The Irresistable Force?

Another politician has been caught with ... well, you know ... the ongoing problem of sex being more powerful than the desire to succeed. Gov. Sanford (R-SC) goes AWOL and meets up with a woman in Argentina. Didn't he know someone would find out? It's not as if he hasn't seen it happen before.

Gary Hart (D); Bill Clinton (D); Elliot Spitzer (D); Larry Craig (R); Mark Foley (R); John Edwards (D); King David (?).......

(Don't ignore preachers, either- Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard quickly come to mind.)

Back in older days we cannot forget that Nelson Rockefeller, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt weren't exactly just sitting around. They just were never made public.

There are probably a number of psychological things at work, of course. There has to be a grandiosity and a certain amount of narcissism in anyone who aspires to such high offices. There has to be a sense that what they do is right, even when it isn't. There has to be a sense that they really won't get caught- they have figured out a way around it.

Or is it the game of doing something that is in some way or another illicit or immoral and trying to get away with it? Is it a power trip?

And let us not forget what may be the biggest of all- the pull of sex and sexual gratification. The pleasure centers of the brain, the powerful neuro-chemicals that flood our system when we are engaged in something as enjoyable as sex are difficult to turn off.

I am not one, however, to blame the society and the permissiveness that some say runs rampant. It is much more profound than that, and much more difficult to assign such simplistic blame. Yet it is much more basic and actually simple (as opposed to simplistic) and you have heard me talk about it before.

Human nature. Or actually, the proclivity for human nature to lead to sin. I don't mean that in any judgmental way. Original sin is, as I have said before quoting my Old Testament professor, the only provable, verifiable, observable doctrine. Just look around. Which is why it is less than helpful to point fingers and make all kinds of moralistic statements.

Gov. Sanford, like each and every one of us, yes, each and every one of us, has fallen prey to the basest part of who we are. His was through sex. Yours or mine may be in a gazillion other ways. But it is sin. And all any of us can do is get down on our knees and ask forgiveness. Whether other people forgive us or not is beyond our control. Whether we can forgive ourselves may take a while. But the good news is that God does forgive.

That's the wonder and power of grace. May we be as graceful to others as God is to us.

(By the way, do you realize how difficult it was to write this and not have any double entendres in it? Or at least I tried not to since I would like this to be no worse than a PG-13 rated blog. Okay, that reminds me of a joke from one of Garrison Keillor's old joke shows:
Did you hear about the woman who walked into a bar and asked the bartender for a double entendre?
He gave it to her.)