My Official Response to My Future Scandal

Whenever there is a scandal in the church, there are always two victims: the thought leader, and his brand.

Actually, that’s horribly insensitive. This is 2022. Sometimes the thought leader is a lady! So that should read “his or her brand.” Note: have my team edit this later

Anyway, scandals are in right now. Sometimes, scandals are good, like if they take down one of your theological rivals. But they can also be bad, like for instance if you are the one being investigated.

Probably the worst part about having a scandal is that you have to quickly put out a statement for your followers to read. But let’s think about chests while everyone else thinks about checkers: why should I wait until my scandal drops to publish my denial and/or apology? Why not do it right now, and be prepared?

Since I don’t know exactly what my scandal will be, I made a list of the big sins and addressed them all. When you see my name pop up in a Kate Shellnutt report, you will already have my response on the record.

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Did I plagiarize something?

I take full responsibility…for my team, who did whatever I am being accused of. You have to understand something: as an evangelical thought leader, I am much too important to think my own thoughts. That’s why I have a team, who come up with my thoughts and then put them into social media posts and books. This frees me up to spend more time doing the hard work of an evangelical influencer: scouring the internet, searching my own name and gloating over every positive comment like the deeply insecure affirmation whore that I am.

Did I take a bunch of money from my followers?

If we look at the Scriptures, we find that Jesus had a lot to say about money. For starters, he said “ye cannot serve both God and Magog.” and when you go to the Greek, Magog translates to “mother of Gog,” which is almost a swear, except for that last letter, so it’s pretty serious.

But let’s get downtown to business: I was helping my followers by taking all their money. You can’t be tempted by the power of riches if you give it all to an evangelical thought leader. When you think about it, I was actually doing them a favor.

Was it a sex thing?

It wasn’t my fault, because seasons. My marriage was in a season of darkness, or my eyes were in a season of disobedience or whatever. Something was in a season of something.

Probably what happened was that I was being friendly to another lady who happened to be attractive, and then I suddenly realized that we were in a season of inappropriate feelings for each other. The exact moment I realized this was when we were totally nude in a hotel room that I had booked under a false name. Then I calmly made the decision to immediately leave before anything untoward happened. Yes, that’s it. When our bare privates were mere millimeters from each other, throbbing and whirring like the instruments in a dentist’s office, I wisely stopped. We didn’t officially do a sex, so you see there was no actual sin. To be frank, if I am guilty of anything, it’s caring too much. That’s why I am taking a break; to refresh and refocus, and learn that I simply cannot try to help every woman who I have recurring sexual fantasies about.

Did I say a bad thing?

If you are a liberal, please know that I am ashamed and heartbroken. The person I am today is not the same person who said that hurtful, shameful thing last week. I am committed to a season of listening and learning, and I will grow from this.

If you are a conservative, I will never bow to the PC mob. I apologize for nothing. This attack on my free speech is nothing short of an attack on America itself.

If you are Steven Curtis Chapman, I am very sorry for checking into that hotel using your name.