Oh Tiger! What have you done?
I admit it. I have been a Tiger fan. Whenever he played, I cheered for him. Clearly he is the best to ever play the game of golf. I envied his fluid, forceful swing and his magical use of a putter. His smile was infectious. But we have learned that he has a bad hook in his personal life and he has hit the ball out of bounds. There is now a triple bogey on his lifetime scorecard and it will not go away. The scorecard has been attested and signed by many witnesses.
Tiger needs a mulligan.
Tiger is the most famous international sports figure. He has been making about $100 million a year in endorsements, in addition to what he makes playing the game. He had a squeaky clean image until, in the middle of the night, he drove his Cadillac SUV into a tree and fire hydrant outside his home on a residential street he had driven on hundreds of times.
Like the rest of the world, I have gone through a wide range of emotions as the story has unfolded, everything from shock and disappointment to anger.
But one thing sticks out in the story for me. There is no evidence of a sense of shame. There is embarrassment but not shame. The embarrassment is for being discovered not for having done something morally wrong. All the attention has been focused on what will happen to Tiger’s quest for more trophies and records. What will happen to Tiger’s riches? What will Elin, his wife, do now? And what about the kids?
Forgotten in the whole saga is what God must think about this! No one is writing about God’s take on the story. There is no sense of guilt for offending a holy God with selfish behavior.
BILL CLINTON AND JIMMY SWAGGART
When President Bill Clinton’s infidelities were revealed, he came to the place of confession. On September 11, 1998 at the National Prayer Breakfast, he said, “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned.”
Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was involved with a prostitute at a Metaire, Louisiana hotel. Some associates secretly flattened the tires on Swaggart’s car and took photographs of Swaggart exiting the hotel with the prostitute. On February 21, 1988, on his television show, Swaggart tearfully confessed that he was guilty of sin and compared himself to King David.
Clinton and Swaggart are not the only public officials to have said, “I have sinned.” There is an endless list of philandering politicians who have needed to confess. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) flew 8,000 miles to Argentina for an illicit relationship. When Sanford admitted his extramarital affair, he said, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are moral absolutes and that God’s law indeed is there to protect you from yourself, and there are consequences if you breach that.”
I have no way of knowing the sincerity of the confessions of President Clinton, Jimmy Swaggart or any other public official. We have no way of knowing whether their publicity-seeking cleansing rituals were genuine or simply designed by their press departments. I only know that there was an awareness of moral wrongdoing, a need for confession to God and a need for God’s forgiveness.
They did say, “I have sinned.” Such a moral statement is so far missing from the Tiger Woods’ story and of course, our world in general.
WHATEVER BECAME OF SIN?
More than 30 years ago, I read the book Whatever Became of Sin? written by the influential psychiatrist, Dr. Karl Menninger. Menninger bemoaned the loss of the concept of sin and personal responsibility. He contended that the modern denial of sin, as evidenced by the use of alternative euphamisms, produced psychological trauma.
According to Menninger, humans readily acknowledge sin as a weakness, a mistake, or a problem in the social environment but fail to acknowledge sin as an offense to God. He said there is a need to recover a definition of sin as moral guilt and assume responsibility for that behavior. Sin is not just what is illegal, it is what is morally reprehensible to God and falls short of his standard.
KING DAVID
Tiger should talk with King David. At least he should familiarize himself with the story. David went through a similar public humiliation. David thought his behavior was secret but the Jerusalem tabloids quickly made it public knowledge. Tiger could relate.
David attempted to ignore the consequences of his behavior, but he later wrote that he paid a terrible price in his physical body as he attempted to deal with his guilt. He said he groaned all day, he felt the heavy hand of God pressuring him and at night, his tears of grief flooded the pillow. David’s sin affected him mentally, emotionally and physically and all those reactions were symptoms of his deteriorating relationship with God.
I don’t know what, if anything, Tiger understands of the biblical teaching of right and wrong. I haven’t heard the word “righteousness” used in the discussion. And the concept of sin is not in anyone’s thinking. God is left out of the daily reports of infidelity in the press.
Psalm 51 provides a model prayer for dealing with a crisis like the one Tiger is going through. It would be good for him to read the psalm and embrace its message personally. The psalm outlines many critical principles. Let me mention three essential principles for dealing with immoral behavior.
Have mercy on me, O God., according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. ( Psalm 51:1-2).
1. Acknowledge God.
When the crisis broke, David did not demand his privacy or limit his statements to short emails. He called on God. He prayed, O God.
David did not attempt to bargain with God. Nor did he seek to shift the blame to Bathsheba. He did not try to justify his sins in light of the pressures of his office. The mightiest man in the kingdom put himself at the mercy of God. One relationship mattered: God and David. David was more concerned about what God thought of him than what his PR agents thought of him.
David was not confused in his understanding of God. David recognized that God is merciful, loving and compassionate. Our world has forgotten this. People think God is mean and is trying to make life difficult for us. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is on our side. His ways make our lives better and more fulfilling, not miserable and lacking in excitement.
When anyone faces a personal crisis of behavior, the most important issue is to acknowledge and clarify our understanding of God.
2. Admit sin.
We’ve forgotten what sin is. Sin is rebellion against God. Sin is a moral crookedness, a perversion and depravity. Sin is behavior that misses the mark.
David knew what he had done was sin and admitted his sin to God. Of course, God already knew, but David said, Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. (Psalm 51:4).
When we lose a sense of the ugliness of sin, we forget that it necessitates the gracious mercy of God. David didn’t lose sight of this.
3. Appeal to God.
David asked God to blot out or expunge the record of his sinful behavior from his record book. David appealed for God to wash the pollution from his life. The imagery behind the word wash is the action of washing clothes. Before modern machines and detergents, an Israelite washed clothes by beating the dirt from the clothes between two rocks. David prayed, “Lord, beat the ingrained pollution from my life.”
David pleaded with God to cleanse him from his missing of the target. David sought cleansing from the defiling character of sin.
Blot out! Wash by beating out! Get the impurities out! David prayed with intensity.
THE GATES OF REPENTANCE
When President Clinton made his “I have sinned” statement, he quoted from the Jewish liturgy book, Gates of Repentance. He cited the following from the Yom Kippur liturgy.
”Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively.
“But for us, turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to make a turn. It means breaking old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong, and this is never easy. It means losing face. It means starting all over again. And this is always painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means recognizing that we have the ability to change.
“These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday’s ways. Lord help us to turn, from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from carelessness to discipline, from fear to faith. Turn us around, O Lord, and bring us back toward you. Revive our lives as at the beginning, and turn us toward each other, Lord, for in isolation there is no life.”
President Clinton made another statement that day that we could only pray Tiger Woods and other public officials would understand. He said, “The children of this country can learn in a profound way that integrity is important and selfishness is wrong, but God can change us and make us strong at the broken places.”
The good news for Tiger is that God wants to give him a mulligan. Our God is the God of a second chance.
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