Neil Sedaka twice recorded a song called “Breaking up is Hard to Do”. Breaking up may be difficult, but it isn’t nearly as difficult as restoring a shattered reputation. I’ve been thinking about this this week, ever since I heard about the dreadful story of astronaut (presumably former astronaut) Lisa Nowak, who drove 900 miles in a diaper from Houston to Orlando, in order to intimidate, threaten, or perhaps kill perceived rival Colleen Shipman in a “love triangle” gone bad.
Lisa Nowak could not have gotten into the astronaut corps without doing some things very well. I didn’t pay very much attention to the space shuttle mission she was on last July, because the space missions these days which go well seem fairly routine, and we all hear more than we want to hear about the disasters. But it would be easier to win a lottery than to become an astronaut. After all, there are new lottery winners every few days. I don’t expect astronauts to be choir boys or choir girls, but I do expect them to stay out of this sort of trouble. In spite of any charges which may be filed against her, she must be a remarkable person in many of the ways we humans measure excellence. Perhaps the Bible is right when it says that the human heart is desperately wicked, above all things.
Wasn’t Lisa Nowak living the American dream? Didn’t she have it all? She had her career, a husband, and three children, including five-year-old twin daughters. Perhaps her 19-year marriage was coming apart. Perhaps she didn’t have it all. But whatever she had, she may well be trading it for jail time. It’s hard not to feel sad about her, even if she deserves the fate which awaits her. Going forward, it’s going to be very difficult for her to have a life worth living.
If she pays whatever debt society exacts from her, can she someday resume her career at NASA? More importantly, can her intended victim, the man she was pursuing, her husband, her children, and her fellow astronauts forgive her for what she has done, or should they? Do we live in a society which is so transient that NASA should train someone else to take her place and her husband can replace her with another woman, and will her children regard the new woman as their “real mother”, even though she gave birth to them? If things are that unstable, does that contribute to how crazy and insecure people are, and why they always seem to be grasping for a better reality? What should she do to merit the forgiveness of everyone involved? Of course, I don’t know whether or not she is even the slightest bit penitent about what she has done. But even if she is, it’s going to be a long hard road to recovery for her, and human beings are generally not very merciful.
This week I also read an article about former New Life church pastor Ted Haggard, the man who hired a homosexual prostitute and may also have bought drugs from him. The article indicated that other pastors have been counseling him and that he “has discovered he is completely heterosexual”. That discovery isn’t particularly remarkable, since it applies to most of us, and it presumably applies to the vast majority of those he pastored. What caught my attention about the article, though, was their recommendation that he should leave Colorado, and he should obtain a secular position outside of the ministry. It was as if the other pastors said, “You’re cured, but get lost.” For what it’s worth, I would have given him very different advice. I would have told him that leaving is a copout, he needs to face the people he has embarrassed, and they need to face the reality of whether or not they are willing to forgive him. I wouldn’t put him back in the pulpit any time soon, but I would insist on him being willing to serve his congregation in a lesser capacity. As in the former case, there is a real issue regarding whether or not he is truly penitent about the terrible and hypocritical things he did. If he is, it does neither him nor his congregation any good to run away from each other.
Tags: FORGIVENESS, REPENTANCE
