The Unspoken Truth

Today, my wife took my daughter to the doctor, so I had some time to myself at home while the baby was sleeping and the other two were playing in the snow. I had heard that defrocked pastor Ted Haggard had been on Oprah a couple of days back, so I decided to see if I could find the interview online. As you may remember, Ted Haggard was the senior pastor of a mega church from Colorado who was found to be living a double life. On the one hand, he had a great wife, kids, and church, and, on the other hand, he was secretly dealing with and falling to the temptation of homosexual relationships. I found the interview on youtube, and here are my thoughts.

First of all, I thought Ted did a very good job of speaking about the love of Christ who "came to seek and to save that which was lost". This includes all of us, no matter what our shortcomings may be. Secondly (and expectedly), Oprah was relentless in trying to get Ted to "just be who you are", in other words "give into your desires to be a homosexual man". To this I have a few thoughts.

#1: This is an incredibly illogical line of reasoning. The difference between men and animals is that we have the ability to reason and discern right from wrong. We are not slaves to our desires or instincts. No one would tell Ted to "give into your desires and be who you are" if his instincts were to kill somebody. Why? That would harm someone. As a Christian, I believe that God gave us His 10 Commandments so that we would not get hurt or hurt someone else. A homosexual lifestyle is destructive in so many ways (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) and God, in His love, doesn't want us to be destroyed.

#2: I think the greatest tragedy concerning the interview is that Ted shared that he had been sexually-molested as a second-grader by one of his dad's male friends, and Oprah didn't follow-up on that statement at all. She didn't seem to want to go there.

As a pastor, I see this somewhat often: young adults who were raped or molested as children struggling with their sexuality. The strange thing about boys who were molested by homosexual men is that many of them begin to believe THEY are homosexual rather than recognizing they were taken advantage of by men with unchecked homosexual desires. My point is this: from my experience, it is not unusual at all to have a young boy who is not confused with his sexuality come out of a homosexual molestation with different thoughts and emotions about his sexuality. So, for Oprah to say "just be who you are" is essentially saying, "go ahead and give in to this self-destructive lifestyle; you don't have any choice and you have to because long ago you were taken advantage of by a man of little character, responsibility, or moral clarity."