Is it OK to be happy about Josh Duggar’s collapse?
To me, Jesus’ most important words are “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’’
They are not an invitation to cast stones.
I don’t know if Jesus said these exact words, or if someone cleverly attributed them to Jesus so other people would pay attention. What makes them so perfect is that they work for anyone, Christian or not.
All of us — with the exception of children — have done horrible things. We’ve said or done things that hurt people we loved.
Or worse, people we don’t even know.
Following reports that he molested children as a teenager, reality-TV star Josh Duggar of TLC’s “19 Kids & Counting’’ apologized Thursday and resigned as executive director for the Family Research Council. (Here’s where his bio used to be.)
The group says homosexuality “is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large,’’ and pushes for legislation to stop gay people from marrying.
“We oppose the vigorous efforts of homosexual activists to demand that homosexuality be accepted as equivalent to heterosexuality in law, in the media, and in schools,’’ the group says on its website.
Let’s give them points for being upfront about it. Unfortunately, what the group is upfront about is its belief that gay people aren’t entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
So I admit feeling a little satisfaction when I learned Duggar had confessed to past sins that cast his moral standing into doubt.
And I’m embarrassed that my first thoughts weren’t for his victims – where they should have been. Instead, I felt a little glee that a hurtful person had been proven a hypocrite. And then those 10 words about stones, and the weight of the message they carry, popped back into my head.
I don’t go to church much, as you may have guessed, because I don’t like feeling like God needs to be filtered through anything else. When I’m doing something wrong, I know it’s wrong. A voice in my head tells me. A conscience. God.
And my conscience nags me about Duggar. I’m trying not to delight in his downfall. But God, he’s made it hard not to.
Codifying laws against gay people, as Duggar and his group have tried to do, makes life harder for actual human beings. I’m about to spend Memorial Day weekend at a wedding in the Bible Belt, where gay kids are told by their churches, state legislatures and sometimes even parents that they are not entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
Some of those kids kill themselves.
And it doesn’t have to be that way, especially since the basis of gay-bashing isn’t moral, or Biblical, or Christian.
Yes, there are people who sincerely believe homosexuality is wrong, and who even think they’re helping gay people by trying to make them “overcome those attractions,’’ as Duggar’s group aspires to do.
But some of those people are also just sinners, throwing stones to prove how sinless they themselves must be.
And some of those stones hurt young gay kids.
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