Jack Schaap, an Indiana megachurch pastor with a finely tuned Sincerity Face, has been fired after he was caught sincerely sucking face with a girl who was not his God-endorsed wife. The good news is that the girl appeared to consent to the makeout sesh. The super, extra gigantic bad news is that according to some sources, she's underage. God impregnated the Virgin Mary when she was, like, 14, so I don't understand what the big deal is here.
The 54-year-old Schaap was the head of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, the 20th largest church by population in the US with a congregation of some 15,000 parishioners. He was busted just days ago, when a deacon at First Baptist retrieved Schaap's cell phone for him just in time to see a picture message arrive from Schaap's young paramour. The picture showed the two of them — the girl and the God guy — making out.
Schaap is married to the daughter of another megachurch pastor, and the two have two adult children. When he isn't preaching the word of God, he's writing marriage advice books. I swear I didn't make that up. Here's a sort of creepy passage from one called Divine Intimacy,
When a person acts out by his life actions that lie about the truth of the Bible, God gets very upset. Nothing symbolizes more of what God has with the believer like the romantic, intimate, physical intimacies between a husband and wife. The wife receives her husbands body. Ephesians 5:23 says that the husband is Christ in the home. When a wife receives her husband's body, she is saying, 'I just want to remind you, Christ, that I am receiving You'.
And another,
The person who deeply loves Christ understands that when He receives Christ as Saviour, it is a spiritual intercourse. A person receives the body of Christ. A Christian is the female gender in the spiritual realm, and God is the male gender of the spiritual realm. When a person receives Christ as Saviour, he is receiving Christ as a lover.
Maybe he wasn't wearing his glasses that day and, in his haze, he could have sworn the teenage girl was Jesus? IDK, maybe they have similar hairstyles and beards.
Other books by marriage expert/philanderer Jack Schaap include How to Speak Husband, Marriage: God's Original Intent, and How to Speak Wife.
What's Wife for "I'm sorry I cheated on you with a girl who may be as young as 16?"
[NYDN]
DISCUSSION
Jack Schaap originally hails from Holland, Michigan.
For people who are familiar with Holland, the idea that a tightly-wound, hyper-Christian knowitall would be secretly doing something sinful verging on criminal should come as no surprise. For people unfamiliar with Holland...it has a quaint downtown area.