No Tiger in Me

The following is the opening paragraph to an article found at crosswalk.com (http://www.crosswalk.com/11623365/) entitled "The Tiger (Woods) in You".

Prior to this recent series of revelations, there wasn't a man on the planet who in some sense didn't want to be Tiger Woods. Tiger is good looking. He's physically fit. He's a world-class athlete. He has a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids. He's rich beyond anyone's wildest imagination. He had a father who loved him—not just in words, but in action, pouring himself into his son, building a love that survives to this day, in many ways making Tiger the man he became.

I would like to state, for the record, that I am one man on the planet who never wanted, in any sense, to be Tiger Woods...even before this recent series of revelations. He may be good-looking, physically fit, and a world-class athlete. He may have a beautiful wife and two beautiful kids. He may be rich by the world's standards. He apparently had a father who loved him, who poured himself into his son to make Tiger into the man he became. But I still never wanted to be anything like Tiger Woods, and I'll tell you why.

I don't know if I'm good looking or not. I'm not physically fit, I'm certainly no kind of an athlete. I don't have a beautiful family. And I'm almost as poor as the proverbial church mouse. Tiger and I share one thing, though...I also had a father who loved me, who poured himself into me to make me into the man I have become. But what really differentiates me from Tiger is not what he has that I don't, but what I have that he doesn't.

Tiger is a self-professed Buddhist, the religion of his mother. He says it has made himself aware, and helped him realize he was stubborn and impatient, but has taught him that he has to work on the things in his life that he wants to be perfect. His entire life, all thirty-four years of it, has been about his career as a golfer--his swing, his stance, his concentration. The most important thing in Tiger's life, the thing that got him international fame, wealth beyond compare, a beautiful wife and beautiful children (along with no less than 11 beautiful mistresses) is the ability to hit a little white ball into a little black hole. That is the most important thing to Tiger Woods...that is what Tiger's dad apparently poured into him. And now, his whole world is crashing down.

My dad never played ball with me. He never taught me to work on a car. He never took me hunting, never showed me how to clean a fish or butcher a deer. In fact, I'd say that in terms of "practical" things, my Dad taught me very little. It wasn't that he didn't love me; my Dad loved me without reservation; he told me; he showed me. But Dad wasn't concerned about me being a success by the measure of the world. I'll tell you what Dad poured into me.

My Dad poured Jesus into me. As much as he received, he gave. If he learned it in the Word, I learned it. If he heard it in the Spirit, I heard it in my own ears. Dad taught me how to pray, how to worship, how to preach, how to minister to people. Dad showed me how to be strong and how to take a stand when I was right, even if it meant everyone else was standing against me. Dad showed me how to be honest, and how to have integrity, and how to keep seeking God's grace to overcome my weaknesses. Dad never condemned me for my failures, he loved me in spite of them, showing me the immeasurable love that our Heavenly Father has for us. He encouraged me to do better, but never rejected me for falling short.

He was not a perfect man, my father. There were some failures on his part, some shortcomings. I knew some of them; those did not diminish his stature one iota in my eyes. He was a great man of God. There were probably issues he dealt with, weaknesses, failures, sins, of which I had no knowledge. But he was a man who lived by grace, through faith, in the Lord Jesus Christ. He showed me the way to perfection was through forgiveness, and gave me hope...not in a worldly fortune or a measure of success. He gave me hope in the eternal. After all, a man can gain the whole world and lose his soul.

I never wanted to be like Tiger, because he doesn't have Jesus. He has the whole world, but give me Jesus!