The High Cost of Low Living
Ted Haggard, Todd Bentley, ex-Revolution Church pastor Gary Lamb, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Jon and Kate Gosselin, and Carrie Prejean (speculative based on a personal standard of defining lingerie as “nudity”, I even think the author of the article I am referencing has grossly mis-labeled Prejean because Prejean was fired for taking appearances without the consent of the Miss USA pageant) all seem to have one common thread running through them….
The are about to experience the cold-hard facts that there is a:
“High Cost For Low Living”
Emotional adultery, sexual adultery, allegations of sexual infidelity and the impending divorce, and the “photos”. All of this from “celebrity Christians” who many people looked up to (some to the point of idolatry) for “proof” that the religious-right’s “official Christian perspective” of theopolitics actually works or in Bentley’s case, the Lakeland Revival was legitimate.
I had thought about this term ever since these stories broke out and how true it really is to only be reinforced later on after reading Mark Galli’s article entitled The Scandal of the Public Evangelical (much of this article I do not necessary agree with) over at Christianitytoday.com.
I remember hearing this term almost twenty years ago from an friend of mine who later on in his own life, had to experience that very high cost for some low living he had done. It also reminded me of a very famous Allman Brothers song by the name “High Cost of Low Living”
Below are the lyrics
You’re the life of the party, everybody’s host
Still you need somewhere you can hide
All your good time friends
And your farewell to has-beens
Lord knows, just along for the rideYou think you’re a survivor
But boy, you better think twice
No one rides for nothin’
So, step up and pay the priceChrous:
It’s the high cost of low livin’
Ain’t it high time, you turn yourself around?
Yeah, the high cost of low livin’
Is bound to put you six feet in the groundSo many here who love you
But still, you just can’t tell
The real ones and those who drop your nameAll the while behind your back
They lift the flesh right from your bones
You should know by now, we’re all fair gameYou’ve been chasing each dream with whiskey
From here to Tokyo
Usin’ up all your real friends
Places left to gorepeat chrous
Don’t look behind you
Ahh, don’t look back
Don’t try to find reason in the past
Past is gone, gone at lastrepeat chrous
Every one of these people will have to pay that High Cost that they never imagined that they would (1): ever had to pay, and (2): if they figured out that there was a cost for low living, the cost is a whole lot more expensive that they ever dreamed. In fact, out of these two instances, you see three distinct personalities rise up
(1): The one who blames everybody else for his low living in the name of damage control.
(2): The one who was willing to pay a little bit but when realizes that this was costing them more than expected, started to fight over the actual cost in the name of cost cutting.
(3): The one who realizes that they are already doomed and accepts his fate in the attempt to go on with their life.
It’s easy to know what happens to the sinner who doesn’t repent. They act like nothing ever happened. What usually happens to the sinner who decides to go through a “season” of repentance:
(1): They either go for a “quickie” repentance to say “they did it” but are anxious to get back into the conference circuit because “the show must go on” (and the bank account is running dry)
(2): They go to repentance but go to their buddies of “yes men” to where they will be convinced that “the other party was the root cause” or “the spouse was no longer pretty enough”
(3): They go to repentance but choose a counseling group outside of the scope and authority of their district overseers because they fear that the counseling group of the overseers will remember all the numbers and money lost along with “secular-devil liberal news media scrutiny” and hold the “repenting sinner” back from ministry for a ridiculous amount of time in the name of “life grudge” or as a way to “hold him down” to where they can seize power and control. (personal opinion aside, I believe that is why Ted Haggard went to Arizona because the ones originally scheduled to walk him through his repentance probably would have “life grudged” him because of the liberal tide the nation took)
(4): They go to repentance, paid their price, come back “restored”, and are taking proactive steps to ensure that “low living / sin” never happens again.
It’s hard when the people we “leach” upon fall because we truly believe that somehow Christianity in America is going to die or get suppressed to further persecution with black helicopters looking for us. We get angry with righteous indignation because we can no longer perform “name-drop evangelism” using our christian celebrity we vicariously want to be. We then grumble because we are now forced to evangelize through us learning everyday to live right by carrying the cross and crucifying the flesh.
It’s easy to see now. We leeched on these people to “do the job” of evangelism that we were supposed to do. We went for the atomic bomb evangelism to reach the masses with one punch instead of being content over the fact that we were able to just reach one soul.
We are Christians, we are supposed to be different. We are to be “not of this world” even though we have to everyday “live in this world”. The fundamentalists / holiness people went too far to one extreme while the “greasy gracers” went to the other extreme. Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart’s fall should have scared the church more and more to live more right but we chose to instead blame a “devil news media” and dump these people as if we never knew them instead of acknowledging their sin and tried to restore them while fighting over who got Christian Disneyland in the end.
This created the two-sided coin of one side consisting of pastors who hide everything in fear of being caught and dumped over the side having to discover who the real friends were and who were the friends that leached on. The other side of the coin consists of the pastors who will choose to continue sinning because no one will force them to deal with the sin.
The shame is that in the limelight, the christian celebrity we idolize and see as our next Billy Graham or our next Ronald Reagan usually end up dumping the true and loyal friends for the name-droppers and leeches that brag and boast about being ‘their buddy’. They go all over the world proclaiming their power while in their own private world everything is falling apart.
Even though the Christian public lambastes these people when they fail to turn America into the utopia of men like Falwell, Rushdoony, Dobson, and others; the Christian public has also sinned equally by trying to create idols, heroes, and fighters, and lovers out of these people.
And what is Christian America’s solution to a leader who steps down because of moral turpitude?
Find another charismatic figurehead quick to be our new celebrity and continue the fight. Have a repent-a-thon and invent new sins to repent from. Extremely react back to a hyper legalistic state thinking we will find the middle balance when the chaos is over with but eventually fearing to take the step for the middle fearing that this is the re-stumbling back into an apostacy.
… and eventually the cycle repeats itself when the celebrity falls and we end up paying a higher price for lower living….
Some of these men never recover and go to their graves. Some of these men claim to be free just enough for the circus to continue while never recovering and eventually go to their graves. Very, very few of these men actually pay the cost and turn around to where tragedy becomes testimony.
After seeing all these celebrity Christians “fall”, are you more scared now about the state of your personal walk with Christ? Or are you more scared about your “competition”?
I am scared about the personal walk!
My weakness appear to be more stronger
My strengths appear to be more weakened
You know you are eternally secure but you know Romans 6 resonates within you….
God forbid!
As you feel like the secret trap door is about to open up with you on top about to fall down the chute?
We can pay a little now or a lot later and the lower we go and the longer we wait to confess, the higher the cost is. If you want to live low, be prepared to pay the cost. If you want to stress yourself above and beyond the human body to the point of weakness and easy submitting to temptation and sin, be prepared to pay the cost.
I don’t want to live low. I want to live righteous.
Related Posts
- Christian Celebrity Repentance Episodes
- The High Tech Church
- Now It’s Time To Repent
- The Odd Couple
- Interesting Articles on The Lakeland Revival
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