Tiger Woods has scheduled a news conference for today. Only certain media are invited and they have been told there will be no opportunity for questions. I am mildly curious as to what he might have to say although I expect it will be predictable in many ways. He’s sorry, he’ll try harder, he loves his wife and children. Do I sound cynical? Yes, I guess, I am.

I feel sorry for Tiger but not so sorry that I haven’t listened to, and repeated, some of the jokes that have been told about him over the last couple of months. Like other celebrities there is a larger than life quality to him that reduces the personal and makes him more of a curiosity than an individual.

His story does make me wonder about the role of confession and forgiveness in our culture. Will you believe his confession?  If you have admired him or even just watched him as a golfer will his sexual infidelity and subsequent apology change how you think about him?

Scripture is full of sexual infidelity. Just recently a man told me he started reading the Bible as a teenager when his friend told him it had lots of sex in it!  Many of the ‘bigger than life’ biblical characters found in our Bible were seduced or became seducers. Sex has a powerful influence.  I have often sat with people who are emotionally devastated by their partner’s infidelity.  At other times I have been to one to receive the confession of those who have betrayed their own partner by succumbing to the temptation of sex with another.  Forgiveness can be hard to give. It can also be hard to receive.

Most Sunday’s our worship service includes a Prayer of Confession. I sometimes wonder how significant that is for people. Do we really believe that confession makes a difference? Does forgiveness from another make a difference to you? Does confession and forgiveness hold a godly or holy element to it? Are there things that only God can forgive?