A Different View of the Ted Haggard Scandal
By now, you have all heard the news about evangelical pastor Ted Haggard and his activities involving a male prostitute.
Some have reacted with glee at this seeming victory over their enemy.
I, personally, have reacted with a deep sorrow - for him, for his family, and for the 14,000-member church he founded.
There are so many layers to this issue, I almost don't know where to start.
I guess I'll start with the myth that Christians think they are perfect and the unabashed joy expressed by non-Christians when one fails.
Christians are not perfect. We struggle with temptation just like anyone else. If we were perfect, we wouldn't need Jesus Christ.
In his letter to the church, Rev. Haggard said that he has struggled with this part of himself all his adult life. The natural response of the world has been that he is gay and should just admit it and be who he really is.
Let's take a look at that for a minute.
First a little explanation about Christianity. A Christian knows what God wants him to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not by following some set of rules - that's legalism. (There are some Christians who choose to live that way, though I'm not sure why.)
That's not to say that we can do whatever we want to. We need to walk with God and take time and prayerful consideration to know what God wants. We also should be well-grounded in God's word.
The problem is that we also have to deal with the lies of the world, the temptations of the flesh, and the great deceiver - Satan. If we allow lies to take root in our minds, we begin to rationalize our wrong behavior. That is when we fall away from God and into sin.
How does this relate to Ted Haggard?
Well, I don't know him personally, but my guess is that he probably isn't gay. Statistically, almost every man has had sexual thoughts about another man at some point in his life. Certainly no one would suggest that every man is gay. The fact that Haggard struggles with sexual thoughts about men does not, in and of itself, mean that he should go on to live his life as a gay man.
Perhaps there is another explanation.
While many are offended at his use of the words "repulsive and dark" to describe his desires, you needn't take it so personally. To him, they are "repulsive and dark" because they go against his true nature and the way he knows God wants him to go.
The fact that one has thoughts or desires doesn't mean one should indulge them, or worse yet, make them one's lifestyle.
I have dealt with my own spiritual battles; my own "repulsive and dark" desires that have overtaken my mind, though not homosexual in nature. If I ever acted on these thoughts it would have destroyed my life and my family. Should I too have given in to them? Isn't that what the world is saying to Ted Haggard now?
What if I said I wanted to kill someone? What if I said I wanted to have an affair? What if I wanted to kill myself? What if I wanted to lie? What if I said that every time I walked into a store I had an overwhelming desire to steal something? Should I stop fighting my nature and indulge those desires?
No one would say that I should.
One needn't indulge every desire in order to be who they are.
But this is our battle. The spiritual battle that rages in our minds between what God is telling us to do through His Holy Spirit and the lies being whispered to us by the great deceiver and validated by a fallen world.
The fact that the pastor of a huge mega-church, the leader of 30 million evangelicals as head of the National Association of Evangelicals, wasn't equipped to win his own spiritual battles, if that is the case, should serve as a huge warning light to the Christian community that we are not doing enough to win this battle for our minds and hearts.
The single greatest victory Satan has claimed in this world is convincing us that he does not exist and that those who believes he does are crazy. That has given him the power to deceive us all.
Updated: Here is the full text of Ted Haggard's letter to his church.
Further Reading on Spiritual Warfare
On-line articles:
"Spiritual Warfare in Ministry," by Pastor Rick Warren
"Spiritual Warfare," from Freedom in Christ ministries
Books:
The Bondage Breaker, by Neil Anderson
Spiritual Warfare, by Timothy Warner
Beginner's Guide to Spiritual Warfare, by Anderson and Warner
Battlefield of the Mind, by Joyce Meyer
2 comments:
a very good blog.
I think one of the problems Ted Haggard must have had was that being a pastor of a church of 14,000 puts a lot of pressure on you to have it all together. So I think one of the main issues here was pride; not wanting to seem weak or vulnerable.
I can certainly relate to this. Confessing sin is never an easy task if you have an issue with pride - in fact its one of the most difficult things you'll ever do. So perhaps Ted suffered with Pride, which made matters worse for him in his private life because it caused him to stand alone.
If we are pushed into a place where we have to cope alone, then the simply fact is that you will not cope alone. It's impossible.
So maybe one thing the church needs to learn from this is that we need to foster a sense of trust so that we can come to each other and talk honestly and bluntly about the problems we face. Maybe Ted did not feel he could come to others to talk about such things - it was clear from the response of his friends that all this was a shock.
"So maybe one thing the church needs to learn from this is that we need to foster a sense of trust so that we can come to each other and talk honestly and bluntly about the problems we face."
Yeah, I think you are very right about that. I struggle with pride issues, too. Not only is it something that stops us from coming to others, but it also stops us from coming to God.
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