Fallen Priests Sometimes Do God's Work (Pastor Paul Prather)

Preachers may illustrate the Lord’s work even when they fail and fall (yahoo.com)

Paul Prather
Thu, February 10, 2022, 10:00 AM

This time it’s the co-founder of the international megachurch Hillsong who’s in trouble. Australian Brian Houston, 67, announced recently he would step down from the pulpit while he defends himself against criminal charges that he concealed child sexual abuse committed by his father in the 1970s and perhaps into the 1980s.

The father, Frank Houston, allegedly molested multiple boys. He passed away in 2004, but confessed in 2000 to abusing a boy in New Zealand, the Washington Post reports. His son ended his father’s preaching career after learning of the abuse accusations.

However, Brian Houston didn’t report the abuse to the police. His lawyer has said he will plead not guilty to concealing a serious indictable offense.

Hillsong has had other problems. The Washington Post reports that in November, Hillsong’s New York City pastor was fired for cheating on his wife. Last April, its Dallas church closed, apparently after complaints arose that pastors there were misusing contributions.

Just weeks ago, videos circulated online showing participants at a youth camp singing and dancing even as the Australian state of New South Wales was trying to control the spread of Covid-19.

All this, of course, is just the latest in an endless roll call of religious figures behaving badly. None of it is unique to Hillsong.

Religious scandals date back to however long religion has existed. Taken together, it’s enough to make churchgoers lose their confidence in the clergy, and perhaps in God.

A few days ago, an 80-year-old Southern California nun was sentenced to federal prison after she confessed to stealing more than $835,000 from the Catholic school where she was principal, to support her gambling addiction.

And before the Houstons and the nun, there were all those priests who abused children. And before we learned about the priests, there were Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.

And before them was Aimee Semple McPherson, the famous evangelist, media star and founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, who in 1926 may have faked her own bizarre kidnapping to—reporters said—hide a tryst with a married former employee.

And before her was Judas, one of Jesus’ own lieutenants, who pilfered the ministry’s funds and ultimately sold out Jesus himself for 30 pieces of silver.

And before him was King David, who committed adultery and murder and certainly ranks as one of the worst parents in history.

And before him was Abraham, the father of three faiths, who while fathering faiths also fathered a child with his wife’s maid, and twice gave his wife to other men for their use, to save his own skin.

This is the shortest of short lists. From the beginning until today, in every city, hamlet and rural crossroads around the planet, some supposed saint has royally messed up—gambled away her church’s money, cheated on his spouse, warped his children’s souls, drunk herself into oblivion. It’s so common it’s a trope: the saint as wastrel, Graham Greene’s whiskey priest. Occasionally, as in the case of pedophile clergy, the “saint” is exponentially worse than a mere wastrel.

Thus has it always been.

In a roundabout way that feels counterintuitive, this also can be viewed as the glory of the message those fallen leaders proclaim. That message says two things that are in tension with each other. It says that on the one hand, there’s this glorious, all-powerful God who created heaven and earth and dwells in inapproachable light.

On the other hand, because God is invisible to human eyes and inaudible to human ears, he employs flesh-and-blood men and women as his spokespeople.
The messengers’ messages get garbled. The people God uses are every bit as sinful, flawed and self-contradictory as their neighbors, no more pious by nature than your typical cop, teacher, politician, truckdriver or Walmart clerk.

As could be said of those folks who work in other vocations, some preachers are more honest, law-abiding and self-aware than other preachers—not every minister steals from the collection plate or fakes a kidnapping or, thank the Lord, molests kids. But they’re all nonetheless flawed. Even the best of the lot are 100 percent human, and humans are by definition silly, destructive little creatures.

Here’s the staggering part, though. This holy, glorious God deigns to enter these people’s self-absorbed little hearts and speak through their sour little breaths, and through them proclaim the wonders of heaven and eternity. St. Paul recognized this as a miracle 2,000 years ago.

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” he wrote, “that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not of us.”

The news isn’t that pastors, nuns or evangelists mess up, occasionally in dreadful ways. The news is that from time to time they also manage, with the Lord’s help, to say or do things earth-shaking, soul-saving and sublime.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.

[PADA: Yup. Sometimes people complain that PADA is "against ISKCON." Well not exactly, ISKCON-ites and / or ex-ISKCON-ites are our best customers. They get some sort of start off with the GBC's bogus guru's process -- and then later on they want to move on to a higher understanding, and that is where we come in. 

Then they start reading PADA and asking questions etc. So this pastor is right, sometimes God uses lesser vessels to get people to a higher platform -- eventually. ys pd]