Psalm 6: A Psalm of Penitence
If you look on Wikipedia under scandals you will find a list of 11 different kinds of scandals. If you click on the first one – political scandals – you will get a list of 17 countries you can choose from. When you click on Canada, you get a list of 13 federal scandals and another 39 provincial scandals. Going back to the first screen and clicking on Evangelical Christianity you get a list of 33 prominent pastors and ministry leaders followed by another 6 “prosperity gospel” ministries that had senate ordered investigations. The list includes evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who in 1986 began on-screen attacks against fellow televangelists Marvin Gorman and Jim Bakker. He uncovered Gorman’s affair with a member of Gorman’s congregation, and also helped expose Bakker’s infidelity (which was arranged by a colleague while on an out-of-state trip). These exposures received widespread media coverage. Gorman retaliated in kind by hiring a private investigator to uncover Swaggart’s own adulterous indiscretions with a prostitute. Swaggart was subsequently forced to step down from his pulpit for a year and made a tearful televised apology in February 1988 to his congregation, saying “I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God’s forgiveness.” Swaggart was caught again by California police three years later in 1991 with another prostitute, Rosemary Garcia, who was riding with him in his car when he was stopped for driving on the wrong side of the road. When asked why she was with Swaggart, she replied, “He asked me for sex. I mean, that’s why he stopped me. That’s what I do. I’m a prostitute.” Money, sex and power, the same three temptations in the Garden, the same three temptations faced by Jesus in the desert, and the same three temptations faced by you and I in this life. There is no shortage of scandals. Read more…
