On the Right

It is the season to be jolly at the expense of the television/radio preachers. Oh my, how those saintly television commentators are enjoying it all! And the press in and around Washington has not had so much fun since Congressman Robert Bauman was caught in mid speech denouncing juvenile delinquency, while contributing to it. The implicit notion here of course is that the whole idea—the idea of preaching the word of Christ on television—is discredited. How is that? Well, because a preacher called Jim Bakker (pronounced, to the eternal distress of the Secretary of the Treasury, “Jim Baker”) engaged in an act of adultery, and then paid out blackmail money to prevent its getting out.

Implicit in the handling of the story is the message that those who do not practice what they preach invalidate that which they preach. To suggest such a thing is to betray a most awful misunderstanding of Christian teaching. The man whom Christ designated as the rock on whom He would found His Church sinned three times before the cock crowed. It is testimony to the profoundest understanding of Christian teaching that such generalities as “Physician, heal thyself” are utterly empty of moral and empirical meaning. If a doctor himself smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol to excess, his failings do not invalidate his medical advice to others not to yield to weaknesses he cannot dominate. After receiving a scolding from his physician for drinking too much, a character in Rabelais responds, “Forsooth, I do believe I know more old drunkards than I do old doctors.”

It is the season to be jolly at the expense of the television/radio preachers. Oh my, how those saintly television commentators are enjoying it all! And the press in and around Washington has not had so much fun since Congressman Robert Bauman was caught in mid speech denouncing juvenile delinquency, while contributing to it. The implicit notion here of course is that the whole idea—the idea of preaching the word of Christ on television—is discredited. How is that? Well, because a preacher called Jim Bakker (pronounced, to the eternal distress of the Secretary of the Treasury, “Jim Baker”) engaged in an act of adultery, and then paid out blackmail money to prevent its getting out.

Implicit in the handling of the story is the message that those who do not practice what they preach invalidate that which they preach. To suggest such a thing is to betray a most awful misunderstanding of Christian teaching. The man whom Christ designated as the rock on whom He would found His Church sinned three times before the cock crowed. It is testimony to the profoundest understanding of Christian teaching that such generalities as “Physician, heal thyself” are utterly empty of moral and empirical meaning. If a doctor himself smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol to excess, his failings do not invalidate his medical advice to others not to yield to weaknesses he cannot dominate. After receiving a scolding from his physician for drinking too much, a character in Rabelais responds, “Forsooth, I do believe I know more old drunkards than I do old doctors.”