Earthen Vessels

I had had been getting some Google hits for my old Midland pastor, Tim Ortiz, which was odd. What was odder was the reason why; he's up on rape ("third-degree criminal sexual conduct") charges.

That's a jaw-dropper.

We left Father's Heart about three years ago when Tim's preaching became (IMHO) a bit too perfectionistic in striving to follow God's will 100.000000000% of the time. I wondered whether I was too lax in my faith or he was over-the-top in his, but when both Eileen and I have a worry-streak that gets us depressed when we get perfectionistic, we needed to leave before we went crazy.

Was Tim dealing with his internal shortcomings by getting perfectionistic in his teaching?

Prayers for him, his family, and the church are an order. A pastor in prison on those charges is going to have a bulls-eye on his back, so even if he did what he is alledged to have done, he still needs prayers for survival in the prison system.

Comments

[Matt Brown]

This kind of stuff is even harder to swallow when it's a good friend. One of my friends from church (a pretty conservative Baptist one) - who was probably the most "spiritual" of our youth group (he went to Pensacola Christian College for undergrad AND grad school) - was accused earlier this year of molesting a 13yo girl. He planned to go on to the mission field, but he met a woman, they had a baby, then they married and had another child, and eventually divorced. He was recently let out of jail on technicalities because the prosecuting attorney didn't complete the proper paperwork on time. I haven't really talked to him in the past few years, but we were fairly tight in high school. If he did what he was alleged to have done, I would never have thought it possible.

[jarofthegeek.blogspot.com]

It's my experience that most people are not what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of people. Most especially the uber-religious people I've known. The more in-your-face, holier-than-thou they are, the more skeletons in the closet.

Plus, we never really know anyone. How we perceive the world around us is informed by how we view ourselves and what decisions we have made about the world. The people we think we know are only projections of how we want to see them. The pastor you knew was the character in your story that you created to represent him. We see what we want to see.