Of Slivers and Beams

I have been reading all the news regarding the downfall of Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, anti-gay crusader and poster boy for self righteousness. You cannot help reading the articles. Tales of this kind of hypocrisy are like highway wrecks -- you cannot look away because the mendacity is just so unquestionably complete.

Mr. Haggard is a very nice cautionary tale about the danger of trying to remove specks (slivers in some biblical interpretations) from the eyes of others without attending to the beams in your own.

While I feel a certain sympathy for Mr. Haggard -- who doesn't have something about them they wish not to be revealed -- I cannot help but think of all the pain he has brought to so many individuals and the divisions he has helped sow throughout the country by giving bigotry a biblical justification. What a sad and pathetic man.