Ted Haggard…but for the grace of God…

// November 25th, 2006 // Christian Living

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I just read Ted Haggard’s statement (pdf) on New Life Church’s website as well as his wife Gayle’s (pdf). Ted’s statement is pretty much what you’d expect. “I’m a worm, please forgive me, please pray for my family.” It’s seems sincere enough and well thought out. At the very least he appears broken and genuinely repentant.

But, what strikes me most are his wife’s words. I’m the son of a pastor, so I know well the pressure and scrutiny to which a pastor’s wife is subjected. It’s life in a fishbowl. To add on top of that the high profile of the church and her husband’s desperate failure, her response is nothing short of extraordinary.

I’ve heard a range of reactions to the situation. Some outraged. Some hurt and disappointed. Some angry. Other’s simply using it as ammunition for their belief that the church is nothing more than a sanctuary for hypocrites. “See! I told you all those people are hypocrites!”

Do any of us really believe that we are not equally as capable of such a failure? Perhaps the vice would be a different one, but the devastating results would be the same. Shouldn’t our response to this and similar “scandals” be “but for the [tag]grace[tag] of God, there go I.” It’s easy to go through life with a self-dillusion that, sure, we’re capable of some things but not THAT. Did Ted Haggard wake up one day and just say to himself, “Hmm, today I think I’ll go get a homosexual massage and buy some crack while I’m there. That’ll be great!” Of course not! Like anything else, it was a series of small failures compounding over time that ultimately led him to this. Certainly, he is almost as shocked at himself as we are.

It seems to me that the church at large is getting yet another wake-up call. A call that says, “The measure of a man is the content of his character not the level of skill he demonstrates.” It certainly seems that God isn’t afraid to expose any of us, no matter how public it has to be.

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