As I watched Jimmy Kimmel last night I laughed and then I stopped laughing and I felt sick. He was talking about Ted Haggard and some of the happenings surrounding him over the last 24 hours. I was laughing as my skeptacism of extreme evangelical leaders was shining (especially in light of what a fool Haggard made of himself in the film Jesus Camp), and then I just stopped. This was a truly hurt man. He was back on his heels, and lies covered his face, his speech, and his body language. He had messed up and it was evident that it wasn't only his "high" position in the church that would be hurt, but so would all of the people in the church that look up to men like this, and most of all, his family, and his wife. So what is the best way to handle situations like this? Is there more to it than we just need to love him, pray for him, and forgive him? Or is that it? Let's love him and pray for him and forgive him? Or is it both? Does to love always mean to forgive? Does forgiveness always look the same? Maybe discerning "the best way" to love him for Kingdom of God and it's church is the best way? Maybe bringing more attention to Haggard on blogs like this is unneccesary and unloving? This is a confusing subject and there are certainly some tensions... PS My wife has taught me that confusion often results from a network of sin.
Mini Putt
4 comments:
I was watching the same news clips and wondering the same thing. I feel bad for this guy. I think we should, as followers of Christ, love him during his struggles. How to do that best though is not for me to answer.
It is so hard to experience another Christian leader fall. It made me so sick to my stomach to hear about this, I seriously wanted to puke. Yet, if we look back to the Scripture, our heroes of the faith are also so fallen and broken. God demonstrates His greatness through them as well. For Jesus did not come for the righteous, but the sick. We are all so sick and need of Jesus, even our greatest leaders. I was impressed my his wife's response found on the New Life website on the top right corner. http://www.newlifechurch.org/
What an example of faith and grace, and a perfect example of how we should respond - continue fighting for our fallen brothers and sisters of Christ.
Yeah - this was and is sickening - more fire for those opposed to Christ and indifferent...
My prayer is that over time Haggard would go through a healing process and earn trust again and that his story would be one of redemption - b/v God can redeem all of this stuff...
theule
we talked about this in class, mostly around the area of dealing with desire. What was he to do with the fact that he had these desires for other men? I would guess he knew he couldn't tell anyone or he would lose his career, so the desire was repudiated and denied, yet it obviously didn't go away. Do we allow for ourselves to be open and honest about our desires so that they can be possibly dealt with in a good way or do we right away damn these feelings and the person that experiences them?
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