Quotes I don't want to lose

I heard this morning something about someone big in the evangelical world being brought down. (Dobson? I wonder. But just idly and don't really believe. Maybe that guy behind the Purpose driven stuff) But no details until I got home from work. In which case I get email from focus on the Family that today's broadcast was about Haggard. (Who?) So I go out and find out the current status of things. For someone supposed to be so influential in the evangelical world though... I don't think I'd heard of him before this so maybe not?

But anyway, the usual suspects are saying the usual things. But a few things have also been said that I want to capture because it is really relevant to remember in any situation where someone you respects sins publically (Or at least sins are discovered publically). and we KNOW that will happen.

La Shawn Barber

Christians constantly are being watched, and rightly so. Any little thing we do that appears hypocritical, unbelievers jump on it. To justify their own sin and rebellion, they 'expose' ours and say, 'See? The self-righteous hypocrite!' They rejoice when they 'discover' we’re human, too!

and from Jonah's mailbag on The Corner:

Romans 7:18-19: 'For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.'

Every bona fide Christian knows and believes he is a hypocrite because, in moral and ethical behavior, he constantly falls short in his heart and in his deeds. Pointing out Haggard's hypocrisy is therefore to point out that, yes, the grass is green. It is an irreducible plank of Christian theology that all persons are sinners, all persons are flawed, all persons require redemption, and all persons are subject to immutable moral laws. Rejection of these ideas, and not some person's failure to live up to them, is why the Left goes bananas when a pastor stumbles.

and

Concerning your reader's comment, "...and if he's doing it, then doesn't it follow that he knows it's not really wrong?" I laughed so hard I almost fell
out of my chair.

I've done plenty of things in my life that I certainly knew were wrong, and I'm sure your reader has too. There's a reason why every language in the world has words for "I'm sorry": We're all sinners and sometimes find ourselves in need of those words.