By now, virtually every American not on an expedition to Antarctica has heard about Rev. Jesse Jackson’s crude and offensive remarks picked up by a live mic in a Fox News studio last Sunday.
Rev. Jackson expressed his extreme displeasure about Sen. Obama supposedly “speaking down to black people.” Most observers believe the specific remarks that triggered Rev. Jackson’s outburst were uttered by Sen. Obama in a Father’s Day speech at a black church in which the senator admonished absent black fathers by saying, “We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child–it’s the courage to raise one.”
Rev. Jackson’s son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., issued a blistering repudiation of his father’s comments saying that while he would always “love his father,” he did “thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.” Rev. Jackson has apologized to Sen. Obama for his comments.
One point that I have not heard made in the barrage of criticism directed at Rev. Jackson is the extreme vulgarity of his comments. Some have talked about his “crude” language, but as far as I know, no one has pointed out that Rev. Jackson’s comments are particularly beyond the pale for a man of the cloth.
As a minister myself, I am even more shocked that Rev. Jackson would state that he–how shall I put it?–wanted to remove Sen. Obama’s procreative abilities. Am I suggesting that ordained ministers should be held to an even higher standard of conduct than non-ordained people? Yes, I am.
The New Testament is quite clear that people who would be pastors or ministers are held to a higher standard than other Christians (1 Tim. 3:1-7) and even other church officers such as “deacons” (1 Tim. 3:8-13). I, for one, do hold ministers, including myself, to a higher standard of conduct and that includes both not harboring such hostile and vicious thoughts toward others and not verbalizing them in such vulgar and crude language.