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Today’s big news concerns the Democrat Governor of New York, but he is hardly the first and will not be the last. In case you had not heard, Governor Eliot Spitzer engaged in acts that he prosecuted as the Attorney General of the state of New York– he hired a prostitute on multiple occasions.
There are many things that makes this tragic. It’s just the latest thing in Gov. Spitzer’s life to come undone.
First, there was the accusations that he abused his power with the New York State troopers to get them to dig up dirt on his Republican rival. Then, it was the drivers licenses for illegal aliens that had his constituents up in arms. It seems that he was just about to get back some of his popularity when this struck. As of this writing he has not yet resigned, though there is speculation that he will.
How does a person go from having a family, being in a seat of authority and power to a man shamed, robbed of that power, and with a family in a shambles?
As some would say, power corrupts. In the case of Gov. Spitzer, and everyone else that falls into sin, it wasn’t something that just happened– it was something that percolated for a length of time. You see, sin is progressive, building up tolerance for more and more risky things until it is caught. And we can be sure our sin will find us out.
Certainly, Gov. Spitzer never believed that he would get caught. He had been part of groups that had closed down rings of prostitution, so he obviously knew what not to do. He knew not to leave a trail with a credit card, so he paid in cash. He knew that he couldn’t do it in his own area, so he did it in Washington.
The fact is that we all believe, to some degree, that we are smarter than sin. That we have figured out how we can do wrong things and get away with it. When we don’t see God’s judgement or we aren’t caught, we believe that we’re smarter than the system. We believe that we’ve got it all figured out. When the truth would show us that we aren’t as smart as we believe we are.
Why would he throw it all away? The same reason that we take risks with sin in our own lives. Sin gives pleasure for a season. It seems easy. We believe that we’re strong enough to resist or not to get caught. All of this is far from the truth.
