[Frederica-l] First Things: Ted Haggard and Suffering

[Frederica at aol.com]

The essay below is running on the First Things website today: 
http://www.firstthings.com/

And my little movie is out! 

http://www.christianvisionproject.com/dvd-2006.html

This is the short documentary that Andy Crouch filmed last June at my home 
and church. Christianity Today ended up making 6 short videos about people 
engaged in the culture. Mine is the last of the 6 videos, and it's about spiritual 
disciplines. CT is selling the DVD with a Leader's Guide for church and study 
groups to use in thinking through how Christians can be "a counterculture for 
the common good."
 
On the website above there's a 5-minute trailer, and it includes a bit from 
my video at the end. 

here's the First Things piece: 

***

I was in Denver for about a hundred minutes this weekend. I hadn't planned 
it, but when I arrived at the airport Friday morning to begin my journey to 
Calgary, I was surprised to see that's where I would change planes. The story 
about Ted Haggard had hit the news the night before, and I had been for some 
reason really moved by it. I walked through the Denver airport praying the Jesus 
Prayer for him: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on Ted." That whatever needed to 
happen would happen, and that it would be used for Ted's ultimate healing. And 
I prayed for his wife, Gayle, and their five children. I cannot imagine their 
pain. 
 
I was probably not the only person who found his initial response suspicious: 
"I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man in Denver." Imagine that 
you're a guy, and a male escort you've never heard of suddenly announces to 
the press that you two have been in a sexual relationship for years. After you 
got through screaming "WHAT?!?" for a few hours, you would say, "This is 
really sick and creepy and repulsive. I have never met this guy. It is scary to 
think anyone could have this kind of full-blown delusional fantasy going on. This 
is some kind of John Mark Karr thing. I'm disgusted, and I feel stalked, and 
am talking to the police about protection." 
 
So "I did not have a homosexual relationship with a man in Denver" was pretty 
feeble. "In Denver"?
 
But in the rush of travel, I didn't catch any images of Haggard until the 
return trip Saturday; I didn't know what he looked like. An airline rescheduling 
unexpectedly brought me back through Denver on the way home -- that had the 
looks of something God-arranged. This time while praying my way through the 
airport I spotted some newspaper dispensers with Haggard's name in the top 
headlines. I knelt to read the stories and saw that sad truths were coming to the 
surface. 
 
But I also saw a photo of Haggard, and for the first time connected a face 
with the name. So that's the guy! I had seen this face before, I guess in photos 
of evangelical leaders. It sure had struck me as a crazy-scary one - somebody 
I'd instinctively step away from. http://www.tedhaggard.com/  The zones of 
his face are sending out conflicting messages. It looks like both terror and 
attack. The overall effect is frenzied.
 
Ted wrote in the letter read to his church on Sunday: "There is a part of my 
life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it all my 
life." http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1326184&secid=1
 
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, we speak of the impulses that move us toward 
any kind of sin as "passions." You shouldn't think of this term as related to 
"passionate." It's more like "passive." (As in "The Passion of Christ;" his 
passion is what he endured.) 
 
These impulses beat us up. They originate as thoughts, sometimes as thoughts 
that evade full consciousness. The roots are tangled with memories, shame, 
anger, fear--and the thoughts are also very often inaccurate. 
 
All this mess damages our ability to see the world clearly. We go on 
misreading situations and other people, and venture further into confusion. The 
illness compounds itself, to the delight of the Evil One who nurtures lies and has 
no compassion on the weak. To him, the weak are breakfast. 
 
Eastern Christianity speaks of this as the darkening of the nous, that is, of 
the perceptive center of a person. (Most English bibles translate nous as 
"mind," but that's not quite it; the nous is not the rational intellect, but a 
perceiving faculty. Thoughts and emotions are subsequent reactions to the nous' 
perceptions.) The damaged nous is like a pair of glasses fitted with 
distorting lenses. It needs healing. 
 
The Greek word represented by this kind of "passion" is "pathos." It means 
suffering. It is because we are helpless in our suffering that Christ came. He 
took on vulnerable human form, and went into the realm of Death and defeated 
the Evil One. Now we are invited to gradually return to health, by fully 
assimilating the truth that sets us free - by assimilating the presence and life of 
Christ himself. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me," St 
Paul said. This life fills and changes us like fire fills a piece of coal. 
 
In the Eastern Christian understanding, sins are not "bad deeds" that must be 
made up in order to satisfy justice. They are instead like bad fruit, which 
indicates a sickness inside the tree (the analogy Jesus uses in Matthew 7:7-8). 
Sin is infection, not infraction. And God not only forgives freely, but sent 
his Son to rescue us when we were helpless. 
 
With God's help, we begin to heal. Like an athlete striving for the prize (I 
Cor 9:24, Phil 3:14, 2 Timothy 2:5) we resist succumbing to lying thoughts. 
The ancient spiritual disciplines -- continual prayer, fasting, and love of 
others - are like the exercises in a time-tested workout routine. They make us 
stronger. When we fall, we get up. This is a life of continual repentance -- and 
you can see in that word re-pent, "re-think." Salvation is health, and health 
comes from knowing the truth and resisting lies. This gradually heals the nous 
so that it is restored to its original purpose: to perceive God's light 
permeating all Creation. 
 
St. Paul writes, "Be transformed by the renewal of your nous." The biblical 
word for repentance, meta-noia, means literally the transformation of the nous. 
We are welcomed into God's kingdom in an instant, as we see in the story of 
the Good Thief; but full healing comes slowly, and will continue every day that 
we live. 
 
So it is a mistake to present Christianity the way some churches do, as if it 
is the haven of seamlessly well-adjusted, proper people. That results in a 
desperate artificial sheen. It results in treating worship as a consumer 
product, which must deliver better intellectual or emotional gratification than the 
competition. And that sends suffering people home again, still lonely, in their 
separate metal capsules. 
 
What all humans have in common is our "pathos." Getting honest about that 
binds us together. And then we begin to see how the mercy of God is pouring down 
on all of us all the time, just as the Good Samaritan bound the wounds of the 
beaten man with healing oil. May God give this healing mercy to Ted and Gayle, 
and to their children. May God reveal his healing mercy to Michael Jones, who 
told the truth. May God have mercy on all of us. 


********
Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com
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