Tiger Woods and Mammon’s Scorecard

by Ernesto Tinajero 12-23-2009

Money has become the measure of man, contributing much to our recent sorrows. It may, indeed, be the prime reason. Greed, a sin, leads to ruin. As we try to come to grips with why the wheels came off the car in the Great Recession, one of the least talked about aspect has been how much we judged each other by money’s measurement yardstick. Our human worth is tied too much to the bottom line of our finances.

Yet, death reveals this measuring device as fool’s gold. What we most remember about the ones who have passed from this life is more about their love and relationships. The best of our lives goes beyond our money it goes to the quality of our relationships and of our honor, and of our integrity. We have forgotten this reality and chase the fairy tale that greed proclaims. Easy money and love of pleasure replaced salvation as the good news we most want to hear. No longer do we look at a human’s honor or her word. When have last time you even heard the use of the word honor?

In the whole Tiger Woods story, the subtext has been how much money he has lost. His has diminished in our estimation because he has lost money through lost sponsorships. That he may lose his family registered hardly a blip. How strange that the weakness of Mr. Woods and his lack of integrity is primarily calibrated against his money. The loss of honor, the loss of relationship, and the loss of reputation are thought of as side casualties. The loss of possibly hundreds of millions of dollars is what counts. The fact that he still has more money than most two-thirds world countries doesn’t count. What counts is the loss of future revenue. As we have made money the reason for living, we have lost our sense of shame.

Unfortunately, this use of money as a scorecard is not limited to Mr. Woods. Is it any wonder that bankers claim that only by offering outrageous salaries, can they attract “talent”? “Talent” that were the very same ones that created the machinery of the Great Recession. Few have shown any remorse or shame in their conduct leading to the economic debacle, and in fact blame others for the mess they created.

Having pride in a job well done, doing good for the general welfare, being a servant like Jesus have been replaced by the dollar sign. Until we rid our selves of our new Ba’al, making money the point of life, we will continue to cycles of unabashed hedonism followed by economic sorrows. We need a prophet to proclaim to us the true Gospel, the good news of Jesus. Money lacks the power to save us; the love of God through Jesus saves us.

The church, for the most part, has failed in its roll of prophet and at times has, itself, chased profits. If all that matters is how big our churches are and how much money they raise, we miss the Gospel of Jesus. If we pray for God to make us rich monetarily, then who is our God, Jesus or money?

Yesterday, I saw a miracle. A fellow brother in Christ, a faithful man who raised three children and has the love of the church in his heart, has been confined to a wheelchair. During prayers of the people, in the midst of our crying out to God for healing, in the midst of prayers celebrating the birth of babies, he struggled out of his wheelchair and stood before his God. The power of God rested on him. His voice joined the rest of voices crying out for new life. The beauty of a faithful man standing before his God overwhelmed me and pointed to the truth of God. I knew the beauty of the Gospel. We are helpless before God, and no amount of money will help us when we stand before the ultimate reality. We love, therefore we are.

Until we again understand the truth of love, and abandon the love of money, we will miss the beauty of life. I know I am saying nothing new here. It is as old as the cross of Jesus, as old as the foundation of creation. We just have forgotten the truth, blinded by the shiny siren of easy money leading us with cheap promises to the edge of the cliff. Let us back away from the cliff.

portrait-ernesto-tinajero1 Ernesto Tinajero is a freelance writer in Spokane, Washington, who earned his master’s degree in theology from Fuller Seminary. Visit his blog at beingandfaith.blogspot.com.

Categories: Economics

Tags: Christ, church, creation, death, dollar, Economic, economy, Family, Finding Our Way in the New Economy, God, Good News, Gospel, Great Recession, greed, healing, human, integrity, Jesus, miracle, money, power, pray, profits, prophet, recession, relationship, rich, salaries, shame, sin, tiger woods

Darnell Barkman

I highly doubt that Tiger didn't care about his family. I'm sure that he was a hurting man, with a lot of loneliness and frustration in life just like the rest of us. He lost touch with what was important and fell to sex like lots of us do. That's why proverbs has Chapters all about staying clear of the wayward woman, because there always seems to be one available when we're weak. I hardly believe that Tiger didn't care about his family, he's not a monster. He's another damaged human that's been lifted to superhuman status and left lonely at the top.

He's clearly another victim of isolationism and individuality in our culture.

justintime

Not at all, Sam, and thanks for the link to Tom Bevan's rebuttal of the Cottle piece that I referenced.

Tom Bevan is Superintendent of Bayonet Golf Course in Monterey, so you'd expect he'd want to rebut Cottle's "ignorant, superficial and odious little piece...".

Bevan references the 2009 National Golf Foundation Report while Cottle references the 2008 NGF Report. Still if you read between the lines of these NGF ("Helping Golf Businesses Succeed") reports you can't help but come to a different conclusion than Bevan did about trends in the golf industry.
Cottle read beyond the first bullet point about the number of golfers increasing by 16% since 1990. Gee, even if the NGF number is accurate, that's less than 1% per year, hardly an explosion, as claimed by Bevan.

If you read further you get Cottle's drift about a dying industry -
Bullet point 2 states: 10% - 15% OF PUBLIC COURSES ARE “AT RISK.” This extends to about 1,500 courses. Only about half of course operators report that they are doing well. Nearly 90% of at-risk courses are experiencing operating losses. They have been particularly hard-hit by demand dilution (rounds are off 30%-35% from peak and revenue is off 10%-25%). Many of these courses may be trapped in a downward spiral – 60% report they have lowered their maintenance standards, and almost 90% are deferring capital expenditures.

Bullet point 3 states: 100-200 COURSES PER YEAR WILL CLOSE. Our best estimate is that 5% to 10% of the 1,500 courses in trouble will close per year until supply and demand reach equilibrium. And, there could be even more closures if the economy, golfer confidence and rounds played don’t begin to improve.

Even in the words of the National Golf Foundation, with the bottom falling out of the American dream, golf is not an exploding market, is it now?

But my point is not Cottle's point. I actually agree with Bevan on this - if Obama can relax playing a round of golf, that's OK with me.
I just think we'd be better off if Obama were to meditate over the future of America, then go out and shoot some hoops.

I think we'd also be much better off if Detroit and Wall Street big shots had spent less time on the course, more time minding the store.

justintime

deleted

SamHamilton

Exactly my point above. She says controversial things and the media just loves conflict and controversy so they air her views.

SamHamilton

If it's not too much of a waste of time for you, here's a rebuttal to Cottle's TNR piece:

http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/12...

She makes few substantive points, but I guess when one writes about a subject about which one knows little and solely relies on Google for talking points that's what happens.

justintime

Some golf miscellanea for Sam Hamilton:

There are more than a thousand golf courses in the United States that can be considered "coastal." More than half of them could be gone by the end of this century because of global warming.

GOLF IN AMERICA WILL FACE A CRISIS OVER WATER.
There simply won't be enough to go around for golf courses to continue to do what they've been doing (one report says U.S. courses each use on average 300,000 gallons a day).

THE PESTICIDES THAT GOLF COURSES USE, AND THE ONES THAT PEOPLE THROW ON THEIR LAWNS, PERHAPS ARE NOT AS SAFE AS WE BLITHELY ASSUME THEM TO BE. There's a reason golf-course superintendents dress like Power Rangers when they spray the golf course.

From: How Green is Golf?
http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2008/05/envi...
..................................

It has been posited that W. quit the game in part because of the stinging coverage of comments he made on the golf course in August 2002, following a suicide bombing in Israel. “There are a few killers who want to stop the peace process that we have started, and we must not let them,” Bush told the assembled journalists. “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.” The tone-deaf clip eventually made its way into Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. It was not one of golf’s finer moments.

... for all the blather about how golf is soooo much less elitist than it used to be--a line being aggressively peddled these days by the head of Scotland’s Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in an effort to return the game to the Olympic lineup for the first time in over a century--it remains largely the province of reasonably affluent white guys. (Memo to the R&A: That whole golf-is-egalitarian pitch might be more persuasive if your club weren’t still boys-only.)

There are fewer black faces on the PGA Tour now than there were three decades ago, and Augusta National’s 2003 fight to keep women out of its clubhouse did nothing to improve the game’s sexist rep.

And if we really want to get harsh about it: Golf is a dying game--on the skids for nearly a decade, according to a 2008 report by the National Golf Foundation. The number of Americans who golf has fallen by some four million, while the number who golf frequently (25-plus rounds a year) has plummeted by a third. One observed problem: evolving family dynamics. Men once free to spend all weekend on the links are now expected to help shuttle the kids to soccer, walk the dog, and generally pull their weight on the home front.

from "Bunker Mentality-- Barack Obama's dangerous obsession with golf."
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/bunker-ment...

In spite of all this, I'll defend your right to waste your own time on the links and to comment on Tiger Woods' peccadilloes. After all, it's your life.

WB123

Why are you wingnuts bringing up Sarah Palin on a blog that has nothing at all to do with her if you want people to stop talking about her?

squeaky

If Sarah Palin wrote a Facebook post in the forest, and there wasn't a media person around to cover it, did she really write it?

BlueDeacon

Keep in mind that we are also a business, and more so than before we're a victim to the marketplace. Print especially is taking a beating because people don't want in-depth stories anymore.

SamHamilton

I never blamed liberal activists. I blamed the media. Yes, the editors and producers choose what goes on air. Sex scandals sell. So they sell them. They don't have to though. I was surmising how nice it would be if they didn't feed our hunger for junk news.

ford49

I would bet that a lot of African Americans would argue about your characterization of "this point in history" regarding the reality and impact of racism in U.S society. We continue to be asleep to the reality that this country was founded on the genocide of one race of people and the enslavement of another. It's ugly and we compartmentalize this reality and conveniently tuck it away in our "cowboy and indian" mentality...the ramification of this slight of mind impacts our relations with all people of color in our country today. SoJo is not "portrying" anything but it is presenting an uncomfortable truth.

BlueDeacon

My hypothetical above was premised on the belief that the media controls what it airs and prints.

What you say is true, but only to a point. However, those decisions are made based on perceived news value by a team of editors/producers, not some liberal activist types out to hammer conservatives. And believe me -- they will complain. For example, during the tour for "Going Rogue," Sarah Palin visited a local bookstore in an area where she has a lot of admirers, and last month Mike Huckabee visited a mega-church, which made the front page of our paper.

BTW, yes, I'm the same guy.

SamHamilton

I'm assuming you are the same person as BlueDeacon. I read your comment - "It's because of her legion of fans that she remains in the news in the first place..." to mean that because she has legions of complaining fans the media is somehow compelled to air her views. My hypothetical above was premised on the belief that the media controls what it airs and prints.

Rick Nowlin

That's irrelevant in this case and not what I'm saying. The conservative movement targeted us from the beginning because they figured that if they can create doubt about our integrity they would be able to substitute their propaganda and have people accept it as truth or a legitimate version of such, even while we know all the while that they're distorting it or outright lying. (BTW, I'm a print guy and almost never watch cable news.)

SamHamilton

Someone forgot to take his cranky pants off before commenting here.

SamHamilton

So are you saying the media covers people who complain the most about the lack of coverage? In general, the national media does a pretty poor job of making decisions about what is news and what is "news" (i.e. entertainment and controversy).

BlueDeacon

I'm not saying to ignore it. Just don't exaggerate it. Or portray America as uniquely evil in this regard. What country in the world has as much racial integration in the world as us, or has attempted to do as much to right its wrongs? That doesn't mean we're not guilty or close to being perfect. But in Africa or the Arab world, there's a lot of racial animosity among people of the SAME color skin, even.

Well, in fact the conservative movement in this country has actually tried to roll some of that back; some even said so. Examples of that are simply too numerous to post here, but suffice it to say that the Reagan Administration took the lead in Washington. And no one will accuse Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, whom many evangelicals listen to, of promoting racial harmony.

But it goes beyond racism as an explanation.

My point is that blacks often don't have the contacts to "move up the ladder" because they don't live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same churches, join the same clubs etc. as the "big shots" -- in other words, they're not part of the "old-boys" network.

Brent Hardaway

"I'm African-American, and as such it's not something I personally can ignore even if I wanted to (and I'm not the super-sensitive type)."

I'm not saying to ignore it. Just don't exaggerate it. Or portray America as uniquely evil in this regard. What country in the world has as much racial integration in the world as us, or has attempted to do as much to right its wrongs? That doesn't mean we're not guilty or close to being perfect. But in Africa or the Arab world, there's a lot of racial animosity among people of the SAME color skin, even.

"Have you noticed how few blacks get busted for things like insider trading? Think that's a coincidence?"

No, it's not. But it goes beyond racism as an explanation. When I was a business undergrad, there were only 1 or 2 African-American students out of a typical class of 80 people. If few black students are choosing to enter the business world, few are going to make it to the top.

Is it because the business world is racist? I've been in the corporate world for 13 years now, and you might be interested to know that 3 out of 4 supervisors I've had have been liberals, and in the pod where I am now, I'm the only one who voted for McCain. Most people are college educated, cosmopolitan people, and the number of politically liberal people is sizable.

BlueDeacon

I'm African-American, and as such it's not something I personally can ignore even if I wanted to (and I'm not the super-sensitive type). Have you noticed how few blacks get busted for things like insider trading? Think that's a coincidence? Hint: It's not because we're more virtuous. On top of that, Jim Wallis lives in one of poorest neighborhoods in D.C., so he has a different perspective than probably most evangelicals -- it may be his reality, and it certainly is such for Christians who live in those communities.