Friday, March 14, 2008 at 12:12am
Spitzer and his 'monster'
Column: For His Glory
As a person born and raised in New York, I am always interested with news from my home state. I mainly keep up with my hometown sports teams; therefore I was elated when the Giants beat the Patriots. The latest news coming out of New York doesn't exactly make me proud to be a New Yorker.
My first reaction to the scandal Governor Spitzer is in was to ask why? Why would a man who fought hard to put criminals behind bars as a New York district attorney get caught up in this mess? Then the answer came to me quickly in the form of a Bible verse: "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" (Jeremiah 17:9) Apparently Spitzer didn't know how bad his heart is and let himself spiral down a dark road to political suicide. What makes the matter worse to me is that the young lady with whom he had his "meetings" could be his oldest daughter's buddy. How can Spitzer face his daughters and talk to them about the value of respect or face his wife when he was having sex with someone whom his daughters could bring home? My heart aches for the agony Spitzer's family is going through, but it also aches for his call girl.
There is a headline in which she is quoted as saying that she doesn't want people to think of her as a "monster." I would agree she is not a monster. Despite her mistake, she is still loved by God, and so is Spitzer. Yet she is blind as a bat to her spiritual condition — a condition that needs to change by the grace of God. Whatever demon she faces can only be removed by the power of a genuine conversion, because at the present moment her heart is desperately blind to her sins. She is an attractive young girl, and it hurts to see her fall into such moral depravity, especially when I realize she is my baby sister's age. It's sad, very sad — yet that is the condition of the unconverted heart, and we can't understand it.
The reality is that we all, religious or non-religious, have to guard our heart, because it can lead us toward a horrible fall. A fall that would end our career, destroy our family and ruin our credibility. May God keep you in His loving arms, and may you allow His embrace if you have yet to accept Him as your loving savior.
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Gio Marin is the pastor of the College Station and Waller Seventh-day Adventist Church in the state of Texas. He graduated in December 2007 with a master of divinity degree from Andrews Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, with a dual emphasis on systematic theology and church growth & evangelism. Send him an email at {email GioMarinColumn@aol.com}GioMarinColumn@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Gio Marin.
My first reaction to the scandal Governor Spitzer is in was to ask why? Why would a man who fought hard to put criminals behind bars as a New York district attorney get caught up in this mess? Then the answer came to me quickly in the form of a Bible verse: "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" (Jeremiah 17:9) Apparently Spitzer didn't know how bad his heart is and let himself spiral down a dark road to political suicide. What makes the matter worse to me is that the young lady with whom he had his "meetings" could be his oldest daughter's buddy. How can Spitzer face his daughters and talk to them about the value of respect or face his wife when he was having sex with someone whom his daughters could bring home? My heart aches for the agony Spitzer's family is going through, but it also aches for his call girl.
There is a headline in which she is quoted as saying that she doesn't want people to think of her as a "monster." I would agree she is not a monster. Despite her mistake, she is still loved by God, and so is Spitzer. Yet she is blind as a bat to her spiritual condition — a condition that needs to change by the grace of God. Whatever demon she faces can only be removed by the power of a genuine conversion, because at the present moment her heart is desperately blind to her sins. She is an attractive young girl, and it hurts to see her fall into such moral depravity, especially when I realize she is my baby sister's age. It's sad, very sad — yet that is the condition of the unconverted heart, and we can't understand it.
The reality is that we all, religious or non-religious, have to guard our heart, because it can lead us toward a horrible fall. A fall that would end our career, destroy our family and ruin our credibility. May God keep you in His loving arms, and may you allow His embrace if you have yet to accept Him as your loving savior.
— — —
Gio Marin is the pastor of the College Station and Waller Seventh-day Adventist Church in the state of Texas. He graduated in December 2007 with a master of divinity degree from Andrews Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, with a dual emphasis on systematic theology and church growth & evangelism. Send him an email at {email GioMarinColumn@aol.com}GioMarinColumn@aol.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Gio Marin.