Jesse Jackson destroyed his moral foundation

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, January 30, 2001

(The Rev.

Tuesday, January 30, 2001

(The Rev.) Jesse Jackson has made a career of casting moral stones, but now he claims no one has a right to cast any at him because Jesus said only the sinless can cast stones at such as him. Staking everything on moral principles as he has, Jesse Jackson has destroyed the very moral ground on which he claimed to stand; he must withdraw from public roles until he has convincingly repented and has demonstrated moral recovery.

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Jesse Jackson capped his observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday by acknowledging he had 20 months ago fathered a child out of wedlock. Most news coverage seriously missed the point by reporting it in the self-serving way it was crafted for him. The real issue is not his responsibility for an illegitimate birth, but that he had betrayed himself, his family, and his cause by carrying on an extra-marital affair while continuing to chastise black men for doing precisely that. A child being born but dramatizes his sin, with an innocent, unfortunate child being his victim. Jackson is no more a sinner because a child happened to be born than he was already consequent to his adultery.

His, moreover, was not an announcement but an acknowledgement managed by a public relations firm and timed to beat exposure by "The National Enquirer." Not a confession, everything betrays the fact there is still no repentance but only regret and resentment at being exposed.

Jackson and his supporters argue that Jesus demanded: "’He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’" (John 8:7, as in the King James Version (1611, 1876), which they quote). This ordained Baptist minister, and others who resort to this non-exegesis, are either irresponsibly ignorant of the Bible or, more likely and worse, arrogate to themselves the authority to say scripture says what they wish it did. The casting of stones was not a procedure to accuse a person of sin, but the stipulation of the Mosaic Law for execution. The issue with the "woman taken in adultery" is not moral criticism but retaliatory execution. Everyone on the scene, most decisively Jesus, recognized her sin. Jesus did not disallow moral criticism but demanded repentance and redemption, which he got from the woman but doesn’t from this man.

To claim that "casting stones" was moral criticism, now disallowed in the Jackson case, is to say that Jackson has been casting moralistic stones at social sins all his career but that he alone is exempt from moral criticism. What he claimed to be opposing – e.g., racial prejudice and abuse, immorality and irresponsibility among black men – is indeed a righteous cause. He was sometimes correct, but not nearly often enough. He constantly rushed in and announced final judgment before the facts were known. By the law of averages, he had to be correct occasionally. Let’s credit him when he was, but that cannot compensate for the great number of times he was mistaken.

This country has seen few acts of hubris and hypocrisy as monstrous as when Jackson seized the position to counsel a president about his sexual affairs and then assert Bill Clinton should not be judged, because he, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, understands these things. At the very time he was carrying on his own affair. Clinton tried hard to claim his private affairs do not necessarily diminish his effectiveness as president, but the nation rejected that ploy. Jackson is infinitely worse off, because his news releases always identified him as "the Rev." Demanding the honor and deference normally accorded clergy, he must now be held accountable as one. He based everything in his ministry on his own superior moral rightness, and this serious and significant sin knocks the foundation out from under him.

The time to repent was when he had sex with Karin Stanford. More so, when she had to prove by DNA testing he is the father. It is too late when (as it was with Clinton) he is no longer able to hide his sin. It is a noble thing to plea for compassion, but all this is a political demand for indulgence and exoneration.

He unconvincingly denies sustaining a messianic complex, but claims a resurrection after three days and three nights out of sight in his Chicago living room. Then he stages a come-back before the cameras he so dearly loves.

Jesse Jackson’s cause is still worthy and it does need him, but not as he yet is. He needs truly to repent and honestly work through his moral and spiritual recovery, carefully rebuilding a reason to respect and trust him.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays