Forgiveness, Freedom & Tiger Woods
Today at 1 p.m., Tiger Woods will face reporters in an unfiltered interview format since his car crash at his house in late November. The bizarre details surrounding that night remain a mystery but are perhaps overshadowed by the larger questions that have been created by the details that have come out since that night.
Today will the first opportunity for the media to try satisfy the public curiosity. No doubt there will be some new nugget of information that comes out of this session, but my guess is that the deeper questions will remain a mystery.
Perhaps the reason for that is that Tiger himself is just now beginning to uncover those truths.
In my Easter message this past weekend, I said that the whole story of Christian faith involves both forgiveness and freedom. If we are under the impression that following Christ is just about being forgiven, we’ve only engaged half of the story. It’s an important half, but half nonetheless.
The message of the empty tomb is that God not only has the power to forgive sins, God has the power to set us free from our addiction to them.
Some might think “addiction” is too strong a word. If so, perhaps this words from Paul’s letter to the church at Rome will shed some light on my thinking.
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
I do what I do not want to do.
Throughout his writings, Paul calls this slavery, and addiction is one of the most devastating forms of it.
The week that the new first broke that Tiger was participating in an in-patient rehab program, I heard many commentators on say things like…
“Tiger’s not an addict. He’s just a guy.”
“That’s just what guys do.”
“There’s no such thing as sex addiction. It’s called being human.”
And yet there is still this nagging question… There is still the mystery that heightens our curiosity…
Why would Tiger Woods, the man who seemingly had everything, risk it all for this?”
I do what I do not want to do.
Talk to almost any family member who has had a love one wrestle with an addiction and they will say the same thing.
“How could they risk it all for this?”
I do what I do not want to do.
This week, I’ve asked a very close friend of mine to share his thoughts on this topic of finding freedom from addictions. He and I were roommates for a short time in college, and he currently works as a Christian counselor here in Mansfield. I’ve referred countless people to him in the last several years and I have heard nothing but wonderful things as a result of that work.
He will be sharing three guest posts here and on Friday I will be posting some next steps to consider for anyone who might be personally wrestling with an addiction in their life.
It’s my prayer that this series of posts will be the first step for someone breaking free from an addiction in their life.
