Britt Hume's Advice to Tiger Woods

Everyone pretty much knows the story of Tiger Woods' recent fall from grace. It became public that the mega-star athlete and corporation head was a serial adulterer. The married Woods is the father of two kids in diapers and cashed in greatly not only on his golfing acumen, but also on a squeaky-clean family man image.

Since the numerous affairs began to become public at Thanksgiving following a late night domestic incident and auto accident at his home, Woods' sponsorship deals have disappeared and his golf career put on hold as his family disintegrated in public.

Into this mess last Sunday waded Fox News political analyst and veteran newsman Britt Hume. On the program 'Fox News Sunday', the network's key Sunday news offering on major events, the panel participants were commenting on the big stories in the coming year. In the category of sports, Hume decided to tackle the immediate future of Tiger Woods, opining that Woods would indeed recover his golfing career this year.

However, Hume did not stop there. He went on to add that though Woods, who is believed to be a follower of Buddhism in his religious leanings, would indeed regain his golfing status, he might have a more difficult time in battling and overcoming his personal moral demons. Here is the full, exact quote by Hume at it's relevant point:

"My message would be to Tiger..turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

Uh oh, take cover, Britt Hume! Head for the hills! Here come the leftists and atheists with their pitch forks! A Christian daring to go on national television and expound that the best course of action for a fallen human being to take would be to turn to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and redemption? An outrageous scandal in the making!

The responses from the liberals was fast and furious this past week. A perfect example was Huffington Post blogger Eve Tahmincioglu, who termed Hume's commentary "bigotry" and further stated she could only "loosely" call him a journalist. Hume has worked for UPI, has been ABC's chief White House correspondent, and has been in the industry for 40 years, having twice been named 'Best in the Business' by the American Journalism Review.

But that is what liberals do best when their ideals, or lack of them, are challenged. Rather than express their own positive messages that extol their own ideas, liberals attack and smear, taking a page from their Saul Alinsky bible. As Britt Hume showed last Sunday, mainstream America is no longer afraid of these fringe radical attacks on American traditionalism and religious freedoms.

The fact is that the U.S. Constitution does not include any references whatsoever to any 'separation of church and state', and in fact makes numerous references to God, as do numerous other documents including the Declaration of Independence. Rather than stifling or eliminating references to religion, the Constitution simply protects the right of Americans to freely express their religious beliefs without being forced to embrace a state-sponsored particular religion.

For decades now, Christians have been under attack by left-wing radicals who embrace atheist concepts as a part of their socialist or communist agendas. It has been particularly Christians who are attacked because Christianity is far and away the leading religious belief system in America, and because our nation was founded largely by Christians acting on the principles that were espoused by their belief system.

All that Britt Hume did last Sunday was give public utterance to the exact teachings of Jesus Christ Himself. Christ taught "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whomever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father." It just doesn't get any clearer than that.

What Tiger Woods did was to sin, plain and simple. Sin has been called "the greatest evil, being the root and source of all evil." Tiger needs to acknowledge his sin for what it is, he needs to seek forgiveness from his God for that sin, and he needs to seek redemption in the only way possible by believing in and accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior.

Now many believers in other religious systems would take umbrage to that statement. They might believe that there is some other path that Tiger Woods can take to ask for forgiveness and to receive his redemption. Whatever you believe, that isn't the point. The simple point is that Britt Hume, and the nearly 80% of Americans who are also Christian, legitimately believe what he said is plain and simple truth, and that they have a Constitutionally protected right to express that belief.

Expect further attacks from the liberal media including newscasters from other networks, comedians, politicians, and members of other faith systems. At the same time, it is long past time for the more than 200 million Christian Americans to stand up for ourselves and for Christ in a public manner. If they want a fight, it's time to make it a two-sided brawl, for there is nothing more important to humanity or to individual men than the salvation of our immortal souls.

It is not only truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to true redemption for your sins, for Tiger Woods sins, but it is also truth that you will undeniably and absolutely find the peace of mind and the wholeness of self that all human beings seek if you simply do what Britt Hume advised Tiger Woods to do: "turn to the Christian faith", to Jesus Christ and his Word.

NOTE: This is a continuation of the regular 'Sunday Sermon' series, all entries of which you can view by clicking on that label below this aritcle at www.mattveasey.com

Greed is Not Good

"...Greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA." - Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street"

The Catholic Church divided sin into two classes - venial sins, which were relatively minor, and the more serious cardinal sins, which became known classically as the 'seven deadly sins'. These were said to "destroy the life of grace" and brought the threat of eternal damnation on those who practiced them, unless absolved through a formal confession or forgiven through an act of perfect contrition by the offender. One of these was the sin of 'Greed', which is seen as a sin of excess, and is applied in particular to the acquisition of wealth. It is closely alligned to avarice, which can manifest itself in bribery, robbery or theft by means of violence, trickery, betrayal, and even treason. It also covers the scavenging and hoarding of materials, as well as manipulation or abuse of authority. In the film 'Wall Street', Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko delivered the above now-famous speech at a shareholder's meeting. Gekko was trying to woo the shareholder's to accept a bid that his company was making to takeover the Teldar Paper company. His sales pitch was that the current Teldar management was bloated, wasteful, and borderline incompetent. Either that, or they were intentionally abusing their positions to ensure their own personal gain, the shareholders be damned. Gekko flat out says in his speech that the management was not greedy enough. They were not nearly as interested in turning a profit for the company, and increasing it's value for the shareholders, as they were in enjoying "steak lunches, hunting and fishing trips, corporate jets, and golden parachutes." But while Gekko painted himself as a "liberator" of companies, the fact is that his greed was every bit as dangerous for the company and the shareholders as any inappropriate or incompetent acts of the current management. The film highlights the many subjects in play in recent corporate scandals such as the Enron Corporation and Arthur Anderson accounting firm debacle, and today's collapses and bailouts involving Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and Merrill Lynch. Big business, finance, mortgage, and insurance companies playing fast and loose with what is often other people's money, thinking that they have the system so securely managed that nothing can burst their upwards bubble, and not concerned if the bubble does burst because either they will be bailed out by the government, or be able to personally escape with few ramifications as individuals, or both. Fact is that financial speculation comes with risks. If a company or individual manages their finances well, and makes good, sound, stable decisions, they will usually come out ahead in both the long and short terms. If decisions are made on a more short-sighted basis that results in high financial rewards for both individual loan and account managers, as well as for customers, but also exposes all to greater risks, then the fact is that if the worse case develops everyone is going to take a financial hit. In fact, history would say that in such speculative periods the more appropriate word would be 'when' the worse case develops, not 'if'. So lots of bad loans were made, many speculative investments were made, over a number of years, and finally, inevitably, these markets have not been able to hold up, at least not in the short term. Companies and institutions are being sold or folding, or the government has been forced in to prop them up or outright take them over with public money. We the taxpayers have become the owners of mortgage and insurance companies. Much as the management of the fictional Teldar Paper, their poor decisions are coming home to roost. And much as the fictional Gordon Gekko, many of the big money men have proven too big for their britches. But most of them will soar off into the sunset without individual responsibility, some with those golden parachutes that Gekko spoke of in the film. In the end, it will be you and me, the regular tax payer, who will foot the bill for their poor business decisions, and that is not how our system is supposed to work. You can debate the importance of these institutions and their solubility from now until doomsday, but the fact remains that the winners are supposed to take it all, and the losers are supposed to take the fall, based on their business decisions. If it takes a few big businesses going under, if it takes a ton of money being lost, to straighten out what has ultimately become a house of cards, then so be it. Incompetence and greed, which despite what Gekko said is not good, should never be rewarded. The results of both deserve to be left to suffer the consequences, as educational for both the participants and for the rest of us.

Forgive Yourself

Apparently there are many Christians out there who, even after participating in the Catholic sacramental process of confession and reconciliation, find that they continue to worry about past sins for years after they have confessed them. The fact for many people is that the Lord forgives more easily than we can forgive ourselves. In the New Testament, John 3:17 says it most completely: "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." Let's start by dealing with the forgiveness of sins as the Church deals with it. God gave us two ways to be forgiven of our sin. First is the sacrament of Baptism, which I spoke more fully about last weekend at this blog. Baptism was given by God to take away the 'Original Sin' committed by Adam in the Garden of Eden, as well as to cleanse our souls of any sins committed by us prior to our baptism. At Pentecost, Peter, who Christ had left as the first steward of his Church, said: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins..." Of course, man is an imperfect creature, and he will sin even after being cleansed and forgiven at baptism. To help man with sins committed after baptism, another process was needed, which has been called by the names confession, penance, and reconciliation after the three main parts of this process. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins and to forgive them as well. After His resurrection, He said to the apostles: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you...If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." Knowing that He would not always be among men physically, Christ passed the power to forgive sins on to His followers, and instructed them to pass this along to their successors. Thus we have the formal forgiveness of sins today in the confessional. Some people are afraid to go into the confessional and face a priest to ask for forgiveness. Maybe they have been away from the Church for a time, perhaps a long time, and are embarrassed both by their sins and by their estrangement. Others are simply resentful, feeling that they should just be able to deal with God directly, and not have to use a 'middle man' like a priest. Some have especially taken this attitude with the emergence in recent years of sexual abuse scandals within the priesthood itself. "Why should I ask those pedophiles to forgive me of my sins?" is an attitude that has been expressed. The fact is, these are only excuses, not reasons, for missing out on the sin-forgiveness process. Fear needs to simply be overcome, and there is only one way: just do it. Find out when your local church holds confessions, go there during that time, sit in a pew for a few minutes praying for strength and reminding yourself of some of your more egregious sins, and then get into that confessional and lay it all out with the priest, even telling him of your fears. Pride needs to be overcome, the feeling that maybe you know better how to have your sins forgiven, and give the process a chance. Once you give up the pride, overcome the fear, and get into the confessional and begin talking to the priest, I guarantee you that the feeling you have on leaving that confessional will be uplifting and freeing. I hope and pray that more of you actually take the opportunity to get back into the formal penance process, and back into Church itself, sharing in Christ's body in the Eucharist. That said, even should you do so, you have only won half the battle. God has fully forgiven you, but you still will need to let go and forgive yourself. First, know this: Jesus loves sinners. Again in the New Testament, Mark 2:15-17 quotes Jesus Himself as saying: "People who are healthy do not need a doctor; sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the self-righteous." In most surveys on the subject, the reason that people have left and stayed away from the Church go back to pain: the pain from sin, abuse, divorce, addiction, abandonment, betrayal, failure, poverty, loneliness, etc. One of the biggest sources of pain has always been described by respondents as guilt over past sins. This guilt has spoiled relationships, caused sleeplessness and depression, and caused many to say things to themselves such as: "God doesn't want to have anything to do with me." Fact is, nothing could be further from the truth. Sin causes these worries for a reason. Sin is evil, committed intentionally. We have taken some action, said some words, thought some idea that we absolutely know full well is wrong. It is a violation of one of God's commandments, particularly Jesus' command for us to love one another as He has loved us. William McKee has written of three ways to stop worrying about past sins. First, don't be a 'connector'. Stop thinking that bad things happen to you now because of your past sins. God doesn't work that way. Second, don't make 'comparisons'. Just because you perceive someone else to be holier or more perfect than you doesn't make it so. You have no idea what goes on in someone else mind, or behind their closed doors. You can only worry about yourself and your thoughts, words, and deeds. Finally, and perhaps most difficult, develop a 'positive self image'. It is not vanity to think well of yourself. It has often been said that you need to love yourself before you can love others, and this is very true. The roots of your past go deep, but the fact of the matter is that you are likely a much better person at heart than you give yourself credit for. One thing that is important to remember here is that self-love does not really come from ourselves 'looking in the mirror'. It comes from the reflection that we see of ourselves in others. How does our family view us? Our friends? Our peers? No matter what you currently think of yourself, start acting differently. Start treating others really well on purpose. Start talking to people in a positive tone, not using profanity, comforting and encouraging them. Do this regularly, and you will be amazed at the response that you receive from them over time, and at the improvement you will feel in your own self image. You are a child of God, and He sent his Son so that your sins might be forgiven. Don't be afraid, and don't be vain. Give the Church another chance. Go to confession, be forgiven, and then most importantly, forgive yourself. Removing the weight of your sins from your life, your thoughts, your relationships will free you to experience God's love more fully, and will indeed free you to both love yourself and others more completely. God bless you.