I have to confess, I am a bit frustrated today. I am rather weary of the critics, the pundits, the “evaluators” as I will call them, who analyze and parse and pompously pass judgment on everything and everyone these days! We decide on which movie to go to based on what some obscure person writing for a newspaper tells us! We listen to “expert panels” give us the truth of what the President “really said” after he’s already said it himself! We go to restaurants based on what some food critic has rated a place, and don’t go if they scored it low. It goes on and on. I contend we may well have “evaluativitis” as a society!

Restaurants, movies and political speeches are one thing. But apologies? Come on now. When someone has the courage to stand before us and say “I’m sorry”, “I messed up big time,” “I really blew it this time,” and then we critique everything from eyelids fluttering to body language to words used to camera angles to movement of hands? Really now. What have we become?

I watched, on TV, the greatest golfer in history give his apology a few days ago. I wanted to see it for myself because I “knew” what was going to happen. I would be told by a thousand media sources what “he really said” or what “he really meant” or that “he wasn’t sincere” or that “he didn’t really apologize.” I figured if I see it myself, I can decide for myself. What a concept!

I watched a man who was obviously broken by his fall from his wife’s grace, his family’s grace, and his hordes of fans and sponsors’ graces. I listened as he apologized profusely, as he admitted his pompous arrogant attitude in the past, his sense of entitlement that was wrong, his idea that “I can do anything I want to do” spirit that got him into such trouble. I listened as he promised his best efforts to not repeat his destructive behaviors, and even wanted to respect the game of golf more by his actions on the course. Wow. I was moved. Here was Sports’ first billionaire on this planet speaking with sincerity, honesty, openness. Having walked around three different golf courses watching Tiger play at least once every year for ten years, I was keenly interested in what he would say, and came away pleased.

Within minutes, the evaluators went into high speed. By the time a few hours had passed, let alone a few days of media reports, newspaper columns and call-ins from average folks on talk radio, I wondered if I had seen a different apology! Maybe I was watching something else! Maybe I was blind or deaf or unable to comprehend, because what they saw and heard was so completely different than what I saw and heard. Evaluativitis became epidemic. And it has continued!

And so it goes in our society. All the time. With anyone of fame or fortune, noteriety or success, degradation or perversion, we go into overdrive with our critiques and evaluations and really think we know!  Don’t we?

I have been fascinated at the response of many of God’s people as Tiger’s sins sunk in.  I have been the only one in the many conversations I’ve had with people who expressed unitiated that I hoped his sex rehab was successful and the family was able to stay together.  Virtually everyone else was raining condemnation, judgment, categorical declarations.  I have heard virtually no one express concern for two children, and other than saying his wife ought to discard him and get all she can virtually no one express genuine concern for her. 

I listened as radio talk show hosts and sportscasters and radio call-ins spewed venom in all directions, while at the same time saying “they all do it” and “he’ll never change” and “who cares who sleeps with whom” and “shut up and play golf” and all sorts of confused and two-sided statements like that.  I even heard two well-respected sports show hosts ranting that he even mentioned Bhuddism, which was, after all, the religion of his youth, and his Foundation, saying it was all a cover-up of his indiscretions.  Forget the fact that he acknowledged he had left his faith, albeit not the one we would choose for him, and paid a price for it, and that he had “let down” those who believed in his Foundation, which, after all, has literally helped thousands if not millions of children and youth.  Yet, these hosts said, he never should have mentioned any of that.  So here we go again – men who never acknowledge any faith at all (I listen regularly!) and use Christ’s name in vain (often!) and will never have enough wherewithall or devotion to causes to ever have any Foundation yet they have the right to evaluate  and pass judgment on another?  We are amazing people, aren’t we?

As soon as I write this, it may well be that further revelations will come out.  It may well be that any sex rehab “success” will be frittered away in terrible immoral decisions within weeks or months thereafter.  It may well be that Elin says “I can’t take this anymore” and divorce, and another family becomes a terrible statistic.  It even may well be that he wasn’t sincere, didn’t mean a word of what he said and can’t wait to get back to his freewheeling ways.  It may well be.

But here’s my take, Tiger.  Here’s hoping  you overcome your issues and straighten up your life.  Here’s praying your family somehow makes it and is restored.  Here’s one person saying your only ultimate hope is to be introduced to Jesus and begin a personal relationship with him that will change you from the inside out.  And yes, I’ll be there in September at the BMW Championship at Cog Hill – hoping your incredible golf game comes back to entertain us again.

At two different tournaments that I’ve seen Tiger play in, by total coincidence we found ourselves standing next to Elin and Tiger’s mother, before they were married.  We chatted a few words back and forth, and kept running into each other on the ropes surrounding the greens.  I saw these people not as celebrities, but human beings.  They looked so very normal, accessible, vulnerable.  And I’ve stood within a few feet of the man himself multiple times as some great golf shot was once again displayed. 

I know I’m naive.  I’m soft.  I still care.  Somehow I can’t muster up the condemnatory anger so many others have.  I apologize for that.  Or do I?  And I confess that with some people,  much more than I should, evaluativitis sweeps over me and I become what I so disdain in others.  I confess.  And repent. 

But I hope and pray it’s less and less frequent in my life.  I don’t want to be like that.  And I can only imagine what life might be like if we all cared, instead of critiqued.  Wow.  Dreaming, aren’t I?

For Christ’s love compels us…So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.  Selections from II Corinthians 5:14-19