Pastor warns Malawi police officers against ‘the trap of Jezebel’ as force tackles mental health stigma

A Christian pastor has called on Malawi’s police officers to guard their marriages as fiercely as they guard public safety, warning that infidelity is quietly adding to a mental health crisis many in the force are only now beginning to speak about openly.

Speaking at the inaugural men’s conference held by Central West Region Police in Lilongwe this week, Pastor Reuben Chilera addressed a room of male officers gathered not for a briefing on crime statistics, but for an honest conversation about what the badge doesn’t show — the exhaustion, the pressure, and the silent toll of a job that rarely allows for weakness.

Chilera’s warning was direct but pastoral in tone. Cautioning against what he called “the trap of Jezebel” — a reference to the Old Testament queen long associated in Christian teaching with manipulation, moral compromise and broken faithfulness — he told officers that extramarital affairs do not offer the escape from stress they might promise.

“Extramarital affairs only pile fresh stress onto already strained lives,” he said, urging the men to see fidelity not as a burden but as a form of protection — for their families, and for their own wellbeing.

It’s a message that sits comfortably within a wider biblical understanding of temptation: that the choices which look like relief in the moment often deepen the very weight a person is trying to escape. For officers already carrying the strain of long shifts, economic hardship and a culture that discourages them from admitting struggle,

Chilera’s counsel offered something rarer than a rule — an invitation to examine where they are truly seeking comfort, and whether it’s leading them toward stability or further from it.

His comments came during a conference that organisers hope marks a turning point for a force long shaped by a “tough-it-out” ethos.

High Court Judge Chifundo Kachale, also addressing the gathering, urged officers to abandon the pretence that everything is fine, invoking Christ’s own tears at the tomb of Lazarus as evidence that vulnerability and strength are not opposites.

Mental health expert Mark Chalamanda encouraged officers to root themselves in the present rather than past regret, while

Central West Region Police operations officer Hanleck Chingolo acknowledged that stigma has, for too long, kept officers from asking for the help they need.

Taken together, the conference reflected a growing recognition — inside and outside the church — that mental and spiritual wellbeing cannot be separated from how well someone copes with the ordinary pressures of life and work.

Chilera’s warning about infidelity was not, in that sense, a stand-alone rebuke, but part of a broader appeal: that officers protect not only their communities, but the relationships and inner lives that sustain them for the work.

For a force where silence has often been mistaken for strength, Monday’s conference — and the frank words spoken within it — may prove to be a small but significant step toward a healthier, more honest culture within Malawi’s police service.