Haggard

There are those who would take this incident, read into it, and quickly conclude that churches are chock full of people kidding themselves -- people acting like they've got it together, but are actually just flat-out messed-up as anybody.

They'd be exactly right.

Then there are those who would say, "But we never said our churches are for perfect people.  They're hospitals for the sick."

They'd be misleading you.  They're not hospitals for the sick.

I've been a part of -- literally -- dozens of churches, thanks to my life of moving.  I have never -- not once -- been a part of a church that seemed like a hospital for those sick with sin.  Never. 

And yet, we are sick with sin.  Jesus was being ironic (wasn't he?) when he said he'd come not for the healthy, but for the sick.  He knows:  We're all terminal.  We're hopeless, addicted, hooked on ourselves.

I've just never been part of a church that agrees.  Sin means loneliness and death. That would imply desparation.

Writer Andree Seu recently quoted Samuel Shoemaker, an early leader in Alconholics Anonymous.  Shoemaker learned a desperate church might look like:

"...people do not come to AA to get made a little better.  They do not come because the best people are doing it.  They come because they are desperate.  they are not ladies and gentlemen looking for a religion; they are utterly desperate men and women in search of redemption.  Without what AA gtives, death stares them in the face. With waht AA gives them, there is life and hope.  There are not a dozen ways, there are not two ways, there is one way, and they find it or perish...

"AA does not expect to let anybody who comes in stay as he is.  They know he is in need and must have help," he says. 

Then, he turns to the church.

"Have you ever been drastically dealt with by anybody?  Have you ever dared to be drastic in love with anybody?"

Saying that churches should be hospitals for the sick does not make them so.  Pretending that we are not -- all of us -- addicted to ourselves does not make it so, either. 

I'm not sure if there have been major hypocrisy scandals at the top of AA.  I'm honestly not sure if there could be.