Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Penn State and the Fallout from One Man’s Sin

Happy Valley has become Depression Gulch. Penn State still captures daily headlines for allegedly covering up a horrendous scandal of juvenile sex abuse by a prominent assistant coach several years ago.

One man has become an unspeakable liability to a respected institution whose football coach and winning teams are legendary. The result is that Joe Paterno, the winningest college football coach ever, is gone and the university president fired, their departures decreed by the governing board shortly after the storm broke. A blanketing gloom spread over the campus, making some cry and others violent. The spreading chill may affect athletic recruitment, enrollment and fund raising with a shadow across the support of its many alumni.

In a similar case, a longtime assistant men’s basketball coach at Syracuse University has also been fired amid allegations of molestation. The far-reaching affect of that case remain to be seen.

It is difficult to fathom how the sins of a single individual can impact the lives of so many. Not that accessories to the cover-up bear no blame, but the infectious disease is traceable to one man. His career is tainted, his family shamed, his college shaken, his associates degraded and his future is likely prison.

Bible students may easily shift from Penn State to the Garden of Eden. There we find that a single individual’s personal crime against God brought universal debauchery for all humans in all history.

Romans 5:12 clearly traces the sweeping consequence of a single sinner. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Think of that—one man sinning millennia ago still insures the fallen status of every human.

Although each human is born into the death of Adam’s fall, God still gives us all the choice of corroding personal preference or of uplifting generational influence. The sins of the fathers do affect the fortunes of the children as one of the Ten Commandments forbidding idol worship reminds us. “…For I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me.” (Exodus 20:5)

King David’s personal sin brought endless family troubles. “‘Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up adversity against you from your own house…’”. (2 Samuel 12:10-11a)

New Testament believers as the Body of Christ are even more vitally interrelated. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”
The Living Bible translates Galatians 5:9 with a powerful warning: “But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others—a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough!” This is the biblical equivalent of the old saying, “One rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel.”

Actions do have consequences as Romans 14:7 insures. “For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself.”
The positive side of an individual's actions is seen in selfless service as found in Isaiah 58:12. “Those from among you shall build the old waste places; You shall raise up the foundations of many generations; And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.”

That is a great incentive for people at Penn State, Syracuse University or anywhere.

Dave Virkler

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