Barry's Blog

C. S. Lewis once observed that "the tongue is the most unruly organ of the body, save one." Never has this truth become more apparent than in the news over the past few days of New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who yesterday resigned after the scandal broke of his involvement with a prostitution ring. Both the ascent and descent of Spitzer's career have been dizzying. He was the brilliant kid who graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School, who then became the avenging state attorney general, tracking down Wall Street malefactors with a moralistic fervor. Everywhere he went, he found "betrayals of the public trust" that were "shocking" and "criminal." He then ran for governor in 2006 and seized the electoral mandate. 

As the demise of Spitzer continues to unfold, a few lessons are worth considering. First, while some psychiatrists and so-called behavior "experts" suggest that Spitzer was "acting out" so as to get caught (due to issues of self-hatred, etc., and there may be an element of truth here), the more glaring story is the hubris, his pride and arrogance, that led him to believe he was not subject to the moral constraints of mere mortals. Deep down it is doubtful that Spitzer believed he would ever get caught. Does this attitude not remind you of other recent political and sports celebrities, who believe they are above the law? C.S. Lewis called pride "The Great Sin" in Mere Christianity, for "it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."

Listen to how Michael Powell, writing in The New York Times, described Eliot Spitzer: "Mr. Spitzer cast himself, self-consciously, as the alpha male, with a belief in the clarifying power of confrontation. Long predawn runs, fierce basketball games: He did nothing at half-speed. 'Listen, I'm a steamroller,'  he told a State Assembly leader in his first days as governor, adding an unprintable adjective into the mix for emphasis. Soon enough, his enemies and even admirers and friends came to affix another adjective to his name: reckless. So often the new governor seemed to accumulate enemies for sport, to threaten rivals with destruction when an artful compromise and a disingenuous slap on the back might do just as well. 'I am not naturally suited to this job,' he told a reporter recently, and perhaps he knew more than he was letting on."

A second lesson, or more an observation, is that we must beware moral crusaders. (Note to self: beware moral crusaders). There appears to be an interesting psychology at work in those who most vociferously denounce the moral shortcomings of others (to wit, Spitzer's strong legislation against prostitution). It is almost as though they are attempting to exorcise their own demons through attacking others. Think Ted Haggard or Jimmy Swaggart. Were not all these guys preaching/legislating out of their own weakness? Did Jesus not have this in mind when He told the hypocrite: "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly enough to take the speck out of your brother's eye" (Matthew 7: 3, 5)?

A third observation is offered as a counterweight to what has been said, a warning against self-righteousness. Our tendency is to be the moralist, and to some extent this is rightly understood, to judge this man for his hypocrisy, for "playing a part," feigning moral purity when it was in fact lacking. Yet we have our marching orders in the New Testament, that "let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12); and are reminded that when a person is caught in any trespass, "look to yourself, lest you too be tempted" (Galatians 6:1). Which is all to say that none of us is above reproach, none of us have "arrived," or are ourselves beyond committing heinous sins, given the right circumstances. Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed in The Gulag Archipelago that "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either--but right through every human heart--and through all human hearts." He certainly was not excluding the saint. 

Blaise Pascal knew the human condition well, both saint and sinner, and a few of his meditations from the Pensees are worth considering:

"Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast." (678) "Christianity is strange; it bids man to recognize that he is vile, and even abominable, and bids him want to be like God. Without such a counterweight, his exaltation would make him horribly vain, or his abasement horribly abject." (351)"To make a man a saint, grace is certainly needed, and anyone who doubts this does not know what a saint, or a man, really is." (869) "What a long way it is between knowing God and loving Him!" (377)

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow