If you were anywhere near a TV this past Friday at 11am, you witnessed Tiger Woods’ apology. As I watched and listened with keen interest, it was encouraging to hear Woods own up to his faults as well as stand up for his wife. However, it was just as discouraging to hear his determination to return to his Buddhist background for help and recovery.
Woods said, “Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously I lost track of what I was taught.”
Woods was clearly referring to his numerous marital affairs. By returning to his Buddhist roots, Woods is convinced that any impulse for happiness outside of ourselves in pointless and ultimately harmful. We must rid ourselves of all external desire. Then, according to Buddhism, we will find peace.
As Christianity teaches, ridding ourselves of all desire is an endless, hopeless quest because God has created us to desire Him! Buddhism has diagnosed the problem, but offered the wrong, the tragically wrong, solution. Trying to fill our desire for happiness in marital affair after marital affair will never fill the void in our souls! However, denying we have a void in our souls will never fill it either! Refusing to seek fulfillment beyond ourselves will never satisfy us because the Fountain of Life is beyond us until by faith He dwells within us!
Craving for happiness outside of ourselves is not the problem. Trying to fill that craving with sin instead of with the Savior is the problem. Tiger Woods’ embrace of Buddhism may save his marriage, may restrain his adultery, but it will never satisfy his soul! His soul was not created to be denied. It was created to be filled, filled with the joy and glory of God!
As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Tiger Woods will not find what he’s looking for in himself. He will only find it in the Lord Jesus Christ! Pray for Tiger Woods.
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