cast the first stone

this was forwarded to me by a friend. as i read it, i felt overwhelmed different emotions. curiosity drove me to look at the link. "pastor" and "relationship with... man" were the words that struck me.

reading the article, i started to feel repulsed by the pastor. he was condemning homosexual sex. he was the president of an evangelical association, for crying out loud. and he was also this lecherous adult, encouraging a 20yo to 'have fun on the side'. such hypocrisy.

then i started to feel empathy. yes, i actually knew what he was going through. i have chronicled my own struggle with these 'drives'. i know how it feels to feel so powerless, even as i knew how wrong it was, according to my faith. i stopped condemning him and realized that he was not too different from me.

then it became fear. i have my own skeletons in the corporate closet. and if something like this got out for him, it could very well happen to cc. of course, im not famous or anything. but i do have my circles. and within those circles, talk could be vicious.

in the end, i could not cast a stone against the poor pastor.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/29/lkl.ted.haggard/index.html#cnnSTCText