May 4, 2010: A Line In The Sand

On March 10, 2008, the New York Times reported that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had used the services of prostitute Ashley Dupre. Soon we learned he had solicited six or seven other call girls. Now, the Chicago Tribune reports, "Spitzer hired prostitutes more extensively than previously revealed, dropping more than $100,000 on more than 20 assignations over at least two years." ("'Rough Justice' recounts Spitzer's journey to disgrace", May 1, 2010).

There's always more, isn't there?

A distraught woman once called me concerning a situation that required some pastoral counseling. I can reveal no details except to say that, after hearing her story, I felt I had to warn her, "Do not trust the individual you are telling me about. The misbehavior that you know of will not turn out to be an isolated incident. He has done it before, and he will do it again. There have been, and there will be, other victims."

I did not say that because I knew him (I didn't, and still don't), but because I know human nature. Or at least masculine nature. Years of experience have taught me that a man either draws a line in the sand against conduct impermissible to him, or he doesn't. A behavior is either impossible for him - in which case he never does it - or possible for him, in which case he does it a lot. A man's sin does not erupt suddenly out of a vacuum chamber of purity, but out of a corrupt heart that, like the volcano at Eyjafjallajokull, can spew repeatedly. Once we knew that Spitzer had solicited Dupre, it should not have been shocking to discover that he had hired many, many others. What would have been shocking would have been to find that there were no others.

Is this principle true of all men? No, just 98 percent of them.

Think of it this way. When we hear that a priest has molested a boy, is it ever just one boy, one time? Did Bernie Madoff defraud only one client? Did Ted Haggard sodomize a male prostitute just once? Did Tiger Woods cavort with only one woman of ill repute? Does anyone ever get drunk only once? Does an angry man strike his wife "just that one time, when she got me really mad"?

We deceive ourselves when we regard our sins as easily isolatable failures. They're not. They come in bunches, usually, and reflect long-standing patterns. That is one of the reasons why it is so important to draw a hard line in the sand against evil practice. When you permit yourself to fling one careless epithet, for example, you will soon discover that you have acquired a naggingly persistent potty mouth. Then all it takes to provoke a string of profanity from you is a little stress. (And every day seems to bring a little stress, doesn't it?). Decide, decide now, that there are some words you cannot say. They are on the other side of a hard line in the sand.

Sometimes I surprise people by telling them that I've never had a beer nor smoked a cigarette. I'm not proud of that, and I'm certainly no fundamentalist - I don't regard smoking or moderate drinking as sinful - but in my case I confess that the hard line I have drawn against such things may well be the only reason that, by God's grace, I have not become a nicotine addict or an alcoholic.

Carve your hard lines with gruesome finality, if you must. When I wrote to my son about marital faithfulness (see the December 26, 2009 essay), I told him, "I want you to regard adultery as an act of such unspeakably cruel hatred against your spouse that you could no more do it than you could torture a child." Is that comparison too extreme or graphic for you? I do not apologize for it, because I learned extreme imagery from my Master. Jesus spoke of gouging out your eye and cutting off your hand, of drowning tempters in the sea with heavy millstones around their necks, of religious authorities who were "broods of vipers", of damned souls who will wail and gnash their teeth. No one who earnestly imitates Jesus Christ ever speaks mildly about sin. Jesus knew - and perhaps our generation must re-learn - that strong words and gory pictures are necessary to mark out the hard lines that a soul must draw against corruption.

A friend of mine confessed to me a while ago some concerns about "shading the truth." I know by now that I would make a horrible priest, because I can never think fast enough to respond appropriately to such confessions. But now that I've thought it over, maybe if it happens again I'll refer to this stanza from the Steve Goodman song "Trouble Will Find You":

The first time you shade the truth
You want to run and hide
Your tongue gets tied
Your throat gets dry
And then you start thinking,
Maybe no one knows you lied
And now you're shady all the time.

Confess, repent, and draw a line in the sand that keeps shady stuff far away from you; while, on your side, there shines only the bright sun of truth.