Sunday Message- The Duggar dilemma

I was there back in 1991 when Jimmy Swaggart fell.For those of you that never followed him, he was a fiery preacher, not one of the beggars like the Bakkers.  He knew his stuff, and I believe he was preaching for the right reason.  But when he was arrested for solicitation and confessed crying to his congregation, he became "just one of those guys."  One of those thinking with his p_  guys, nothing but a fraud.  Because, as EVERYONE knows, if you are "one of those guys", your entire life is a fraud.

Ask Gary Hart.  Or Herman Cain.  Or Clarence Thomas.  Or Bill Cosby.


Or Martin Luther King, Jr.


Except it's not true.  Sexual addiction is the most powerful tool Satan has in the defeat of Christian men, and it's such a cliche because he uses it over and over.  And in the eyes of the public, being weak here is enough to cast every good thing you ever did into ashes.

Unless you're Bill Clinton, apparently.

 But that's not my point.  Josh Duggar made lot of big mistakes, and I believe the biggest one was not coming clean about the Ashley Madison deal when the molestation charges came to the surface.  But that's not how an addict works.  How many times did Mark McGwire lie about his steroid use, even before Congress, until years later when the damn things were out of his system and he admitted to it?  Or more recently, you saw the same thing rip Ryan Braun apart in the space of a single season. He lied, then came clean.  "After my interview with MLB in late June of this year, I came to the realization that it was time to come to grips with the truth," he said. "I was never presented with baseball's evidence against me, but I didn't need to be, because I knew what I had done."


But you can put a steroid aside.  How do you set aside the sight of a beautiful woman when they are everywhere?

I am FAR from excusing Josh, and how he told the story was his biggest mistake, but small potatoes compared to the biggest sin of infidelity.  But here's the thing, everyone is making the big deal of how he was supposed to be "penitent".  Even he called himself "the biggest hypocrite ever".  He can do that- can we?

Can you?  What is your secret addiction?  Is it something trivial or horrible?  How do you deal with it?  Can you pick up that first stone?

Really?

I find it funny that the biggest detractors of the Duggars, of Cosby, of Cain, are those who " also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error." (Rom. 1:27) or those who support them.  It's not about what he did, but who he is.

And who is he?  Another fallen human being, who has a weakness that Satan was able to exploit a little better in him than in some others.  Just like me.  Maybe just like you.

And guess what?  When He came before Jesus long ago and asked Him into his heart, he had these sins forgiven, even then.  Jesus knew he would fall like this, that Swaggart would fall like this, that I would fall like this.  And came in anyway, because He had already paid for it.

Weaknesses like these are easy to slip into, to be blinded into, to fall before you know it.  For me, at one point magic was like that.  A little harmless study of runes.  A little magical bestiary.  A little incantations and amulets.  But I could tear the rune-circle down from the walls, throw out the books, return the carefully-painted stones to the creek bed they were first taken from.  And it was gone and done.  Sex, alcohol, drugs, they don't let go so easy.

But that doesn't matter to the haters and the media.  Josh is now the "example of what Christians are all about," according to real hypocrites who'd gleefully rip into the Duggars while committing the same things themselves, because, "after all, JOSH was supposed to be the Christian, not me."


Laurie can tell you, I'm not giving anybody in the Duggars a free pass.  Honestly, I think it's highly irresponsible to a) raise a family with so many children that there is no way to give each one fair individual attention, and b) raise a family under conditions that have been called "a real-life Truman Show", let alone doing BOTH of these.  And I have called more than one person involved here a "douchebag", like many of you have.

Chris Martin, douchebag.  I'm not picking up a stone to throw at Josh.

How about you?