What happened at Tiger Woods’ residence will, it seems, stay at Tiger Woods’s residence. Which may be precisely the right outcome in light of the Florida Highway Patrol statement about Mr. Woods’ recent one-car crash. He was cited for careless driving, the investigation is concluded and that, it appears, is that so…move along, nothing to see here.

This news will prompt some people to say, “Wait, what? Tiger Woods had a car accident? Is he ok?”

Others will continue to live their lives as if they had no idea who Tiger Woods is (which they don’t) and could hardly care less (which they can’t).

And some will be frustrated if not infuriated by the news because they live for public drama and can’t imagine anything more satisfying than seeing a sports icon toppled by scandal.

Reflecting on the misconduct that discredited Olympic champion sprinter Marion Jones and Tour de France winning cyclist Floyd Landis, the Washington Post’s Shankar Vedantam wrote:

Talk about cheating usually has a ring to it, and that ring comes from having a high moral tone. In this, it is fair to say, most people are hypocrites.

Vendantam’s piece, Cheating is an Awful Thing for Other People to Do, mused on the many studies showing how easily people lie and cheat and how readily liars and cheaters excuse themselves when the alternative means losing face or enduring discomfort.

University of Kansas psychologist C. Daniel Batson told The Post, “We have a whole quiver full of rationalizations. We’re very good at explaining to ourselves why we are doing something.” The inference is that rationalizing is an expression of regret, however faint, that we can’t perform as well as we would like—indeed, as well as we believe we would “under normal circumstances.”

“When you are talking about a moral issue,” Batson said, “it is something we feel we ought to do. So we are in a bind of wanting to what we don’t want to do.”

Mr. Batson gets what the apostle Paul wrote about to the Christians at Rome:

I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
— Romans 7:14-25, The Message Bible

From time to time we—maybe I should just say I—have been known to strike an indignant tone in this space. And I have to admit that sometimes it’s been a tone of self-righteous indignation as distinct from the other kind.

About the only way I can allow myself to get away with this is to focus on temptations that don’t tempt me. It’s a spin on the old fundamentalist position that no one should have sex standing up because it might lead to dancing. As I remember my childhood, the people who were most against dancing weren’t that interested in dancing to begin with and could think of no holy reason anyone else would be.

They did however exhibit a keen interest in food and I don’t recall any of them speaking out on the subject of gluttony.

It was in fact self-evident in my formative years that where two or three were gathered together in Jesus’ name there would be pie and coffee at a minimum. I admit dabbling on the dance floor in the exuberant days of youth but religion and upbringing won out in the end. Which, incidentally, is where—I am speaking of my end—I might justifiably have affixed a wide load placard for some years as a consequence.

By examining only what tempts other people I avoid having to admit that I have already done all the bad things I’ve been seriously and persistently tempted to do. And this doesn’t begin to touch all the good things I have failed to do because they are difficult or distasteful or fear-inducing. I have to find a way to speak the truth as well as I comprehend it without being that guy who is hard on others and easy on himself. But, like so much of life, sober judgement happens one day at a time.

I find myself thinking about the story of a dirty-dealing businessman who had a face-to-face with Jesus (Luke 19:1-10). The writer Luke says the man welcomed Jesus gladly and demonstrated how happy he was by giving half his assets to the poor and repaying people he’d cheated four times the amount he’d skinned them for.

It’s a good story and more than a little challenging—to me at least. It’s also an incomplete story. Luke moves on to other things and we’re left to imagine the rest for ourselves.

What I wonder is, was Zacchaeus what people used to call “a changed man” or was he still tempted to put his thumb on the scale from time to time?

I’m betting the answer is both. I’m betting he had his ups and downs—his good days and his “learning” days—just as the apostle Paul admitted he had, and just as I and everyone I know seems to have. None of which excuses even occasional bad behavior…but it puts it context doesn’t it?

Unlike cycling or track & field or golf, business is a contact sport. The life in business involves by its nature an endless string of micro-decisions between cooperating-with and serving people or taking advantage of them—and rationalizations for the latter are very easy to come by. Thank God, Jesus keeps acting to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.