On "Fox News Sunday" on Jan. 3, the panelists had advanced to that light part of the discussion where they focusing on movies and crime novelists. Venerated newsman Brit Hume turned to sports, and predicted Tiger Woods would return to success as a golfer. But if he really wanted to recover as a person, Hume suggested, he should consider Christianity..... Source: Townhall.com
So 'Buddhist' Tiger Woods likes the ladies too much. That can be a problem, especially when you are married.
I purposely stayed away from the Tiger Woods story because, to me, the guy is a great golfer with a personal problem that he and his family need to work out.
But then I hear that the foolish Brit Hume is trying to endear himself with his nearly Neanderthal Fox News audience by suggesting that Tiger Woods could find "redemption" in Christianity if he would just convert from Buddhism.
Now I personally don't care if Tiger Woods is Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Moslem, or Atheist. I personally don't care about his personal life, other than I would like to see him and everyone in the world happy and functional. But when it comes to Brit Hume's cultural idiocy that has gotten a lot of air play, then I guess I have to put in my two or three cents.
Mr. Hume would have us believe that the more than 2 billion Christians in the world are somehow special when it comes to the sins of the flesh.
As a former Christian, I can honestly say that I once thought you almost had to be adulterous to be a Christian because the two seemed to go hand in hand. I witnessed church-going Christians, and those who claimed to be Christians, engage in so many adulterous relationships that I often wondered how they could engage in that behavior while condemning others for their faults.
Everyone knows that a major reason for divorce is infidelity and, sure enough, the Bible belt of the United States leads the country in divorce. The true Bible believing people in the Bible belts have the highest rates of living together without being married in the United States. I am not big on condemning people, especially since I have plenty of faults, but I do feel sorry for the children who are often emotionally traumatized from the breakup of their parents' relationship. I also feel sorry for the partners who suffer through painful divorces.
So I could have decided that being Christian means that there is a good chance that you will break your marital vows, so it is better to be Buddhist. But then, being a little broader minded than Brit Hume, I opened my eyes and I saw that adultery and Christianity didn't have to go together any more than adultery and Buddhism have to go together. Rather, human beings of every religion violate oaths and break marital vows.
Let's face it. Religion for most people is a way to make them feel good after they break the rules.
People use religion to justify themselves for their bad behavior. Somehow they think if they only claim loudly, publicly, and often enough of their repentance, then God will somehow intervene and they will not have to pay the consequences for their bad behavior.
But what I usually find is that these people often go right back to doing the bad things for which they are sorry. Worse, they use their new-found religion as an excuse to keep engaging in that behavior. Or they find some other terrible fault to engage in while they condemn others for engaging in their previous sin.
"Oh God loves me and he forgives me," they usually say. But still, it generally has little effect on their cheating, thieving, lying, killing, drugging and whatever else they like to do because they are Saved.
But no matter how much we like to think we can break the rules and not pay the consequences, it will not help us escape the consequences of our bad behavior.
So Tiger Woods has to pay the consequences for his bad behavior, whether he is Buddhist or Christian. Hopefully, he will learn his lesson and raise up his heart and mind to see the suffering he has brought on a lot of the people he cares about. But if Tiger isn't able to really feel how badly he has hurt others and if he isn't able to fully understand the consequences of his actions, then he will likely continue doing the things that get him into trouble, no matter what religion or lack of religion he has.
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