Fired Megachurch Pastor Perry Noble Implies Porn is Worse Than Alcohol Abuse

Veronica Neffinger | iBelieve Contributor | Updated: Jul 26, 2016

Fired Megachurch Pastor Perry Noble Implies Porn is Worse Than Alcohol Abuse

Megachurch pastor Perry Noble was recently fired from his position with NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina over allegations of alcohol abuse.

Noble issued a statement owning up to his abuse of alcohol:

"Let me be very clear, neither [my wife] nor I have committed any sort of sexual sin. I have not stolen money. I have not been looking at porn and there was absolutely no domestic abuse."

"I never had a problem drinking alcohol socially," he continued, "but in the past year or so I have allowed myself to slide into, in my opinion, the overuse of alcohol."

Craig Gross, writing for RelevantMagazine.com, takes issue with Noble’s statement.

“In case you haven't caught it, let me make it clear: Noble is saying that being consumed by alcohol is NOT AS BAD as having an affair or beating up your spouse. Or looking at porn,” writes Gross.

In a culture where megachurch pastors seem to so often fall out of grace for an extramarital affair or an addiction to pornography, perhaps Noble’s statement makes some sense, but Gross also makes a valid point that we cannot make a hierarchy of sin.

“I don't want to get into a discussion about which sins are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others. I know that all sin is the same in God's eyes, but, unfortunately, we don't always see with those eyes. We see with human eyes, and our human eyes put more weight on some behaviors than we do with others,” writes Gross.

The path to take for pastors who fall into sin has to be one of honesty, says Gross, and we, as Christians, need to give pastors space to be honest.

Publication date: July 26, 2016



Fired Megachurch Pastor Perry Noble Implies Porn is Worse Than Alcohol Abuse