I'm knocking our pitiful, pathetic lawmakers. And I thank God

The words of Jimmy Swaggart — “I'm knocking our pitiful, pathetic lawmakers. And I thank God that President Bush has stated, we need a Constitutional amendment that states that marriage is between a man and a woman.” — rise from the fervor of conviction, echoing the tone of a man who saw himself standing in defense of what he believed to be divine truth. Spoken in a time of moral and political tension, these words are not calm philosophy, but the fire of a preacher’s pulpit — the voice of one who felt the world slipping away from sacred order and into the uncertainty of human redefinition. Swaggart, the evangelist and televangelist of great renown and controversy, uttered these words in the early 2000s, during the great cultural debates surrounding same-sex marriage in the United States. His message was both a lament and a battle cry: a lament for what he saw as the decay of moral foundations, and a call to enshrine, by law, his vision of marriage’s divine design.

To understand the weight of Swaggart’s declaration, one must look to the time and spirit in which it was spoken. The early twenty-first century was a crossroads of moral thought, where centuries of religious tradition collided with the rising tide of secular and humanist ideals. Marriage, once understood universally as the union of a man and a woman, had become the battleground upon which societies debated the meaning of love, family, and even truth itself. To Swaggart, who preached from the deep well of Christian fundamentalism, this was no mere legal matter — it was a war for the soul of civilization. Thus his denunciation of “pitiful, pathetic lawmakers” was not political theater, but moral outrage — a cry against what he believed to be betrayal: the abdication of divine law for human compromise.

Yet beneath his thunder lies a truth older than politics — the struggle of humanity to reconcile faith and freedom, tradition and change. Swaggart’s words represent one side of that eternal struggle: the fear that when the laws of men depart from the laws of God, society itself unravels. For him, to redefine marriage was to desecrate the covenant that, in his view, had been ordained since Adam and Eve — the sacred bond upon which family, morality, and even civilization were built. In his eyes, lawmakers who entertained new definitions of marriage were not progressives, but rebels against divine order, architects of moral collapse. And in this belief, he joined a long lineage of voices — from prophets of the Old Testament to priests of medieval Christendom — who sought to anchor the changing world in the timeless decree of heaven.

But history, ever the patient teacher, shows that such moments of conflict between tradition and transformation are the crucibles of moral growth. When Martin Luther nailed his theses to the church door, he too was accused of rebellion against divine order. When Galileo declared that the Earth moved around the sun, his truth was branded heresy. And when the abolitionists of the nineteenth century rose to end slavery — an institution many then defended with scripture — they were called destroyers of God’s law. Each age must wrestle with its own understanding of righteousness, and in this struggle, the line between faith and fear, revelation and rigidity, often blurs. Swaggart’s words, then, are both the echo of deep conviction and the reflection of an ancient human dilemma: how to hold fast to faith while the world turns.

One might remember the story of Socrates, who was condemned by Athens for corrupting the youth with new ideas. Like Swaggart, his accusers feared that moral decay would follow when tradition was questioned. Yet time revealed that what they saw as corruption was, in truth, awakening. So too, in every generation, the clash between the old and the new is not merely a war of laws, but of hearts — between those who guard what has been and those who reach toward what could be. Swaggart’s passion, though bound to his own era’s understanding, reflects this timeless struggle: the desire to preserve the sacred in a world that seems to forget it.

And yet, even in his fervor, Swaggart’s quote teaches an important lesson for both believer and skeptic alike. It reminds us that moral conviction, if not tempered by humility, can become a sword that wounds rather than heals. True righteousness does not fear debate, nor does it seek to crush dissent beneath legislation. Whether one believes as Swaggart did or not, one must recognize the danger of making law the servant of zeal rather than justice. For faith that seeks to rule rather than to serve forgets its own foundation — love. And love, whether between man and woman, or any two souls joined in fidelity and respect, is the essence of what all sacred traditions seek to honor.

So, my children, learn this: every age will test the meaning of morality, and every generation will stand at the edge of change. Some will guard the past; others will fight for the future. Do not despise either, for both are needed to keep the world in balance. Let your convictions be strong, but your hearts be open. Speak truth, but listen with grace. For even as the fires of debate burn through the ages — over marriage, over faith, over what is right and good — it is not law alone that will save humanity, but compassion. Laws may bind the hands, but only love can bind the heart.

And thus, the words of Jimmy Swaggart, though spoken in anger, endure as a reminder of this: that when we battle over the meaning of sacred things, we must never forget the sacredness of one another. Whether one stands with him or against him, his passion points to a truth the ancients knew well — that in every argument about justice, God is not found in the shouting, but in the listening.