As the Tiger Turns

I was just at a car dealership getting my truck worked on. While I was in the waiting room reading a book and watching ESPN, everyone (it seemed like everyone) in the dealership suddenly gathered around the tv and turned up the volume. Tiger Woods was making a public statement about the events that have been going on in his life in recent months. One of the employees at the dealership, a young lady who looked to be in her mid-twenties, didn't give him much of a chance to say anything. When she heard him say the words "counseling" and "therapy" she just walked off saying that neither of those things will do anything for him because he is "just a stupid cheating man."
I did laugh at her response because it was kind of comical. Another employee at the dealership, a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties told her to "leave him alone." I couldn't help but laugh at his response too.
After that, I was just halfway paying attention to the rest of Tiger's statement. The way the young lady responded was a bit comical at the time, but I started to wonder what she must have personally experienced to make her respond the way she did. I wonder what has been going on in the young man's life to make him respond so quickly to her response.
For months now, I have had the attitude that the news media must leave Tiger and his family alone as they deal with this. That would be ideal, but unlikely. Just from looking at him today while he was reading his prepared statement, I could tell he did not want to be there. He was doing something that he felt forced to do. I'm not calling his sincerity into question, as one ESPN commentator did immediately after Tiger made his statement, but it does seem as if the public attention is going to make this recovery and healing process more problematic. It just looks as if Tiger was doing something today that he was not ready to do, but felt compelled to do in order to appease the public or the news media (I don't know about you, but Tiger Woods hasn't crossed my mind in quite some time).
Here's my take on it. First, what Tiger did is wrong and it is a sickness. Second, his family is torn apart over it. Third, Tiger can move past this illness and there can be healing in his marriage and the many others affected by this. It will take time and it will take all of them seeking God. Fourth, all of us have a sickness too in one form or another. It may not be sleeping with numerous women like Tiger, but we all have something that stands between us and God and will hurt (or have hurt) others in our lives unless we give it to God and take steps to get away from it. Fifth, we have all been hurt by someone else's sickness and won't move on from it until we allow God to heal it. Just like Tiger's family and just like the young lady who reacted so abruptly at the car dealership, what someone did to us will destroy us if we don't allow God to heal like he is so willing to do. Finally, when going through this, we wouldn't want people sticking their noses in it and spreading it, so why do we keep feeding a news media so obsessed with doing that exact thing?
How do we tell the news media that we don't want to hear it? How do we tell them that they are behaving inappropriately? I don't know, but this is just another example of piling sickness upon sickness. Unfortunately, the church doesn't do a good job of providing an antidote to this. Much of this same behavior is displayed in Sunday School classes and back-pew gossip in churches across America every Sunday. But that is another blog post for another time......