Brit Hume offers some good advice to Tiger Woods on Fox News Sunday, but I have one reservation:
My concern is with Brit's assertion that Tiger can make a complete recovery by turning his life over to Christ. I'm not sure what he means by "complete recovery," but if he means that Tiger can eventually work his way back to the top of the golf world and recover his family as if nothing ever happened, I don't think that's how things work. Our choices, our conduct, have consequences that cannot be erased just because we have turned our life around. Even if Woods followed Hume's advice he'll still have to live with the hurt and devastation he's caused his family and admirers. He still has to live with the fact that it will be very hard for anyone close to him ever to trust him again. He still has to live with the fact that he's become a butt of jokes which will be around for a decade or more. He still has to live with the damage he's done to his reputation.
There is redemption in Christianity to be sure, but many who have all but wrecked their lives and subsequently found forgiveness in Christ have also found their lives reoriented in directions they never would have anticipated. Chuck Colson comes to mind. It may be that part of Tiger's redemption is that he never golfs competitively again, but that, like Colson, he finds himself moving on a path of service rather than a path of personal financial success.
In other words, Hume is right that Woods' best hope is in the life-changing power of the Gospel, but no one should think that just because one has been rescued from a burning building that their own burns will be miraculously healed. Instead, we often have to learn to live with their pain even as we are filled with gratitude that we were rescued before we were completely destroyed.
RLC