Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: An Attack on Christmas

As advent and the Christmas season approach it is good to begin planning now how best to navigate the holiday season to get the most out of it, or rather as heads of homes, to put the most into it. Advent and Christmas are filled with traditions and practices that we often go through unthinkingly. A pristine example of this is the music.

The day after Thanksgiving, if not sooner, radio stations around the country will begin to blare with what have become the staple American Christmas songs. Most of us know them, "Frosty the Snowman", "Silver Bells", "Jingle Bells", and of course "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". But, what is it that all of these Christmas songs have in common?

The common theme in all of these songs is that Christ is nowhere to be found in them. Which makes it absurd that they are called Christmas songs. Nearly all of these songs were written in the 1940's and 50's and have become part of the traditional American Christmas ever since. None of them are particularly good musically, lyrically, or containing potent messages. At their best they are exercises in sentimentalism as the singer drolls on in a melancholy manner about "Being home for Christmas". At their worst these songs are vapid, childish, if not insulting to the true meaning of Christmas, yet adults feel obliged to endure the twaddle in many a December car ride.

Whether of the puerile or mawkish variety, each of these songs have acted as a secularizing force to supplant Christmas with what can be termed "Winter Holiday". Christmas when stripped of its Christ leaves us with songs about trees, snow glistening, Santa Claus, grandmas getting ran over by reindeer, living snowmen, sleds on hills, and or course, heroic red nosed reindeer. There are even bad movies to accompany the bad songs to drill the bad message into your head all the more.

The worldly are often wiser than the sons of light in this regard, the secularizers know what they are about and they give it to their audiences good and hard. Meanwhile, many Christians simply fumble along unwittingly accepting the Christ-less Christmas propaganda into their homes. It's harmless, I remember watching that when I was a kid, it's fun, what's the big deal? For those of us parenting little Christians, the reality is that these songs and movies send a confusing message to our children. What do red-nosed reindeer, frosty snowmen, sleigh rides, chestnuts roasting over open fires, and silver bells have to do with Christmas?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. These are things that may accompany life in winter, and that's what the secularists have replaced Christmas with, winter holiday, where we celebrate winter life and give gifts to one another for no particular reason. How hollow.

It was probably 3-4 years back I can recall riding in our van with our children during Advent season, one of them asked for some Christmas music and so I obligingly and grudgingly put on one of the stations playing the bad Christmas music. Most if not all of the songs already annoyed me at this time, as the music washed over me with the over-singing from performers warbling out the idiotic lyrical content it invariably would cause me to go into rants about the content and mocking imitations of the ridiculous falsetto singing. Perhaps this is what my children really wanted, to see dad at his best.

As I listened to the music and its vapid content and the shamelessly self aggrandizing performances, it dawned on me, "Why are we doing this?" Why do we listen to this garbage every year? Particularly when there is a treasure trove of rich Christ centered hymns and songs that obviously would be more fitting for the season, why do we put on Mariah Carey, and people warbling away about a Christmas tree's lovely branches? Surely we of all people have something far more meaningful to sing about?

Creating More Robust Traditions

The secularists are not going to promote a Christ centered Christmas on their centralized platforms of radio and television, we need to do that in a decentralized manner in our homes. Today the great music of the ages is right at our fingertips, before car trips we can load up our phones with traditional advent hymns like "O Come O Come Emmanuel", "Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silent" and Handel's "Messiah". It need not all be choral arrangements, there are plenty of bluegrass or Celtic folk versions of these great songs. During Christmastide, there are countless great songs that can be played that are centered on the first coming of Christ.

These are the songs I want to reverberate in my home, not the twaddle being served up by the secularists. Music is important, it gets into us, it echoes in our minds. That's precisely why the secularists had to replace the rich potent Christmas music with the shallow winter holiday songs, the Christmas music made them uncomfortable.

Imagine being a thorough secularist and hearing chipper carolers singing that we need to, "Remember Christ our Savior, was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray." 

You can just feel them squirming can't you? People singing such songs are celebrating something, something deep, something profound, something eternal...best to just get back to the chestnuts roasting over an open fire before things get serious.

We as Christians ought to feel just as uncomfortable when the winter holiday songs come on, because these songs are actually an attack on Christmas. They were created to drain Christmas of its potency and to make it vapid and silly. We need to see this music for what it is, and it is not innocent, cute, or traditional, it is a direct attack on Christmas to strip it of its Christ. We need to resist it for that reason. The secularists have drowned out the rich vibrant music with their vapid nonsense, it is our duty to return the favor.

Don't get me wrong I do actually like few of the winter holiday songs, "Happy Holiday" by Andy Williams is probably my favorite. I like it because it sounds rather boozy and has a nice swing to it. I can picture it being sung by a Frank Sinatra type in a full suit with a glass of scotch in one hand and a big band behind him. You got me, that's kinda cool.

But again, what's the Holiday being celebrated?

Conclusion

I want this all to be an encouragement for us as Christians, an encouragement to consciously create robust Christ centered Christmas traditions in our homes. If we are going to do that recovery of the music is one of the first things we need to pry out of the gnarled withered hands of the secularists. The people at Comcast, Clear Channel, and network television aren't going to serve up rich Christmas music for you, you're going to have to swim upstream against the current to obtain the real riches.

 
Toss the winter holiday stuff into the rubbish bin, revive the potency of a Christ-centered Christmas and let the secularists clutching their hollow husks squirm in our wake. As I said at the start of this, the time to plan is now, failure to plan is planning to fail. Advent begins November 27th, get your playlists for car rides and the home ready, get your nativity scenes now, plan which movies to watch now rather than passively letting the secularlist networks serve that up for you. May we fill our homes with the richness of permanent things as we celebrate the Lord of Heaven coming to Earth.

Glorying in the Mundane

Above is a picture of the eggs that our hens are currently producing. Today our girls put out 8 eggs, which isn't too shabby in my opinion. I took the picture to capture the spectrum of color that they make. We have been for some time trying to raise a specialty bird, the Black Copper Maran, which lays the darkest colored eggs in the world, and they have just recently began laying. Ours aren't the darkest layers I have seen, but they lay a lovely mahogany colored egg. There is also one olive colored egg laying hen that we have, and you can see her beauty in the mix.

Step back for a moment and just marvel at this; the chickens romp around the yard scratch up dirt, overturn leaves and other debris, and eat bugs and seeds, all climaxing in them laying an egg. This is simply stupendous. The world all about is teeming with wonder. If we fail to succumb to the call all about us to stand in awe, the fault is entirely our own. There is nothing boring about the world around us, indeed it could rightly be described as a series of miracles one right after the other occurring right before our eyes.

I remember Chesterton once saying something along the lines of, "There are no boring subjects, only people who are bores." I also recall John Piper ecstatically saying "It rains, the sun shines, grass grows, cows eat it, and cows make milk!" Truly a marvel. Oh for eyes to see the world as it is! As children we see the world more rightly, all is new and properly full of wonder. As we age we get used to seeing the miraculous every day; but the rightly tuned eyes, ears, skin, and taste-buds, see, hear, feel, and taste the glory of God all about them.

A Meditation on 40 Years of Abortion, or Why the Nazis Were Better Than Us

Men and women become accomplices to the very evils they fail to oppose. This truth has been a blight upon the German people for the last 70 years. How could they have let the evils of the the ghettos, the round ups, and the horrors of concentration camps occur in their proverbial backyard without stiff resistance? The answer: they countenanced the evil in a similar manner as the majority of people in the United States are either supportive or indifferent to the ongoing practice of abortion, which has continued for 40 years and does not seem any closer to being ended.

How I wonder, can a people wag their moral fingers at the Germans while at the same time being either supportive or indifferent to murdering infants in the womb? Perhaps it is because the Germans were too scientific in their approach, too cold and inhuman, too blunt in their aim, too honest about their goals, too messy in their methods, too dirty in their task. If these be the reasons why the German death camp sends shivers down the backs of people, how can they feel ambivalent towards abortion?

If the Germans are to be faulted for a cold scientism leading to death camps, then Americans are to be faulted with a gushing emotionalism which trumps reason leading to Planned Parenthood "clinics" [sic]. If they were too blunt about their practice (Calling for a "Final Solution"), we are simply dishonest and refuse to say what it is we actually are doing, even the term "abortion" is an obfuscation. If they are to be faulted for being too messy in their murders, we are too sanitary and too clean; to kill a child is a mere "procedure".

The Germans carried out their ethnic cleansing attempting to hasten the evolutionary process; in America the killing of children is done primarily in order to maintain a certain lifestyle or because having a child would be inconvenient. The Germans saw certain races and people groups as un-persons and their lack of rights warranted their deaths; in America, the murder of babies is conducted because the woman is so overflowing with rights that she has the right to murder. Theirs was a butchery done teeming with masculinity, with chest poundings, with "Zieg Heils!", and a frank logical methodology; ours is a slaughter being conducted effeminately, with bra burnings, "Stay out of our vaginas!", and a muddled blend of idiotic talk about rights.

The Nazis were better than us. Or rather, we aren't better than them.

They had goals, they took the ball from Darwin and ran for the end-zone. We, well we have a society of narcissistic whiners with a raging sense of entitlement who think the world exists to serve them and they will kill to maintain their idea of pleasure. For my part, I'd rather be killed in a death camp by some sociopathic-Darwinist-eugenicist shooting for the perfect man, than in the womb of some club-hopping-"Dancing With the Stars"-watching-narcissist seeking their own pleasure. At least I'd have been killed by someone who thinks their are working for the greater good.

Both will be condemned in the Last Day. Yet, perhaps it may be more tolerable for Sodom, Gomorrah, Berlin and Auschwitz than for Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles in the Day of Judgement.

The Courage to Say, "It Stinks"

"The parable of the sower"

Postmodernity is like the classic movie monster "The Blob" that absorbed everything in its wake. In no area of life does this seem more true than that of aesthetics and the arts. We are told that there are no forms of music that are superior to others, nor any art that is better than others; all is in the eye of the beholder, all is subjective, mere opinion. I am here to say, balderdash. I want you dear reader to stand erect, with a stiff upper lip, a critical eye or ear, and to courageously declare, "It stinks." without feeling as though you have committed some sort of blaspheme.

The fear to call a form of art bad came rushing back to my mind this weekend, as I was in a chapel that houses what has to be among the more ridiculous portraits in churches. It is Jesus, looking like the type of stern vagrant one would meet at a 7-Eleven at 2 am, as the sower of his parable. His toes on one of his feet jut out from the wall a bit, giving the impression that he is walking out of the painting to ask for a dollar. Flanking him are the individuals represented in Christ's parable of the sower. In the background is the city of Jerusalem, and beyond that the two towers from NYC smoldering, after the 9/11 attacks (unfortunately I could not get a picture that captures all of this).

The humorous thing to myself is that when I asked other people in the chapel what they thought about this monstrosity, the reply I got was, "Oh wow! I just noticed that! Woah that is awesome!" Another person, who I could tell was looking at the thing with a jaundiced eye, replied, "It's alright." People are simply afraid to say that an artistic expression is bad.

So, let me lead the charge and say it, "It stinks."

Apart from the second commandment issues, many depictions of of Christ are just plain creepy; this painting is no exception in that regard. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an easy piece to make, it took a great deal of talent to produce it, so it has that going for it. It is huge, made with oils, and vibrant. The unfortunate result was a huge, oily, vibrant 9/11 level artistic catastrophe on the chapel wall.

The painting in the chapel reminds me of the steady stream of unwittingly irreverent art that Jon McNaughton continues to churn out. It is "God and Country" Fox News Republicanism put into art. Below is the painting, "The Empowered Man", it is part of a series of paintings (The previous one, "the forgotten man") which could conveniently be made into a comic strip. To the left you see Lincoln, Washington, Reagan, and I think Jefferson praying. On the right you see Obama prominently positioned with his hands up, in a defensive posture, as though the constitution wielding man has a string of garlic driving back his vampiric impulses. Behind Obama are the dejected faces Bill Clinton, FDR, LBJ.

"The Empowered Man"

When analyzing art one must ask what is its message? Here the message is that the constitution is apparently Heaven's gift to man; it has the power to drive back the forces of darkness (Obama, Bill Clinton, LBJ), and it is cheered by the likes of Lincoln. Nevermind that Lincoln was head of the bloodiest anti-constitutional presidential administration in American history; here is Lincoln again portrayed as a national saint. Also, note the kneeling of Jefferson. What is he kneeling before? This kneeling with abject reverence before the constitution is a repeating theme in McNaughton's work. Americana is the god in McNaughton's work. As such, it stinks.

"One Nation Under God"

Above is another example of McNaughton's work. The message is right to the point, the constitution is God's gift to man. It is interesting the think about the type of personality which this kind of art would appeal to; on second thought, no, it really isn't that interesting. There is no mystery here, there is no invitation to contemplate, and no question as to what exactly the artist means. McNaughton's work is to art what a strip club is to romance, it is cheap, to the point, wholly artificial, and utterly lacking in mystery. In other words, it is propaganda. Other than that the paintings themselves aren't half bad.

Art is not purely subjective, like one's favorite ice cream, or roller coaster ride. Some works are better than others and in our context it takes great courage to say that a song, painting, or even an outfit is shabby. Relativism rules in art and aesthetics in our day; where else do all of the squares on canvases, or pajama wearing Wal-Mart goers come from? It's high time for a Renaissance in beauty, this will only come through vigorously reclaiming objective standards in art and aesthetics.

The Tie That Binds Thomas Kinkade and Obama

In a discussion with friends of mine regarding art, the obligatory discussion of Thomas Kinkade arose; leading to my friend making an insightful comment concerning Kinkade's work, "You can't paint stuff like that and not be a moral degenerate." That's one of those kind of statements you need to ruminate on.

Kinkade's work is in a style that is of the manipulatively sentimental. Kinkade's intentional appeal is wholly different from the sentimentality of say the "Precious Moments" cherubic figurines, which has its place among children and women of a certain aesthetic bent; or a man who has his framed football jersey from his Alma-mater on his wall. The Kinkadian style has a shamelessness in its sentimental appeal, it is bold and frank in its appeal to your heartstrings. The question then is, what kind of person does that?

Kinkade, the self described "Painter of Light" tm, it turns out was something less than paragon of virtue. A snapshot of his escapades range from sending prints of his work to people who paid for the original painting, to scrawling out a will bequeathing his estate to his longtime mistress while obviously under the influence of some substance. Kinkade died of a drug overdose at age 54. The estate battle between Kinkade's wife and his will-written-in crayon-on-a-bar-napkin-wielding-mistress has recently been settled in secret. That's the kind of guy who slaps "Jesus-fish" on paintings or, supposedly hides an "N" in every work out of devotion to his wife, Nanette.

I would like to now assert a link between Barack Obama and Thomas Kinkade. On Wednesday Obama announced his plan regarding guns in America, he did so while surrounded by children. When we look at this spectacle like adults, we see this for the shameless emotional appeal that it really is. The message being delivered here by Obama, is loud and clear, if you care about kids you will support my ideas regarding gun laws. Yet, like the boy attesting to the fact that the emperor has no clothes, to point out the obvious merely invites derision and howls from the boobery.

So, let me conclude on this note, Obama's stunt on Wednesday was so bold in its emotional reaching, so brazen, so obvious, that it might have, it just might have caused Kinkade to blush and murmur a little were he among the living. But, in the end I think Kinkade would have to tip his hat to another master of the same trade. The unfortunate difference between Kinkade and Obama is that we don't have to suffer our homes to be cluttered with Kinkade's work, if only Obama's influence were so.

The Reasoning of Prohibitionist Busibodies Overthrown

Piers Morgan

The tragic murders of the school children in CT has brought us yet again into the midst of a bombardment of emotional arguments regarding guns. The arguments never seem to change, just the faces, there just appears to be more of them now, and they are getting louder. A group of celebrities have taken up the moral crusade against guns in a recent video calling for government to act, they never get around to telling us what exactly it is they want done. When you go to the web site that the celebrities are touting you will find that it was formed by a group of mayors, of the Bloombergian ilk, and their ultimate goal is a total gun ban. Professional blowhard, Bob Costas, used the unfortunate murder/suicide of an NFL player to lecture football viewers about the evils of guns. The Costasian logic reached its peak as he firmly asserted that if it were not for guns, 2 people would still be alive this day.

Mellisa Harris (hyphen) Perry

Cable news seems to be a never failing stream of irrational arguments regardless of the topic, and they are doing their best not to disappoint on this one. CNN's Piers Morgan is calling for a total gun ban while smearing Larry Pratt with villainous names along with the standard "You don't care about people!" schtick. Others, who prefer the Cultural Marxist staple of group politics, can get a helping of arguments asserting that those who don't support gun control are in reality racists; because blacks are statistically more effected by gun violence than whites. A pristine specimen of this shameless racial agitation, is MSNBC's Melissa Harris (hyphen) Perry's segment, regarding the apparent murder of 17 year old Jordan Russel Davis in Florida. Davis' death was caused by Michael Dunn, a man who got upset over the obnoxiously loud music pouring out of the SUV Davis was a passenger in. After having his request for them to turn the music down ignored, Dunn proceeded to fire a gun wildly into the vehicle. Not to miss an opportunity to inject race into everything, all that the faces on MSNBC could talk about was Davis' blackness, Dunn's whiteness, the evil of guns and stand your ground laws. None of which is relevant to the actual case.

Shane Claiborne

To continue with our examples of the anti-gun frenzy that is being stoked, a news paper which published the addresses of gun owners, in an attempt to shame them, has hypocritically resorted hiring armed guards because the "feel threatened". The NRA is incessantly being attacked and vilified, as though it endorses the murder of the children in CT. Statistics and graphs about guns and violence continue to pour out, which somehow in and of themselves make the case that the State needs to further restrict gun ownership. Even Christians have not been immune to gun fever. Ultra hipster "emergent-Christian" Shane Claiborn has thrown in what passes for his thoughts on the subject of the NRA; the result, yet another tiresome attempt to paint Jesus as a pacifist pinko who hates guns and votes Democrat. Still other churches are participating in "gun buy back" programs (how the State can "buy back" what was never theirs to begin with is a mystery in istself), in an attempt to clean up the streets. In summation, everyone with collectivist inklings is getting in on this gun bashing party.

In response to all of this one phrase strikes it all down, and reveals all the aforementioned rantings, statistics, howls and shrieks, for the sophomorisms that they are:

Abusus non tollit usum

In English, "Abuse does not remove use"

The marrow here is simply that the abuse of something does not eliminate a rightful use of that same thing. Violations of this historically are numerous; one of the most charming examples, in my thinking, is alcohol prohibition. Alcohol prohibitionists had their statistics. They had their vocal supporters, weeping over the evils of booze. They too had many churches supporting their attempt at idiocarcy. They too couched their position in cultural Marxist group think, banning booze you see would uplift and protect women, and keep the husband home. It was even patriotic to ban booze, since this would eliminate the financial support of German (evil) owned beer companies, and in general lead to the betterment of society. Therefore, alcohol needs to be outlawed.

The problem here again is that the abuse of alcohol, which is a real problem, does not therefore mean that alcohol has no legitimate use; regardless of John MacArthur's wild arguments. One can easily imagine a man who drinks a beer or two each night, doesn't get falling down drunk, doesn't beat his wife, provides for his family, cuddles with kittens, and loves Christ through drinking wine on the Lord's Day. The guy who gets drunk regularly, lashes out in violent fits, has numerous kids he doesn't provide for, kicks puppies, and is never home does not eliminate the rightful use of alcohol through his debauchery. The alcohol isn't the problem, the character of the man is the problem.

Luther with his usual charming wit speaks to this very thing when he writes:

“Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?”

Women, tastefully dressed

If you think it far flung to abolish women, the burka is in essence this very thing. The burka is the prohibitionist mindset in action par-excallence. Think about it, a pretty woman walks into a room, men might lust after her, be tempted to fornicate, or commit adultery. The answer is obvious, cover all women in blankets.

We can imagine abuse and rightful use of countless things, cars, antibiotics, drugs, kitchen knives, a moat filled with man eating fish, lawn darts, gasoline, pitbulls, a slip n slide, a nice stereo system and even computers. Many of the aforementioned items have been banned, or regulated for our own good by prohibitionists.

Coming back to the initial matter of guns and the media, we needn't deal with the statistics, the size of ammo clips, Pier's Morgan's accent, or the tiresome race card, none of that is relevant. Just like anything else guns can be misused, but, like anything else they can be used rightly. We can easily imagine a man saving his family from a group of nihilistic thugs attacking his home, or a woman stopping a would be rapist. But if your imagination is a touch weak you needn't imagine, as a gun owner recently stopped a would be mass shooter from loading up mall shoppers with lead. No, the media isn't talking about that one.

The odd thing is that people seem to know that there is a legitimate use for guns intuitively, which is why none of the gun grabbing crowd is calling for disarming the police, secret service, celebrity security guards, or the troops. No one seems serious about making government buildings gun free zones. After all, if it's such a good idea to subject school kids to gun free zones because they enhance safety, why not start with the the Capital Building, or the White House? Why the State gets excluded from all of its enactments is another post altogether.

To conclude, all prohibitionist arguments rest upon the fallacy that the abuse of a thing trumps legitimate use of a thing. This is appealing for the reason that the abuse of a thing is a real problem, a problem we want to solve, and many erroneously jump to the conclusion that banning the object is the solution. Couple that with race baiting, pseudo moral platitudes, statistics, British accents and you have a movement. However, the real problem is not the thing in and of itself, but rather, the heart of man, which is fallen and so radically corrupt that no government enactment banning items or substances can fix.

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.