Steven Seagal...The Pastor?

It looks like Osama bin Laden's death is having unintended consequences for all of us.  The pastor of a Bible fellowship church has recently had to admit that he made up a story about his military service record. 

Specifically, the pastor had to admit to his congregation, to his family, to the national public, that while he served in the Navy, he never actually served in the Vietnam war or as a Navy SEAL as he had claimed for the better part of two decades.

The pastor apparently melded together stories from Steven Seagal's 1990s action train wreck, "Under Siege" and Demi Moore's "G.I. Jane" to create his own tale of his own Navy service complete with tales of water boarding and kitchen duty for his bad boy attitude.

Pastors are human and live in a messy and fallen world.  We do too little to allow pastors the space to be human.  Because they are in the care of our souls, we expect them to be perfect and when they are not, we make them pay for it by allowing them to fall very hard.

While pastors have special duties outlined in Paul's epistles, they are not unlike other Christians--they are working out their own salvation and space in this world.

I certainly understand how this pastor's story could very well have begun as a harmless omission and ended in an admission to millions of people.  I have seen over-worked and under-paid pastors plagiarize sermons, or neglect the sick and shut in under their care because they only have enough hours in the week to attend to the fiscal matters of their church.  I understand all of that and have compassion on pastors.

But, what I struggle with in this instance and in other instances is that pastors and clergy must sync the messages they send in the pulpit with the messages they send outside of it so that they do not become walking contradictions. 

If we preach against homosexuality in the pulpit, but engage in homosexual conduct, we loose moral authority to lead.  If we smoke, or drink, or even lie and say that we do not and encourage others not to, but we find ourselves drinking and lying and smoking habitually, we loose the capacity to lead in a spiritual context.

I embrace rather than hide the skeletons in my closet.  I occasionally curse, even when I am preaching, I have hustled and relate to hustlers, I love everyone including gays, lesbians, drug addicts, the marginalized and, as Reverend Judah has eloquently said in another article, I am not morally opposed to drinking.

For some that makes me unfit to lead in the spiritual setting.  However, what's worse, someone who walks the same way that he speaks or Reverend Steven Seagal who tells others not to lie but does so himself?