Theres a great line in the Clint Eastwood movie UNFORGIVEN where Clint plays an ex gun slinger who after his wife died and he repents from his wicked ways has to raise their 2 children alone and is financially compelled after many years of repentance to go on a bounty hunt for some bad boys who sliced up a hookers face.
Well theres this young KID who Clint runs into who is after the bounty also,who is a (wannabe) gunslinger and convinces Clint that they should do it together and split the bounty.
Well they find the bad boys and the young KID kills the guy who sliced up the hooker and suddenly realizes what he’s done and confesses to Clint that he’d never killed anyone before and then says “but he (the bad boy) had it coming” and then Clint says “we all got it coming KID”.
I can’t recommend this movie enough there are so many subtle spiritual overtones in this film.

“The hardness of God is softer than the kindness of men, because His compulsion is our liberation.”

is not Henri Nouwen. It’s C.S. Lewis. This is prefaced by Lewis’s comments on the gospel admonition to “compel them to come in.”

No, I don’t mean Arminianism versus Calvinism (Calvin who desired an unmarked grave and saw himself utterly unworthy of memory compared to the Gospel would be aghast and vomit himself blind at the attachment and glorification of his name to those claiming his name and glorifying it, a point often missed by so called modern “Calvinist” today and by the way I don’t believe in free will). However, back on point, the not preaching of the Gospel at churches just like his (Haggard’s) all over this landscape every Sunday is the REAL blaspheme going on. And is EXACTLY why the world in the form of Haggard’s informant sought out to show the hypocrisy. “Why”, one asks? Because the church has done nothing but bear witness to this: Christianity is about morals and virtues rather than what it really is about “not a move from vice to virtue but a move from virtue to grace”. We’d rather “protect our witness from cigarettes, TV, movies and alcohol” than suffer the scandal of the cross!

Of all the things he could have been removed for - he was removed for this rather than his doctrine. Which to me shows the complete opposition the American church by in large is in next to the Scriptures. While Paul rebuked sexual sins in Corinth and did not underplay them, he quickly had a word of grace to those caught in them that repented, even sharply rebuking the church for being over zealous in their correction. Yet, we find his language strangely, to our modern pietistic churchy yard ears, harsh when the Gospel is involved, that is to say doctrine; calling such other “gospels” as doctrines of demons (don’t eat don’t drink don’t marry), worthy of being ‘cut off completely’, that is castrated, a cursed sermon, anathema and again anathema. You see, when Ted Haggard sinned in this way most reacted with incredulity either openly or in thought, yet when his failure, and those like him such as Warren, et ali…, to proclaim solid Law and Gospel was brought up in the past what reaction did we most likely hear? “Yea, but he’s a swell guy and means well.” No, ANYONE who fails to clearly proclaim Christ constantly and not as an “example” is a pied piper walking many down along the ‘clean side’ of the broad road leading to hell. If you cannot preach and reproach Christ constantly every Sunday from Scripture, you need to get out immediately for your doctrine is evil!

Allow me to clarify doctrine here, Christ and Him crucified and risen for you and me. You see on one hand the church falls apart over this Ted Haggard situation but hardly noticed the other. Yet contrary to today’s American church, Paul addresses similar sexual issues WITH the Gospel but says you are a teacher of demonic religion (don’t eat, drink, fill in the blank), the devil’s religion and cursed of God when your teaching and preaching has not or obscures the Gospel. I think we have a wrong impression of Pharisees, mostly due to too much television and ‘passion plays’ as being these scowling hand wringing shadowy plotters. I think Pharisees for the most part are smiling cobras that are generally “swell well meaning guys”, delusional in their own piety.

The reason it was so hard for Ted Haggard to come forward right away is that the church, similar to what he himself has promoted, has become the LAST place you would come to confess any REAL sin or dare admit that, “Yes again today I sinned the same awful sin I sinned 1000 days before and I don’t see ANY victory in site”. We only accept sins like “I’m struggling with television or coveting my neighbors bass boat” or some similar trifling. Or bad sins that we are gaining some micro-victories over. We like the pietistic “victory testimonies”, “I was this or that but the Lord took that away from me” (tantamount to confessing I’m not a sinner now) or at least the testimonies that are pointing in the direction of “victory” if not today then shortly. But heaven forbid Jesus should have died for any real sinners or that they should appear within the church doors. That’s why he (Ted) kept it secret for so long, that’s why a drunk or some other unpleasant outward sinner hardly will darken the doors of the church. Oh they will come as victory is attained by them for a while and we will have a church full of dry drunks, but no wet ones, thank you very much, for such is much to messy for our witness which we are protecting for the watching world.

But what is the churches “witness”, stellar morality? Or the Gospel of Christ? Luther rightly observes that the visibly standing and falling church is singularly upon justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and NOTHING ELSE, without which the Christian church, though so by name, is by essence, practice and works nothing different from the Turk, Jew or Pagan. And indeed we have heard this from both Pagans seeking to show our hypocrisy and Islam calling Christianity a failure, if morality is your goal, then it is. Which brings us back to why the world attempted to expose the hypocrisy in the first place of Ted Haggard through this fellow he knew. They did so because the church, by in large, presents its witness as the “moral majority” or virtuous upright. When you do that and then you slip, like Haggard did, well then the REAL sinners will leap all over your hypocrisy because that is EXACTLY what it is. IF the church makes its visibility the Gospel, the true Gospel not just the word attached to some other philosophy called the gospel (e.g. WWJD), then the world is immediately disarmed. How can the world proclaim hypocrisy if the stumbling stone of the cross, its foolishness, God crucified as a sinner, even a homosexual sinner, is placarded clearly by it? If you proclaim, “we are against theft”, and then you steal then you get what you deserve, the label of hypocrite. But if you proclaim Christ became as the greatest thief FOR YOU, and then you fall into theft yourself, you still have what you claim without hypocrisy.

This is the real and true scandal of the Cross.

Ldh

BTW, Michael i started listening to the Driscoll sermon podcasts, because you talk about him. Anyways, I am less than impressed, but I appreciate his desire to make ministry “missional”.

“…Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God’s grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin.”

Here we have a man who was totally sanctified two years before his conversion. This statement is boiler-plate, I have heard it in various forms at least a dozen times and now I am beginning to wonder what constitutes being faithful to your wife in Driscoll’s mind.

BTW, Michael I listened to your pod-cast on Driscoll and agreed with it. I am basically pro Driscoll but not a member of his fan club.

But Haggard says in his letter that this has been a life-long struggle on a deep level, with many ups and downs. He says that a lack of communication about his struggles was part of his descent. So an AG would be helpful at the early levels of struggle. In the advanced levels, the elders would have to be informed asap.

I know if I knew that my pastor was using drugs or was cheating on his wife I would want them removed from office and I certainly wouldn’t want him in any position of authority in the church. I have no respect for anyone who cheats on their spouse; I don’t care who they are or what profession they are in or how much good they are supposed to have done. Two historical figures that cheated on their spouses that fall into this category are John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. While some laud them to the skies, I have no respect for them because they were adulterers.

Again, I am not sure how an accountability group would have helped in this situation. I am interested in other’s opinions who believe that an accountability group would have helped and what they would have done if they knew this type of behavior was occurring.

This exposure is God’s way of getting Haggard to confront his sin and hypocrisy, repent, and grow closer to Christ. I only pray that the Church doesn’t drive him further away from Christ by leaving him for the press to eviscerate; and then ripping him ourselves when the press isn’t doing it.