thank you ted haggard!

i know, strange title, but i am so grateful that what is spilling out over this mess is a dialog about pastors, christians, evangelicals and their views on sex, power and sexual addictions. we are all talking about it now.

i am horrified at some of the responses i am reading though. i am learning so much about people's theology and what they believe about sex, god and women. i think you can learn more about people when they talk about sex and money than when they talk about church and jesus.

i think that's why the bible spends so much time on these issues. they show the heart and soul of a person more clearly than hiding behind flowery church-talk.

if i can introduce anything into the dialog it would be this:

SEXUAL ADDICTION ISN'T ABOUT SEX

please understand this people.

alcoholics aren't really thirsty people.

alcoholism isn't about alcohol.

drug addiction isn't about drugs.

and sexual addiction isn't about sex.

hotel rooms and fat preachers wives aren't the reason that pastors stumble into sin.

addiction, especially the sexual type happens when there are broken parts of the past that have injured the body, soul and spirit of the addict. masturbation, pornography and acting out sexually feeds those broken areas in a counterfeit way that masks what we truly want and can't seem to find a way to achieve.

true intimacy and wholeness sexually would fill and replace the need for this acting out behavior, but because so very few of us have the ability or help to navigate this, we settle for the counterfeit and it becomes the fix.

blaming other things and people for our brokenness is NO WAY to find healing. owning our junk, confessing to god, to ourselves and another human being is THE ONLY WAY we can break through the shame we carry so that we can find the healing and wholeness we all long to have in our lives.

i have a precious son (i also have a precious daughter, we're just not navigating this area right now in her life yet) who has awakened to the opposite sex. he was shown pornography a couple of months ago by a friend and since that time we have been dialogging about it.

this morning he awoke and found me at the computer, reading about the ted haggard story, and said "mom, i'm having a hard time when i see someone not thinking about them without any clothes on" (he is so honest and real, i respect this child-like innocence he brings to this so much).

first i prayed for wisdom. and then i reminded him about what we have been talking about for the past couple of months. this is about building muscles. spiritual muscles, that will help him navigate this journey called growing up. we talked about 'taking every thought captive', and that temptation isn't a sin. those pictures will pop into his head for the rest of his life. learning to set them aside and see that person as real and an image-bearer, instead of reducing them to a 2 dimensional picture or image. this is what will help him navigate this.

i reminded him that i must do this. daddy must do this. and pink must do this. all for ourselves. it's not something we can do for each other. it is our responsibility to learn, stretch and grow.

it is a very sad thing to hear of someone, with much influence, reducing women to ornaments and add-ons to their lives. it makes me weep. i would ask that we would each use what influence we are given to speak out loudly against this. it is theology like this that feeds the broken kingdom that cannot truly minister the love of god.

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard wrote.

how much more powerful would it have been to his congregation if he had started HERE and not ended HERE?

how much light and life could have been brought into the life of his congregation if he had admitted how hard it was to live his life? love his wife? parent his children? how much more could people have learned from him if he lived transparently - free of the shame and owning his junk instead of the portrayal of the shiny plastic christian with no problems and free of struggle?

if we confess our sins one to another, pray for each other, we will be healed.

james 5:16