I don’t normally write about celebrities, but this is too bizarre to pass up. It is also coincidental that the series on happiness and fulfillment was being written when the whole scandal began to break. In fact, the car crash occurred on Black Friday, and I began posting the series that Sunday. The parallels are too coincidental to not comment on.
What can we learn from this whole thing? Actually, there are several lessons that could be gleaned from this whole, ah-hem, affair:
We all have something to hide. This hearkens to Jesus telling the crowd that he who had no sin was to hurl the first stone. Whatever He wrote upon the ground convicted each of them that their hands were not clean.
Things are not always what they seem. We can look at others and admire them, envy them and even be jealous of them, but we don’t really know what goes on in their lives.
Humanity, civility and respectability are a thinner veneer than we often imagine. It has often been said that Hitler was the exception only because he was given the opportunity. Inside all of us is a monster that needs to be tamed. To put it another way, we are all sinners, and the sin runs deep.
Happiness is often sought from external things. It doesn’t last. Tiger had it all: money, fame, the trophy wife. These are not the things that satisfy in the long run.
Hypocrisy runs in all levels and classes of civilization. That’s because hypocrisy is the normal human sinful condition. Corruption of the spirit is normal. True genuiness, however, is rare.
We need the power of God in our lives to escape these things.
A sermonette speaker in my congregation thought of Proverbs 9:17. "Stolen water is sweet."
He didn't go on quote verse 18, but it applies: "But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of the grave."
@Richard: That passage always reminds me of how animals are drawn to antifreeze. It is sweet to the taste but very poisonous.
Thanks for sharing.