'We Just Weren't Sure How To Deal With It'

* Innitially when I had heard about the Ted Haggard scandal, I dismissed it because I think we need to be careful how we treat our fallen (Haggard, Gibson, etc)
I am not really sure why I am blogging about the Haggard situation other then I want to partcipate in the conversation with other bloggers I respect.

I find myself agreeing a lot with Todd and I had seen this headline on a different site and had the same reaction. Now, I am not excusing Haggard in any way, nor am I really that emabarrassed by this scandal (our focus is on Christ, not on feeble men. Thus such situations are inevitable), but I am a little surprised by his “friends”. How do you not try to intervene? Not to avoid scandal but to serve and help your brother. Some of the comments on the link are pretty intereseting too.

From Todd Rhoades Monday Morning Insight
“I’ve tried to give a real balanced approach to the Ted Haggard situation; calling people to not to speculate (particularly about Ted’s wife) during this situation. But this caught me a little off-guard; and I’ve seen no one else (other than a Time Magazine blogger) even notice this comment. Over the weekend, the head of the Traditional Values Coalition, Rev. Louis Sheldon, said that “a lot” of people knew about Haggard’s homosexuality “for a while” but just “weren’t sure just how to deal with it”…

I’m not trying to speculate; but I don’t want to ignore Sheldon’s comments either. You see, if “a lot of people” knew about this and did nothing; and have a much deeper situation on our hands.

In his comments to the newspaper, “The Jewish Week”, Sheldon casually mentions the Haggard ordeal amid a bunch of other questions on the election, morals, etc. According to the paper:

Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard’s secret relationship with him, and the reverend’s drug use as well, “Ted and I had a discussion,” explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: “He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn’t. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.”

Sheldon’s words sound vague to me. Haggard gave him a ‘telltale’ sign and knew he was covering up. That sounds to me a little different than Ted admitting he is gay (which he still hasn’t admitted). And who are the “a lot” who Sheldon says knew about Haggard’s homosexuality? And why openly admit that, ‘yeah, I knew about it’ but didn’t do anything about it… especially when you’re the head of a ‘traditional values’ coalition? It makes no sense.

When will we stop shooting ourselves in the foot?

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