What Else? Haggard

Let me say this from the outset: I’m not a big fan of Ted Haggard or his ministry. I don’t know exactly what it is; maybe it’s his reductionist approach to our shared faith, maybe it’s his close association with Republican politics and his willingness to give voice to the anti-gay ballot initiative we’re looking at this fall in Colorado, maybe it’s his tacit endorsement of the upper middle class status quo. Or maybe my friends are right and I just have a case of parishioner envy. Maybe it’s all that and more.
So when I was watching the news Wednesday night and heard that a male prostitute named Mike Jones was saying Haggard had paying him for sex and drugs on a nearly weekly schedule, I was surprised by my own sorrow.
My mother said this will affect how people see God and Christ. Haggard will join Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart and those myriad Catholic priests we all heard about a few years ago. The political analysts are and will try to decipher what affect this scandal will have on the evangelical vote here in Colorado.
But I think God can handle himself just fine. And who cares what the political effects are? Real human beings are involved here.
The reason I was and still am sad as I this whole mess play out is that I cannot begin to grasp the depth of suffering Ted Haggard and his family and his church are in for. One can only wonder at the years of denial and self-recrimination, of horror over the conflict between his private desires and deeply held theology, and the inability to reconcile the two.
And then of course there’s Mike Jones, prostitute and drug dealer. The gay community isn’t rushing to thank him, nor should they be. He’s not exactly the kind of representative they’re looking for. He seems almost stunned by the events as a result of his actions. His brief celebrity will shine and die, and where he’ll be, and what, is anyone’s guess. I can’t imagine it being good.
I’ve started noticing some Schadenfreude, that sense of joy over another’s pain. It’s compounded by the delicious irony of this story. I’ve got plenty of that in my veins. Whatever happens to Haggard or Jones, some will delight in their pain.
I don’t know what either man is going to do. Ted Haggard and I both claim and proclaim the Christian message. At the heart of that message is an unadulterated love, a willingness identify with those in crisis, regardless of the consequences. There’s Schadenfreude, and in the Buddhist tradition there’s mutida, that habit of sharing the joy of others. Then there’s Jesus. In English, Jesus is reported to have said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Martin Luther translated “mourners” as, “they who bear suffering,” suffering not only for themselves, but for others, even for their enemies, even for those who ostensibly do not deserve it. I can only hope that there are those around Ted Haggard and around Mike Jones who can bear their suffering.