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I have to admit that I have a certain fascination with Ted Haggard. Ever since his scandal broke (I had not heard of him before that) I have followed his story with a kind of macabre fascination with the hope that something positive will result from his shame. And to be truthful, there have been some positive, God-glorifying things that have happened; most notably that his wife chose to stick with him through this and they are working to hold their marriage together in the midst of this (self-imposed) storm. But when it comes to Ted himself, he seems to go out of his way to do the dumbest thing imaginable at every turn and this video is further evidence of his self-delusion that he is the victim and we should all act like nothing ever happened. Before I speak about Ted directly, I want to use this video as a starting point to look at the Biblical concept of restoration.
Biblical Restoration can only happen within the church
In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus gives us instruction for how to deal with a brother (or sister) that has sinned. The goal of this process is to restore our brother to right fellowship with the church (vs 17), therefore before someone can be Biblically restored they have to submit to the leadership of the church elders and agree with them that what they are doing is wrong and needs to be stopped. If the elders that God has established over that church deem it necessary for certain disciplinary measures to take place (accountability groups, counseling, cessation of public ministry for a time) then the brother should willingly and happily follow their instruction, convinced that God has placed his elders over him for his good. (Heb 13:17) In fact, if the one who sinned rejects the leadership of his elders and decides to do what he wants, even if the person has stopped the particular sin that started the process, he has not truly repented and should not be restored to full fellowship with the church. In fact the church as a whole should assume that he is unsaved (Mt 18:17) and treat him as they would any other sinner by witnessing to him and commanding him to repent. (And in Ted’s case they should most certainly not join his church or submit to him as Pastor)
Biblical Restoration and Worldly Restoration are completely different
On of Ted’s complaints is that he has seen Martha Stewart, David Letterman, Michael Vick and others restored to their former place so K-Mart, CBS, and the NFL are better at restoration than the church. The difference between the church and these companies is that these churches couldn’t care less about the eternal souls of these people and only care about the bottom line. If Ted’s church had only money as their main concern then you can be sure that Ted would have been right back in the pulpit after a short time away but to their credit they were more focused on the man than the money and asked him to undergo a long process of restoration. Ted’s efforts to say that the church should be more like the world in this respect shines a light on what is the problem with Ted really is, a defective and world-like theology. Instead of going to the Bible to see how restoration should actually be done, he is going to the world and taking their advice and modeling his theology after K-mart and the NFL. Unfortunately for Ted, that is not how either the Church or Jesus Christ Himself restores his people.
I will still watch the Ted Haggard story as it unfolds, hoping and praying that somehow he realizes his sin and goes back to the church elders that loved him enough to confront him on his sin and not gloss it over as the world does. Unfortunately, the longer this goes the more distant the possibility of that happening becomes.
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