(Editor’s Note: This is the second of two special opinion pieces on the Brit Hume-Tiger Woods controversy by ABP Senior Columnist Jim Denison. The first piece was published Jan. 12. Denison’s regular FaithLines column will continue to be published every other Monday, with the next column scheduled for publication Jan. 25.)
By Jim Denison
Intolerance of intolerance abounds. You’ve heard about Brit Hume’s now famous (or infamous) recent comment regarding Tiger Woods’ spiritual life: “He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn your faith, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.'”
Critics were quick to lambaste Hume for what they took to be an intolerant criticism of Buddhism. According to Jon Stewart, Hume suggested that Tiger’s Buddhist faith “would not be adequate in saving Tiger’s clearly corroded soul.” A Muslim commentator on Stewart’s show then censured Hume for claiming that his faith is superior to another.
Interviewed the day after his comments hit the air, Hume tried to clarify: “I was really meaning to say in those comments yesterday more about Christianity than I was about anything else. I mentioned the Buddhism only because his mother is a Buddhist and he has apparently said that he is a Buddhist. I’m not sure how seriously he practices that.”
He added, “My sense about Tiger is that he needs something that Christianity especially provides and gives and offers, and that is redemption and forgiveness.” When asked about the firestorm of criticism he has received, Hume replied, “You speak the name of Jesus Christ and, I don’t mean to make a pun here, but all hell breaks loose…. It triggers a very powerful reaction in people who don’t believe; it always has.”
Was Hume wrong in claiming that Buddhism does not offer “the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith”? According to the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Buddhism has no category for the redemption of an individual soul by a personal God: “There cannot be a soul, but only the sequence of one moment giving rise to the next, constituting appearances with characteristic possibilities…. It follows equally that there cannot be an eternal God, independent of the cosmos, who creates it.”
How would someone like Woods find “forgiveness and redemption” in Buddhism? According to world-religions scholar Ninian Smart, “The best way to go for salvation [in Buddhism] is by becoming a nun or a monk…. Lay followers not yet ready for the relative severity of the Sangha [a monastic order] might through ethical living and by giving to the order attain a future in some better or heavenly state.”
What advice did the Buddha himself offer for dealing with sin? “Monks, the man who does not understand and comprehend the all, who has not detached his mind therefrom, who has not abandoned the all, can make no growth in extinguishing ill. But, monks, he who does understand and comprehend the all, who has detached his mind therefrom, who has abandoned the all, he makes growth in extinguishing ill.”
Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist scholar, was asked by CNN to comment on Hume’s statements. His response: Buddhism offers “greater self-awareness and understanding, which to my mind is the very essence of redemption and forgiveness…. It is more a system of self-transformation.” Not by divine grace, but by human works.
What would Woods himself say to the controversy? On March 27, 2008, he told Reuters, “I practice meditation — that is something that I do, that my mum taught me over the years. We also have a thing we do every year, where we go to temple together. In the Buddhist religion you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anything in life and set up the next life. It is all about what you do and you get out of it what you put into it.”
How, then, do you find the “forgiveness and redemption” we all need in life? You can choose with Woods to “get out of it what you put into it.” Or you can decide with Hume to accept God’s grace through faith in Jesus. Choose wisely.