What do the Dalai Lama and Britt Hume have in common? Tiger Woods.
Bob WeathersHume’s advice to Woods is now famous. In early January, as the team closed its Fox News broadcast, Hume recommended that Woods convert to Christianity. “He’s said to be a Buddhist,” Hume said. “I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’?”
Not surprisingly, Hume was vilified on Internet blogs, talk shows and op-ed pages. How dare he use his position to proselytize Tiger Woods? And insult Buddhism at that? Shame, shame.
Then, following Woods’ staged effort at repentance Feb. 19, and in which he affirmed his commitment to Buddhism, the Dalai Lama was asked his religious opinion. What should Woods do to recover?
After the world’s most famous Buddhist leader admitted that he had never heard of the world’s most famous Buddhist, someone explained who Woods was, and what he had done. So the Lama offered that “all religions have the same idea” regarding adultery. Meaning, evidently, adultery is a bad thing. And then advised Woods, “Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important,” he said. “Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”
Never could you ask for a more instructive contrast of world views. The biblical world view, espoused by Hume, offers a personal relationship with God through Christ and with it forgiveness, hope and eternal life. In that relationship, one receives God’s help to overcome addictions and change destructive behaviors, resulting in the self-discipline to build new and better habits (Galatians 5:22-23).
But the Buddhist is on his own. What the Dalai Lama said is true. It just isn’t enough. Self-discipline is important, but in the end it is the same self striving to discipline itself without any real change taking place.
That’s why we need a new self, and for Woods or anyone else, only Christ can do that. God’s gift in Christ is that we can be new creatures. The old is gone. The new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). And that’s why it’s called Good News.