Love in Various Kinds

Not a long post tonight. Just to reflect briefly upon the current events in Colorado Springs. As you probably know, Ted Haggard was fired by his church today for "sexually immoral conduct." There are those who would be quick to condemn him; after all, he apparently lied to his 14,000 member congregation. And he admitted to buying drugs. And he likes sex with male prostitutes.

I wouldn't have commented on him here, except that tonight's reading from 1 Corinthians 13 talks so beautifully about love:

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. ⁹For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

That is such a beautiful passage about how fantastic love is. Apparently Ted Haggard needed some kind of love that his traditional marriage to his wife wasn't able to give him. Too bad for him that he couldn't make peace with that. Too bad for his congregation and his family.