A message for Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton and other disgraced public figures

Background:

• John Profumo
• Christine Keeler
• The chair in the above photo
• The Profumo Affair

How to Find Grace After Disgrace - Today's fallen politicians have a lot to learn from John Profumo's example.

Excerpt:

Because Profumo actually believed in shame, he could absorb it and let it change him however it would. In a way what he believed in was reality. He'd done something terrible—to his country, to his friends, to strangers who had to explain the headlines about him to their children. He never knew political power again. He never asked for it. He did something altogether more confounding. He did the hardest thing for a political figure. He really went away. He went to a place that helped the poor, a rundown settlement house called Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. There he did social work—actually the scut work of social work, washing dishes and cleaning toilets. He visited prisons for the criminally insane, helped with housing for the poor and worker education. And it wasn't for show, wasn't a step on the way to political redemption. He did it for 40 years. He didn't give interviews, never wrote a book, didn't go on TV.

Comment: Same goes for pastors who have fallen morally (into adultery). Go away. Serve quietly. Redeem yourself. Don't seek to Pastor again!