Tiger Woods and his fall from grace has been a shocking revelation to everyone. How does one go from demi-god to goat in a few days? From a squeaky clean cultural icon to the butt of late night jokes?
Many are asking, Why? Why, Tiger, did you do it? You are worth a billion dollars. You have a beautiful wife and gorgeous kids. You own mansions in every corner of the world. You who are so high up on the pedestal of man’s adoration–what could have possessed you to do such things?
Many excuses have been offered by the press. He had lived a sheltered life. Golf was his only world, and he didn’t have a normal childhood. His “dating life” growing up was skewered because of his early celebrity.
Please. Enough of man’s sappy wisdom. What is the raw straight truth as to why he did it?
The Scriptures of truth speak of a corrupt spiritual condition we are all born with [1]. We are born with an old sinful nature. And this old heart is incorrigible. You can dress it up nice every Sunday morning, change the music that it listens to and the books that it reads, but if still alive and given the chance, it will sin. It cannot change itself. Try as we might, we cannot effect a lasting change for our old sinful nature. It has to be stopped, but we in our own power cannot change ourselves [2].
And when you add riches to this old nature, self-deception increases dramatically. In the mind of man, riches give power, and power gives license to do, they think, whatever they want to do. They think, “I have money and power and fame. I’m somebody special, and I am above the law”, especially the moral law of the universe placed there by the Creator. The “deceitfulness of riches” has tainted the rich man’s mind, deceiving him into thinking that he alone decides what is right or wrong personally for himself [ 3 ].
Like the kings of old, who did whatever came into their mind because they had the power, Tiger Woods has succumbed to the same temptations. Like a classic tragedy worthy of the name, Tiger’s tragic flaw has been exposed, and it is his downfall, even as we speak. And so we all can fall, if we are not sober and vigilant, always on guard against our formidable adversary, the devil [4]. And this enemy does not have a forked tail and horns; he has a forked tongue that lies to us in our thoughts and will lead us away from everything that we love or should love–especially our Maker.
Tiger’s sin? He confessed already his “infidelity,” which is a cleaned-up synonym for adultery. Committing adultery is breaking one of the Ten Commandments, and breaking those is sin [5]. And there is a reason why God commanded us to not do this act. For sin will bring reproach and eventually destroy a person. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” [6].
Sin is a spiritual condition that we are born in, but we are not destined to remain in it! That’s the good news. Christ’s whole message for us in the personal realm is that He came to eradicate sin out of our lives [7 ]. He did this at the cross by taking our sin upon Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God, and dying. And when He died that day roughly 2,000 years ago, our sins, along with our old sinful nature, died with Him!
And when we believe that He rose from the grave, we then receive a new heart, a sinless heart, a new spiritual nature, a new life–in Him. And He then gives us His Spirit, and by faith in His power, He keeps us from falling. We are now “raised to walk in a newness of life”. The old sinful life is gone, “for he that is dead is freed from sin” [8].
But this will only happen when a person is sick and tired of the sinful life they have been living. And this usually happens when they hit rock bottom. When a person gets to the putrid bottom of the spiritual gutter, and they have had enough of the swine-pens of sin, then they can finally hit the Rock of our salvation.
Riches, however, prevent one from hitting rock bottom. That’s why Christ said, “How difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” [9]. Why? Because his riches tell him that it really isn’t that bad. Yeah, you made some mistakes, but nobody’s perfect, right? Look at me. I’ve still got my money. I’ll patch it up. Hey, life is good. Minor bump in the road. That’s all.
And so,to the rich, this truth about how to really repent from sin and sinning becomes so much nonsense and foolishness. Yet Tiger needs this message today. I’m sending it out into the blogosphere. Do you think he’ll ever get it?
Do you think anyone will get it? I do. Because of our destiny in Him. Kenneth Wayne Hancock
- Romans 5: 12
- Romans 7: 17-20
- Matt. 13: 22
- I Peter 5: 8
- I John 3: 4-5
- Proverbs 14: 34
- Romans 6: 6
- Romans 6: 4-18
- Matt. 19: 23
Immortality Road 