Pretending we have boxes.
Dec 16th by Jon- Tagged in:
- god,
- serious wednesdays,
- sin,
- Tiger Woods
!Cat Scraptacular!
That’s what I would have named the cat scrapbooking magazine that someone I worked with once printed off the color copiers at our office.
I don’t have any proof that they were actually running a feline focused publication from within our office, but based on how many kitten photos and full color scrapbooking pages I found on our work printer, I have to assume that’s what was going on.
That’s not a great thing to do at your place of employment, but before I judge that lady, I have to remember which one of us was asked to leave that company.
I was …
I had already quit. It wasn’t all that dramatic, but it was pretty gross. It was a Wednesday and I had two days left until I was done at the company. At about 10 in the morning, my boss pulled me into a side conference room and told me to just pack my stuff up and go home. I was surprised but started clearing out all my files and packing up my stuff.
I didn’t do it fast enough though because she stood up in her cube and said something like, “Don’t worry about any of that stuff, just go.” It’s been a few years, but even typing that story makes me feel a little sick to my stomach.
But you know what, she did the right thing.
I was a jerk. I was a horrible employee at the time. I was rude and lazy and belligerent.
And so she asked me to leave.
They didn’t have any security guards in the building so it didn’t get that crazy. I think I said bye to one person. Much to my chagrin, they didn’t stand on top of their cubicles in protest like the students at the end of the Robin Williams’ movie, “Dead Poet’s Society.”
How did I end up there? In that moment? Getting asked to leave the building? Pretty simple.
I let old sin creep back into my life. After having a really powerful come to Jesus moment in the summer of 2005, I had drifted back to my old ways. And after a slow regression of hope and an increase of darkness, I made the same mistake so many people are making right now with the Tiger Woods situation:
I pretended I had boxes.
I tricked myself into believing that sin can be placed neatly inside one part of my life. That it won’t trickle out of the box and spill into every area of my heart and mind. I pretended that I possessed the fortitude to compartmentalize. Surely what I do in my personal life won’t impact my professional life. I can act out in this sector of my mind, but keep things together in these other three.
But I couldn’t and neither can you and neither could Tiger Woods.
I don’t want to go into details of what’s been alleged about his extramarital affairs. There are far smarter people than me that have already covered it.
But what I do want to address is what my friends keep asking me about Tiger Woods:
“How could he have done that?”
“How could he have been so stupid to leave hundreds of text messages and voice mails?”
“Did he think he was going to be the first celebrity who didn’t get caught? Bill Clinton, David Letterman, Frank Gifford, Kobe Bryant, they all got caught. Was he expecting to break the mold and never get found out? What was he thinking?”
What kills me about those questions is the idea that in the middle of an affair you could make smart decisions. As if, in the middle of cheating on someone you would have the intelligence and rational to make wise decisions about how many text messages you should send. As if only part of you would be broken and wounded, but the rest of your life would continue moving along perfectly.
But sin doesn’t work that way.
There’s no such thing as a “smart affair.” Or a smart burglary or a smart lie. Every decision made in that moment is dumb on some level. I think it’s because sin is like a drop of poison in water. You wouldn’t put a little cyanide in a water bottle and then say, “Only the top is poisoned, I’ll drink from the bottom.” Not at all. You’d put the bottle down because the whole thing was poisoned.
I used to think I could hide. I used to think that I could keep secrets like my lies and my porn problems and my other issues in a box under my bed. And maybe if I kept the lid on tight enough, they’d never impact any other issue of my life. But that was a lie. Ask my family. Ask the people that told me to go home from work.
They’ll tell you.
But the good news, the wild truth that proves the point of how corrosive sin is, is also the same hope we can trust in. Simply put, God makes us new. This verse has been rocking me lately and I’ve already written about it, but it’s too big to just cover once or twice.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17
I’m convinced that God doesn’t make us better, because better wouldn’t be enough. Improved wouldn’t cut it. There’s poison in the water. New is the only way to get fresh and that’s what he offers.
To me. To you. To Tiger Woods.
Because we can’t box up sin. And when we pretend we can, things get really messy, really quickly.
Comments
This is the best post that has ever been written on this site.
Very well written and very personal. Thanks a lot Jon! Great post!
Did you invade my head yesterday?! Did you?!
Ouch! So true – and so what I needed to hear. Thanks. You've been used of God today.
Pt. 1 When I was young, I would see people sin and think "I would NEVER do that." It didn't take me long to realize that given the wrong circumstances, the wrong people or being in the wrong place at the wrong time I was always capable of doing anything. We are all so human. As a kid growing up in an abusive home I tried to keep parts of my life seperate from each other.. I didn't want my friends from school to really know what was going on at home. Trying to divide our lives like that just doesn't work. One of the most healing things for me has been God working in my life to integrate everything and being careful to not allow those boxes to grow and fester.
Pt 2. I am so thankful that God meets us in the middle of all that and walks us through into freedom. Things like the recent events with Tiger Woods are a sobering reminder to me of how important for me to guard my heart and protect my marriage. It's also a reminder that true satisfaction in life isn't based on accomplishment, or money, or fame, or power. At the end of the day Tiger is just like me. He's a broken man, who probably had pain in his own life that was driving him to find solace in the wrong place. My prayers are with him and his family.
Wow man, brilliant stuff.
What the heck did you do??! I must know! Was it really wrong like killing a parrot? Or just a little wrong and mischievous, like putting a co-worker's stapler on jelly??
I'm confused as to what could have been bad enough for some woman to have the audacity to tell you not to take YOUR OWN STUFF when you were fired??!
C'mon….enlighten us!! It's all a part of the healing process…….
Good post, Mr. Acuff.
I have been following your blog for months now, because I also write and have an uprooted blog. It reminds me about something I wrote and thought concerning about the same Tiger Woods thing and creating a city for Christians. It may have no sense, but you can read it:
http://mlinyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/christyork.ht...
[...] When that truth shows its ugly side the devastation left looks like the aftermath of a tornado. As Jon Acuff mentions on his fantastic blog, none of us are capable of controlling the “I can handle this” [...]
This is soo true, it is of high importance that we are ready when God comes – Check this out – http://youthforjesus.com/2009/12/the-wrath-of-god...
wow. that video was awesome. I typically shy away from "hell and brimstone" teachers because I feel that it can be one-sided, but that was great. We need to be reminded of this more often!
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
"And such were some of you, but you were washed…"
Such a great verse that offers so much hope. Thanks for the post. Very encouraging
THE best thing i've read on the tiger subject. and you've perfectly summed up the brokenness of my past two years. thank you for finding words i couldn't, jon.
Whoa. awesome post and love the message.
Really great – your honesty is what really draws folks to you and your words.
have you been reading my journal? ouch, needed this like woah.
Praise God for the openness He has inspired in you.
[...] Check it out. [...]
I think there is a difference between judging celebrities who fall versus holding them accountable for their actions. This comment is in response to someone on the first page of comments who said they have Christian friends who are very against Michael Vick. Yes, everyone deserves grace but in our world where infidelities and immoral behavior is so accepted as norm, why let our kids who are watching things unfold on the news, think it is okay? It's not okay. Jesus did die for our sins, and no one is perfect, but it is still not okay. I'm not slamming anyone at all. And I don't think I'm putting my thoughts in writing very well. I guess I'm trying to say that I love grace and I want everyone to have it, but I don't think grace eliminates the consequences of actions.
Ugh, that was tedious to write.
What a great post. You’re right – we like to think we can contain and handle the sin, that we’re somehow different than everybody else. At that point, we have just compounded the original sin with the sin of pride. At least, that’s how it worked for me. It wasn’t until I recognized that pride was now the chain binding me in the other sins that I got any measure of freedom.
Great post. Thanks.
There have only been a couple of people disagreeing (be it ever so slightly) to the post, and I wonder if anyone is considering that two people are in a marriage. Tiger Woods did do something wrong, but can you say for certain that just because his wife was a victim, he hasn't been a victim of her? No. None of us can say that because it's not our marriage.
It is also a sin to deny your spouse repeatedly. Hear me, please! It is not okay for your husband or wife to seek intimacy outside the marriage but it's not any MORE OKAY for you to shut down to them physically or emotionally or mentally. Both things completely destroy a marriage. So if you're considering making an announcement to the world that you think Tiger's behavior was deplorable, would you make the same announcement about his wife if you found out she had been cold in the bedroom or shutting him out of her head and heart? I hate to call people out but Carrie and Rebecca, I'm specifically wondering about you.
Thanks for the reminder that there are no big sins or little sins, and that sin can invade every part of one's life. And speaking of Tiger Woods, I guess it's easy for us to discuss his issues and give our opinions because his sin has been exposed to the world. I shudder to think what people would say if they could know/see some of my sin and/or some of my past. I'd probably be tarred, feathered and burned at the stake. Or maybe covered in honey and graham cracker crumbs and left bound and gagged on a fire ant hill. Thank God for grace and for making me a new creation.
God Bless you a lot. I just found this great site yesterday and I must say that I agree with everything you said here, except for "I’m convinced that God doesn’t make us better, because better wouldn’t be enough." I mean, yeah I agree He makes new, but when He makes us new, He makes us better than we were before. I don't mean as in better than the rest, I mean as in a better person than the one we were before coming to Him.
God Bless you all.
You said the magazine should be named "!Cat Scraptacular!"
I've got a better one, although no one will probably ever read this witty little bon mot:
It should be named "Cats Craptacular!"
It's hard to pack away sin when boxes were never meant to hold such things in the first place.
Alex, I hope you didn't mean me. Your post and mine had nothing to do with each other.
Sorry, Rebecca. I did mean you. I guess I see that you ended your comment on a really high note. But how do we pick and choose who we hold accountable for what? God doesn't direct us to do or not to do things for His own fun, or for frivolous reasons. What I'm saying is that it gets us in a very sticky situation when we are going to hold Tiger accountable for his actions (wait, how are we doing that when we don't even know him?) and not say something if he got to that point for a reason. It is ONLY for God and Tiger and the people in his life whom it actually affected to decide what to do about.
Of course, if my kid were aware of any of the situation I'd tell her what he did was wrong. But I come from a peculiar situation that affords me the knowledge of the pain of being denied a proper, working relationship with a spouse and that is just as damaging.
[...] start with a post from Jon Acuff on the Stuff Christians Like site entitled “Pretending We Have Boxes”. It’s part reflection on the Tiger Wood’s downfall and part personal application. Acuff [...]
[...] Isn’t that how we fall into sin to begin with? Just one more time. I can hide it. I think this post from one of my favorite bloggers (Jon Acuff of Stuff Christians Like) explains it beautifully: Pretending We Have Boxes [...]