...as for the sad case of Jerry Dewitt

Cracker: You loved David, you love a man you make love with a man, you have a baby, but babies cost money, there’s never enough money, so you talk about abor­tion , you go and see Michael, his advice what does Michael say?

Mag­gie Har­vey: Michael says we will always be wel­come in his church no mat­ter what I do.

Fr. Michael Har­vey: I was try­ing to make it eas­ier for you.

Mag­gie Har­vey: I didn’t want it made eas­ier, I wanted you to say ‘No’. I’m a good Catholic I believe, I go along to my priest a life­time of sac­ri­fice and all I ask for is to pro­tect the child in my womb, but he won’t.

Cracker My Brother’s Keeper 1995

This morn­ing I wrote about non-​believing min­is­ters or priests leav­ing their posi­tions in the church as a good thing. There is how­ever a dif­fer­ence between hav­ing doubts and actual disbelief.

In the Catholic church for exam­ple priests, Bish­ops and even Popes still go to con­fes­sion because they are not free from sin. Those con­fes­sors are also in a way coaches, help­ing peo­ple through the tough times.

And that takes me to the spe­cific case of Jerry DeWitt who is men­tioned in the CNN arti­cle. It’s very clear from his own words where his prob­lems began:

As a young fresh-​faced min­is­ter, DeWitt was first con­fronted with his dis­be­lief when he “became the per­son who got the bur­den of preach­ing about hell,” he said. “I really loved the peo­ple I preached to, I loved them like fam­ily. So imag­ine preach­ing that if you don’t do this, you are going to burn in hell. That wasn’t easy for me.”

“It wasn’t easy for me”. This isn’t a ques­tion of doubt it’s was lazi­ness, unwill­ing to talk about a harsh real­ity because of how it made him feel Think about that for a second:

• Imag­ine if your doc­tor was not will­ing to tell his patients about a dis­ease that could kill them because “he loved the patients” and “it wasn’t easy for him”.
• Imag­ine if a par­ent unwill­ing to cor­rect their chil­dren from doing wrong because “they love their child” and “it wasn’t easy for them”
• Imag­ine if your accoun­tant was unwill­ing to tell you about finan­cial issues because “he loves his client” and “it wasn’t easy for him”.

In fact we see it in Wash­ing­ton today with elected offi­cials unwill­ing to solve our finan­cial issues because they love the peo­ple and “it isn’t easy for them”

In other words, he wanted to be liked. It’s dif­fi­cult to be liked when you are telling unpleas­ant truths that peo­ple might not want to hear, even if Christ him­self said they where true.

There is a rea­son Pride is first on the list of deadly sins.

What we have here isn’t some­one who had dis­be­lief, he had dis­com­fort and because appar­ently he didn’t share his dis­com­fort with some­one with more expe­ri­ence who might have coun­seled him. If he had asked me I would have quoted one of my very first posts:

Some argue that a good God would not allow such a thing, yet they don’t ques­tion that a good law (against mur­der for exam­ple) may cause a per­son to be impris­oned for life or worse. It isn’t bad law its the offend­ers bad choice that makes him liable to judgment.

Our unwill­ing­ness as peo­ple to face that fact is not unlike an over­weight per­son avoid­ing a scale or a per­son sick unwill­ing to see a doc­tor. It is much eas­ier to avoid an unpleas­ant truth than to con­front it and do some­thing about it. To the degree that Satan is active this is by design, denial works in his favor

The Devil is a psy­chol­o­gist and a con man rolled into one and will always steer us toward the eas­ier more com­fort­able choice. Of course he could have talked to peo­ple of more expe­ri­ence, who could have pro­vided some answers, but again the sin of pride, I don’t need any­one else help or opin­ions I can do it all myself.

After doubts about hell, DeWitt began to research other schools of thought about God and belief. He began to develop other doubts, about cer­tain bib­li­cal trans­la­tions and about healing.

And of course the rest for Mr. DeWitt is his­tory. He has the rest of his life do decide oth­er­wise, but if he con­tin­ues on this path the CNN arti­cle will make him pop­u­lar with many in the media, he will appear on TV, he will be lion­ized, he will never lack for speak­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with crowds of peo­ple cheer­ing him while oth­ers less appar­ently and thus not able to fuel his ego will be silently pray­ing for him and if those prayer are not answered affir­ma­tively, if he hears the voices of the crowd above the silent voice whose mes­sage he decided was too hard to express he will achieve the fame and respect he desires and will be held up as an exam­ple to oth­ers for the rest of his life…

…after that he’s on his own. I wish him the best of luck in mak­ing that decision.