Free Spin #2 – Haggard Times

Pastor Haggard,

In many ways, this has been just tragic, and I can’t begin to appreciate the difficulty you must be experiencing in your life right now. And I can understand how a lot of people in the world actually hate you. It couldn’t have come at a more volatile time.

I’m gonna talk straight to you. You’re had, Swaggart-style. There will be no redemption for you in anything you say. Only in what you do. Now before you think I’m dogging you, I’d like for you to hear me out.

‘Cause I know that people are complex beings. We have dark sides to us (what I believe my churchin taught me is our “sinful nature”, or as the Jungian would say our “shadow”).

And one of the things I felt was missing from my churchin growing up was acknowledgment that it’s always there. It can’t be repressed into non-existance. In fact, I believe that simply repressing rather than acknowledging and managing it leads to really big problems. Can I get an Amen from you or maybe some other priest who’s had sex and/or addiction issues?

I’ll tell you, too, I’m pissed. I’m pissed that you pounce on gays while being a “liar and deceiver”. I’m pissed that you’re yet another example of corrupted institutions. Government. Church. All the things I grew up believing in. The things so many people in my generation believed in. I’m pissed my lefty, atheist friends will see this as just one more example in a long line of fraud draped as religion. I’m pissed that having conversations about Godwith someone now necessarily means having to talk about corruption and illicit deceit. Well, it was like that before you, but now…

I had to say all that, ’cause it’s true. And, I also feel compassion and am doing my best to feel love for you. Love for your children and your wife, who must be absolutely in hell right now. Understanding temptation and succumbing to it. Understanding owning that. NOT understanding the blatant hypocrisies. Not at all.

You need to cash your chips in, post a farewell letter to your website and move to Brazil. Avoid cameras like the plague, and in fact, spend the rest of your life doing what I think Jesus would have you do – go and heal the sick, minister to the poor. Maybe save some actual lives and let someone else save the souls in that 12 million dollar church you built.