This is how Ted Haggard described himself yesterday, as he admitted to “sexually immoral conduct” and a “lifelong” sexual problem. This is devastating for evangelicalism. One of the most influential evangelicals in America, recently profiled by Christianity Today as a breath of fresh air for evangelicaldom, is a “deciever and a liar.”
Or, maybe it’s not so devastating — or at least devastating in a good way. Maybe this will cause us to respond as the prophet Isaiah did when he was commissioned by God as a prophet: “”Woe to me!” [Isaiah] cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.””
Evangelicals at the levels Ted Haggard reached seem so often to forget that we are to act as agents of redemption in society because we have been redeemed and are being redeemed from the depths of our own sin. We try to use the law, public relations, power and marketing techniques to manufacture a secular constitutional state that would incorporate rules we don’t seem to want to apply to ourselves.
Those of us in the pews who are struggling to live day to day, who understand our own sins and weaknesses, should maintain a healthy distance from these public “leaders.” It’s time for authentic Christian virtues, a real evangelicalism of the transforming Gospel, to flow from the community of faith on the ground. It isn’t about influence and power. It’s about love and service.