Jimmy Swaggart

I like to read.  I like to read especially about people who make a difference in the world, some for good and some for bad.  Either way, as a subject, fame is fascinating.  There are people I know and who I am close to who are famous, and there are people who simply stoke my interest. 

It's not Always Good to Be Famous

I use to go to a small Assemblies of God church in Hialeah, FL with the nicest pastor you could ever know.  Jim Rentz and his wife were great - I visited them a lot when I was stationed in Opa Locka. 

Jim moved from his AG church and headed up Jimmi Swaggart's church in Baton Rouge, LA, when Jimmy Swaggart was the biggest T.V. preacher in the world. 

As a young man barely out of High School, I became a born again Christian down South, which meant I had to get rid of all my Rock and Roll albums and replace them with Gospel and Southern Gospel music.  During this phase in my life for some odd reason, I began listening to and enjoying Jimmy Swaggart's boogey woogey style of piano playing, and  in time, I grew to love the crooning type of Gospel music he performed.

Even though I could listen to his music for hours, I always hated his preaching.  I always felt attacked when he preached and I could only put up with so much of that.

As I grew older and grew in my faith, I slowly returned to the Rock and Roll that I so dearly loved as a High Schooler and drifted away from Jimmy Swaggart's music. 

Not too long after, when I lived in Brussels, Belgium, I stopped at a book store and saw a book by Jimmy Swaggart about fornication which caught my interest.  As I paged through the book, I saw a different Jimmy than I heard preaching.  To this day I am convinced he had a ghost writer pen the pages of the book.  Even though it was a subject I expected Jimmy to write about, it just wasn't Jimmy's style of writing or study.

Around that same time, I had also read that Jimmy called Christian Rock the "fornication of Gospel music," which in hindsight is a very interesting description.

After living in Europe for one year, I moved into the forests of  the Congo, as a missionary, smack dab in the middle of Africa.  I was talking to a friend that day about Jimmy Swaggart.  I told him, "Usually, when people preach against some particular sin, its because they have the problem themselves, but I don't think Jimmy Swaggart would do that, even though he writes and preaches so much against fornication."  I made the mistake of thinking that anyone with a huge ministry like that would want to protect it and stay holy, but one week later, Jimmy Swaggart's crying face was all over the news in the U.S. stating, "I have sinned!" 

The day I heard about his mishap, I learned then that people are as careless about their morals when they are successful as they are when they have no success.  After attacking and destroying the ministry of a fellow minister for his sexual failures, Jimmy was busted by that same preacher he ruined.  The other preacher took pictures of Jimmy entering into a hotel with a prostitute.

Again, 3 months after his tearful confession, a police man pulled him over and Jimmy had another prostitute in his car with a pile of pornographic magazines he was trying to stuff under the seat.

After the second time of being publicly shamed, and after ignoring the Assemblies of God's discipline, Jim Rentz, my old pastor (who was the pastor for Jimmy Swaggart's church), fired Jimmy Swaggart from his position, but Jimmy Swaggart turned around and fired Rentz who then left Jimmy's fold.

Since that terrible time (for Swaggart) I have read several books and articles about Jimmy and I discovered that Jimmy Swaggart's wife holds a strong hand over him, his kids, their wives, and the people who work for him. 

CONCLUSIONS

Drama doesn't get any better.  I spent days after these types of exposures, thinking about whoever just lost their dignity.   I get hit with a lot of feelings.  I get angry, repulsed, frustrated and thankful.  I become thankful for several reasons:
1.  First of all like the 1st Century stereotypical pharisee, I become thankful that I am not like other people:
     a.  I don't visit prostitutes
     b.  I have never had any affair
     c.  I have nothing in my history that would shame my reputation (for whatever my reputation is worth).

I know I am hypocritical in part, because I cannot throw the first stone, but I am thankful that although I struggle as anyone else does, I do not struggle with the types of sins that would disgrace me.  And because I don't have those types of issues, I don't have to worry about getting caught in anything disgraceful. 

2.  I wonder what it would be like to be in the situation of embarrassment.  How do their kids feel, their wives, and friends?  Were Jimmy's kids neglected as so much attention went to him after the fall?  How did they feel about the dad they admired and loved?

3.  How could someone so depraved get to be such a famous pastor?  It seems unfair.  When I was a pastor, I put every ounce of energy I could into living right before God and yet my 2nd church struggled with divisions, jealousies, fear, and a lack of trust in each other and in their pastor.  My first priority was keeping right before God; and I felt good about that.  But Jimmy Swaggart lived a secret life visiting with prostitutes and pornographic magazines, spending the money his church members tithed toward God.

4.  How does someone live with such huge contradiction?

Most of all I think about the proverb: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."