The Ted Haggard Affair

[Reposting this since I had some edits, but the blogger software is locking me out of the original post.]

So some bigshot anti-gay evangelical preacher has been outed on drug and gay sex charges which, apparently, are at least somewhat true. I’ve never heard of the guy, and I don’t really care much about the story. Such scandals are nothing new. But the phenomenon of the high priest being a major sinner is somewhat interesting, since naively you’d expect the opposite.

Here’s how I see it, by way of an analogy. Suppose the preacher at my church started railing against people eating grass. Now, I’ve never eaten grass, and never had any inclination to. Maybe there’s some percentage of the population that does, but not me. Over the years, the preacher goes on and on about how we must not give way to sinful urges to eat grass. Which just makes no sense to me. I mean, it never even occurred to me that people eat grass. Still the preacher carries on – we’re all tempted, but don’t give in. And I wonder – we all are … really? Are you sure? And then the day comes where he gets caught in his back yard, on hands and knees, shoveling fistfuls of fescue into his mouth. The congregation runs around, shocked, but maybe they should have seen it coming.

Not the strongest analogy, but hopefully the point is clear.