Public scandals
Every leading newspaper in the UK, Europe and US has recently been featuring sorry stories of high-profile leaders of society and role-models in sport and culture involved in sex scandals, bribes and allegations of corruption.
This has occurred even though UK celebrities have been stifling public knowledge of their affairs with costly ‘super-injunctions’. Recently, UK parliamentarians spoke out, under parliamentary privilege, naming the Welsh footballer Ryan Giggs. Giggs has admitted adultery with a ‘wannabe’ celebrity and is alleged to have had an affair with his sister-in-law, Natasha.
The MP’s use of privilege came as the footballing association, FIFA, was embroiled in a bribes-for-votes fiasco. According to reports, FIFA’s ethics committee has summoned heads of the 25 Caribbean associations at the centre of the bribery scandal to be interviewed about claims that they were offered money as bribes by senior members Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner.
Across the pond, California’s senator Arnold Schwarzenegger has been named as the father of at least one love-child and accused of further infidelity, while the former head of the International Monetary Fund, French economist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been arrested for sexual assault on a hotel maid, which he denies.
In Egypt, the head of an international bank has also been accused of an attack on a hotel maid, while former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin, took out an injunction against revealing the name of the colleague with whom he had an extra-marital affair while the bank was in the throes of the credit crunch.
If role-models, governing bodies and heads of global organisations are like this, how will the ‘grass roots’ be different? Thankfully, there is one answer. It is in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour from the power as well as the guilt of sin. And Christians are ambassadors for Christ. We are to ‘shine like lights’ among a ‘crooked and twisted generation’ (Philippians 2:15).
