Elliott, a senior at a small Bible college — Toccoa Falls College in Georgia — pays his bills by working as a reporter for a local twice-a-week paper, the Toccoa Record. Lately, though, his name has popped up in decidedly bigger papers, like The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That’s because earlier this year, Elliott learned that the college president, Donald Young, didn’t have the credentials for the job.

Several college publications said Young had a master’s degree from Fuller School of World Missions in Pasadena, Calif. When Elliott checked it out, he found Young never completed his master’s studies. He interviewed Young, who said the inflated credentials were a mistake by a former secretary, and that it was common knowledge among faculty members that he had no grad degree. But the chairman of Toccoa’s board of trustees told Elliott (as summarized by the Times) “that the mistake was anything but common knowledge,” and that if the board had known Young’s lesser credentials, he “would not have made the first cut for the presidency.”

At that point Elliott wrote his story, which ran in the Record April 29 and in the college paper May 2. Things moved fast after that. Within the next few days, the faculty met and cast a vote of no confidence in Young, who resigned a few days later.

But to some people, Elliott took on the bad-guy role for exposing the story in the first place.

The school was facing financial and enrollment challenges, and many people rallied around the president. Elliott found himself persona non grata. When he tried to write a follow-up article, the Journal-Constitution reported, he approached 40 students for interviews; all but three refused to talk with him, some indicating they were afraid and others ignoring him.

There were those who said Elliott should’ve foregone or downplayed the story in order to “do the Christian thing” — settle the issue quietly. At least one college official cited the dispute-resolution process in Matthew 18:15-17 (try to settle it between yourselves first, then with one or two others, and only after those fail within the broader church).

“I said it would have been better to handle it in-house, but it’s too late. It hasn’t been [handled],” Elliott told the Times. “I didn’t want to bash the school. I love the school. . . . But if I can’t handle a situation here, when I’m still a student, with something that’s close to my heart, and do what I feel is right, how can I expect to do the right thing later on when I’m on the job?”

Serious questions, these. What is the Christian thing to do when you know someone’s done something wrong?

The answer doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

It’s true that Matthew 18 lays out steps for Christians to follow with each other. The context, though, involves personal conflicts and animosities; the instructions are for cases where “your brother sins against you” (italics added) in the midst of a chapter largely devoted to such conflicts. The chapter’s emphasis is on forgiveness over vengefulness, and on a more impersonal level, it balances a loving concern for the sinner with the need to uphold moral standards. It’s an injustice to the text to treat it as a rigid formula for all cases where a Christian uncovers sin among other Christians.

This isn’t to say believers can race to indict anyone publicly, even when we have no doubt about their guilt. Rather, it’s to say that we can find ourselves in different offices — positions in life — that call for different responses.

As a general principle, if you know of some vice in your neighbor’s life, you’ve got no business spreading word of it unless it’ll help him or protect someone else. You have a duty to try to deal with it in the least public manner possible. If that can be done one-on-one, or among a few people, you do so. Christian love means you try to minimize the damage and maximize the benefit to everyone concerned, including the primary offender.

Not all situations fit that approach, however.

Let’s say your neighbor’s committing a crime — which is, by definition, an offense against the public. (That’s why criminal prosecutions are framed as “The People vs. John Doe”). You’re not automatically obliged to go to him one-on-one first, though in some relationships you might choose to do so. If he’s a friend who’s taking drugs and you reasonably think you can get him to turn himself in for treatment, you can try it. But you don’t have to do it; your office as a citizen is to uphold the law.

Or let’s say you get reliable information on the vices of a public figure, as Elliott did. If someone in public office is abusing his office — even if he’s not committing a crime in the eyes of the law — then your office as a citizen is to expose it. That’s especially true if you’re a reporter, like Elliott. And while you usually should let him defend himself, there can even be times when you don’t let him do so till after you’ve brought your own charges to the public. For example, if there are documents showing unethical business conduct, you’d be foolish to warn him so he could destroy the evidence.

Many cases aren’t cut-and-dried, and there’s room for debate over whether a particular vice is severe enough or relevant enough to make public. The point is that protecting a man’s reputation, while important, isn’t always the most important consideration.

I’ve had occasion to deal with these issues myself. I’ve done exposes on people like Jesse Jackson and best-selling author/historian Joseph Ellis. In Jackson’s case, it’s because he poses as a “moral leader” and wields that status as an instrument of power — notwithstanding his decades-long track record of sleaze. In Ellis’ case it’s because he was caught in deceptions (like pretending he was a Vietnam combat veteran when he never got near the country) that reflected on his credibility as a historian. (He was pushing the claim that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by one of his slaves — a highly suspect claim widely and uncritically repeated in the media, including a TV movie.)

When I do those sorts of columns, I sometimes have to remind myself to approach them in the right spirit. After all, it’s clear that even when it’s necessary to bring someone else’s sins to light, a Christian shouldn’t take delight in the process.

Elliott’s showing the right attitude. Lots of journalists love to bring down powerful and famous people, and lots of college journalists would be thrilled to have made their name so early. Ego and self-interest have a way of taking over the drivers’ seat. That doesn’t appear to be happening here. While I can’t speak authoritatively to Elliott’s motives, his words suggest he’s driven by conscience, not careerism or combativeness.

We can use more journalists like that. More Christians like that, too.