Pictures of Josh Hamilton's "wild drunken sex party" are sweeping the internet. Everybody seems to be cashing in on his blunder. It makes for great headlines.
As the conservative Christians cannibalize their own saying "I knew it wouldn't last" the non-believers exclaim no REAL change ever took place.
I do not believe that this is the place for my personal views to be vented about God and rebirth and this thing we Christians call salvation and a changed life, but it is the perfect place to remind all of us of a very key piece of information that we so easily forget:
Josh Hamilton is human.
In a statement Hamilton said: “I’m embarrassed about it for my wife Katie, for my kids and for the organization. I’m not perfect. It’s an ongoing struggle, and it’s real. It’s amazing how these things can creep back in. But I am human and I have struggles.”
Christians, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews... everyone makes mistakes. Most of us just make them behind closed doors and without cameras to reveal our missteps.
It is easy to judge the unwed pregnant teenager, the drunk driver that was arrested on Friday night, and the drug-addicted homeless man in the park because the result of their sin is obvious to the world. But there are skeleton's in everyones closet. Maybe even yours.
Hamilton is a married man with kids. He absolutely messed up, but the truth is that the failure is between him, his family, his team, and his God. Everything else is simply us getting a kick out of his misery.
As long as I have been writing news, reading news, and been absorbed in the process of understanding what news becomes front-page worthy, this kind of shock-value reporting should be old hat. But this one just rubbed me the wrong way.
While I understand the argument that his outspokenness of his personal "change" opened the door for all of this media spectacle, I also believe that there has to be a line in the sand somewhere between the right to know and purely wanting to judge and humiliate. This was not a corrupt politician or a money-grubbing CFO. This was a baseball player that messed up. And he will never, ever live it down.
