied it.

I figured "where there's smoke, there's fire" and decided not to hire him. A few years later his secret past caught up with him and he died of AIDS,

Some resurrections are glorious events, but some are ghoulish.  We hope for our own resurrection, while we want to keep the skeletons in the closet under lock and key.

The great American pastime after football is to watch our politicians' secrets come flying out of closets. We're morbidly titillated by the exotic locations: Chappaquiddick, Argentina, the Monkey Business, a bathroom stall, the Oval Office.

I have a friend who says, "Truth and time go hand in hand." He and I have been through a few fires together. After each of them, I want to know that justice is done. But he's in no particular rush; he has a patient approach to justice.. He makes the point that if you're patient, the truth will come out and you'll be vindicated.

But what do you do when it's you? You thought you buried something and then, horror of horrors, one day it comes tottering out of the grave looking for you? It's the premise of many a good slasher film - your past sins coming back to haunt you.

On balance what people don't know can hurt you. The enemy of our souls loves it when we have secrets - that becomes his stronghold. He can blackmail us and keep us from living free if we'll just hang on to that secret. From that stronghold he can summon up fear and even paranoia.

My counsel is to take his power away. Ask God if there is anything you've buried that you need to resurrect once and for all by sharing it with those who need to know. Why live in torment, or worse, deluded and lying to yourself. Apologize and move on; it's much better to live as God intended - free.

"You, my brothers, were called to be free."  Galatians 5:13

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." James 4:7