How High the Pedestal?

America is obsessed with celebrity culture.  But it is also obsessed with the downfall of those same celebrities.  The grocery store counter is festooned with magazines that celebrates their triumphs and their failures.  The internet and cable news channels are littered with celebrity stories.  The cable news will literally dump a major news stories, about an international crisis or a natural disaster, to go to the trial or arrest of a fallen pop star.

Despite these warnings, we are still constantly putting up celebrities on pedestals that cannot possibly support them.  TV reality stars, like Paula Deen and Phil Robertson,say or do outlandish things.  Countless TV evangelists fall prey to greed and/or sexual misconduct.  Politicians of all stripes reveal their human weaknesses.

The most egregious of them reveal themselves not just to be subject to sinful impulses, as are we all, to one degree or another, but also as first-class hypocrites.  The very thing that they may be known for in public as standing in opposition to, or known for railing against, is the sin they themselves commit.

And so we come to the Duggars.  Part of that small group of humanity who have been elevated to reality star status, famous for a television show, this one constructed around the fact that they have a large family.  I believe it must be that they have nineteen children, or maybe it's more.  The name of their show is 19 and Counting, so I'm guessing there's at least nineteen.

Their claim to fame rests not just on the fact that they have this large family.  They also are well known for their socially conservative politics, including their wanting to limit the rights of the LGBT community.  They conflate the gay community with pedophilia, something that really has no association whatsoever.

The sad fact was that the abuse that they so loudly condemned was present in their own family.  Josh Duggar, one of their nineteen sons and daughters, confessed to molesting young girls, including some of his own sisters.  The parent's efforts at reporting these crimes were delayed, mixed and somewhat feeble.  They sent him to a friend's ranch to work on a building project for a few months, presumably as a kind of therapy.  The friend they sent him to later had to resign his position due to molestation accusations.  They sent him to a policeman they knew to talk to him about the consequences of his actions, and to help straighten Josh out.  That policeman can't help him anymore.  He is now in prison for child pornography charges.

Josh was only fourteen when these incidents occurred.  In my opinion, these actions still warranted sanctions.  But they also required proper therapy, love and support.  I don't know how valuable it is for this not to be dealt with legally and medically, instead of in the court of public opinion.  This shouldn't be a headline dominating story.  As awful as it may be, Josh and the family do not deserve to be piled on.

But, then again, we're not the ones with the reality TV show, making the family a fortune.  We're not the ones being hypocrites, accusing the LGBT community, without evidence or reason, of the very crimes that have been committed in your own family.

I think the family should be allowed to heal and deal with this.  I send them my thoughts and prayers to restore their family, and grow and learn.  They just don't need to have a national platform, a reality show, to do so.  They don't need to be listened to anymore when they hypocritically condemn others for crimes that they have committed and covered up within their own family.

Don't get me wrong.  It's not just conservatives who fall short.  My upset at 2008 Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards could fill a whole other column.  He set himself up as the ultimate devoted family man, and his cruel betrayal of his beautiful wife, Elizabeth, went beyond the bounds of simple adultery.

As a Christian, I believe there is only one who didn't fall short.  One who was human and beyond human at the same time.  Only one whose life shines as an example to us all.

We can learn from others, admire others, respect others.  But we have to remember - they are human.  Be careful how high the pedestal is you put them on.  Because the higher you put them up, the harder it is going to be to watch the inevitable fall.