On Being Nicer Than God, or a Reply to the Ongoing Ted Haggard Debacle

Huck and Jim

I am increasingly convinced that one of the great sins of our age is that of trying to be nicer than God. Earlier this week I had a strong reminder of how ubiquitous this has become when I came across a little gem of an article entitled “Going to Hell With Ted Haggard.” In this article the author, Michael Cheshire, invokes the timeless tale of Huckleberry Finn, particularly where Huck is faced with a moral dilemma, to either turn in his friend Jim who is a runaway slave or to become a social pariah by not turning Jim in. Huck sensibly takes the moral highroad and decides not to turn in his friend Jim, and movingly declares “I guess I'll go to hell with Jim.”

Cheshire takes this idea Twain presents and applies it to the scandalized, defrocked, and now self appointed pastor Ted Haggard. According to Cheshire, Haggard is like Twain's Jim, a social outcast, and like Huck Cheshire proclaims, “Fine then I'll go to hell with Ted.” This is supposed to be a moving moral stance on the part of Cheshire, and this sort of thing seems to appeal to the sentiment of a large number of people. Given the majority of reactions from folks in the comments section of the article, Cheshire seems to have hit a double in the bottom of the 9th. There are a myriad of comments from readers about “Not kicking the wounded...” or things like “We need to lift up those who are hurting...” and  "The Church has been really bad at lifting up its fallen" and so on.

The problem isn't Ted, and his train of indiscretions, it's those pesky "Pharisaical" people who don't think he should be in ministry anymore. Well, here I am.

The majority of readers seem to think that supporting Ted's self appointed return to ministry is akin to “going outside of the camp” with Jesus to be outcasts with Him (Heb 13:13). The problem here is that not everyone "outside the camp” shouldn't be there. Some people should be outside of the camp, and those in the camp need to stay far away from them. Here it is good to ask, "Whose idea was that again?" It was God's idea (Levit 13:1-14:6, 1 Cor 5). Do people remain out there forever? Ideally no.

In order to agree with Cheshire's mawkishly sentimental argument, the reader needs to forget the fact that Jim is a runaway slave and as such is breaking an unjust law, which is no sin at all. Whereas, Ted was a minister of the gospel, regularly visiting a male prostitute for roughly a year and doing methamphetamine with said male prostitute. To go outside of the camp with Jim is akin to going outside of the camp with Christ, both were men unjustly condemned. Ted is another matter. But hey, let's not let the details get in the way of pretending we are the protagonist.

Can Ted come back to the Church? Of course, and assuming he has shown repentance he should be returned to a full communicant member status. But that's not what is going on here. This article isn't about restoring Ted to the table, it's about accepting his return to leadership. Now, this may come as a surprise to the "Just love him man!" crowd, but the Bible has things to say about the qualifications of those in leadership. Oddly enough there is nothing in there about being a “great public speaker”, or a “charismatic personality”, or someone who can “really get the crowd going”, none of that is mentioned. What is mentioned (1 Tim 3, Titus 1) are things like being, “blameless”, “vigilant”, “sober”, “of good report” and “not selfwilled”.

Now let me ask this, what is it that Millions of people in America and around the world think of when they hear the name “Ted Haggard”? Do they think, “Ah, now there is a blameless and vigilant man”? People think those kinds of things about Billy Graham. What is it that comes to mind when people hear names like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, and Ted Haggard? Whatever it is it isn't anything close to what it expected of Christ's ministers in the Bible, and as such they have no business whatsoever entering leadership again.

But that never seems to stop these folks, in the case of Ted Haggard, his former church in accordance with trying to be wiser than God decided it would be a good idea to have a “restoration process” for Ted, not to the table, but to leadership. I wonder if Ted ever was even barred from the table? Not likely, the flurry of sophomoric outbursts about not, “Kicking people when they are down” would be too much for the church leadership to bear. The marrow of this though is that Ted bailed on the restoration process, declared himself healed and ready to re-enter the pastorate, and stomped off starting his own church. Maybe I'm out on a limb here, but doesn't that sound kinda self willed?

Ted Haggard

To further illustrate this self-willed trait, an earlier article entitled, "Tiger Woods Got Restored, Why Can't Ted Haggard?" is largely based off an interview where Ted actually has the hubris to criticize the Church for not restoring him fast enough. Ted doesn't seem to think it is fair that God requires a certain lifestyle of his ministers that the PGA doesn't require of golfers or the NFL requires of players. The scary thing is that he is being entirely serious. The fact that Ted would compare the pastorate and its requirements to professions like golfing, the NFL, and TV show personalities, should be enough in itself to disqualify the man as a novice. Yet, to this he adds his childish temper tantrum, where he has the gall to accuse others of wrong doing for being hesitant about restoring him to ministry. This only further attests to the fact this guy has no business whatsoever in leadership, and frankly, given his lack of submission to leadership he probably does not even belong at the communion table.

Do ministers of the gospel sin? Of course. "Blameless" and "Of good report" obviously don't mean "sinless". What is clearly in mind is a man of scandalous character, who through his actions as a professed Christian has a bad report. More can be said on this but for the sake of space I will desist.Suffice it to say that a man who self-identifies as being "Bi-Sexual" and says things like, "I used to think the church was the light of the world, [...] But I've completely lost my faith in it." probably shouldn't be in ministry (source).

To wrap this up, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye, Todd Bentley etc. are not wounded, or hurting, they are not the victims here, they are culprits. The true victim here is Christ's name. That seems to be entirely lost in the talk about “Poor Ted, nobody likes him.” What about the glory of Christ which has been smirched by this man's conduct? As noble as it is to stand by the outcast and the wounded, that's not what's going on with the restoration of Ted Haggard. What the article by Cheshire really represents is yet another case of being nicer than God, which is really just presumptuousness.

But in the end I'll just be accused of not understanding the "heart of God" and of being a Pharisee, for taking the Bible seriously.