I Was Interested To Read A Comment By The Golfer ...

I was interested to read a comment by the golfer Tiger Woods this week. As we all know Tiger Woods had a spectacular fall from grace, so to speak. One minute he was this squeaky clean, highly paid sports star, the toast of the golfing world and the next it was revealed he was a serial adulterer, who sponsors no linger wanted to know and a laughing stock all over the world. This week in his first interview since that scandal broke he said this, “I was living a lie, I really was. And I was doing a lot of things that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalisation, you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly.” Tiger Woods is a Buddhist, not a Christian, but what he said here is very true. A lot of folks are in denial about their true condition – they think of themselves as good as, and often even better than, others. Certainly the Pharisees thought that, and I tend to think there is a little bit of Pharisee in all of us. But once we stop justifying ourselves, and stop rationalising our sins as things we do “just because that’s the way I am,” or because “that’s the way God made me,” or whatever, and strip away the pretence and the hypocrisy we come to an ugly truth, that deep down inside every one of us is a carefully concealed individual who is self seeking, totally depraved and deeply sinful.