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The story is not new: A good-looking charismatic leader has an adulterous affair with an attractive woman. John Edwards had an affair with a documentary-movie producer, Rielle Hunter. After months of denial, Edwards finally admitted to his adulterous affair.
There are two especially repugnant dimensions to this affair:
- Edwards was running for president as a reformer who asked people during the campaign to trust him. He would make a difference and he would change things dramatically as a reformer president. All evidence to the contrary, Edwards lied, covered-up his affair and represents everything that is dishonest, untruthful and personally repugnant. The shame, humiliation and degradation he and his family are now experiencing compounds his fall. What a tragedy!
- Edwards’s affair with Hunter in 2006 was occurring while his wife was suffering from cancer. Giving every impression of being loyal and supportive of his wife, Edwards was actually violating every dimension of his vows to his wife. His affair was with an advocate of New Age spirituality. Listen to Jonathan Darman’s description of his first encounter with Hunter (Darman is a reporter for Newsweek magazine): “She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, NJ, but how she’d previously had ‘many lives.’ She’d worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She’d been a New York party girl, she’d been married and divorced, she’d been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.” Darman relates that in a subsequent conversation, Rielle Hunter declared that her purpose “on this Earth was to help raise awareness about [New Age thinking] to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves. Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential.” After she was fired by the Edwards campaign, Darman met Hunter. She blamed the firing on Elizabeth Edwards, the candidate’s wife, whom she characterized as “someone who does not give off good energy. She didn’t make eye contact with me. . . Someday the truth about her is going to come out.”
After reading Darman’s account of his various conversations with Rielle Hunter, I was absolutely shocked by the lack of wisdom and discernment on the part of John Edwards. Hunter is a serious advocate of the New Age worldview, with all its bizarre and weird beliefs. That he had an extended affair with a woman of such convictions tells me more about him than it does about her. Further, that he had an affair with Hunter while his wife was suffering with terminal cancer tells me how hardened his heart truly is. I am most thankful to God that Edwards was not elected Vice President in 2004 and that he did not win the Democratic nomination in 2008. He has no business being a national leader!
Lest I come across as being self-righteous, it is important to remember that John Edwards simply represents how far a human being can go with sin. His depravity and his unbelievable lack of sound judgment are characteristic of the human condition. As we often correctly argue, “there but for the grace of God go I.” John Edwards, with his hard, insensitive heart and the shunning of the vows he made to his wife, manifests how far a human being can go in rationalizing sin. Edwards had apparently convinced himself that he could commit adultery with impunity. When I was growing up, my mother used to tell me, “be sure your sins will find you out.” God will never ignore human rebellion against His ethical standards. He will either call each one of us to accountability in this age or in the next. Tragically for John Edwards and for his family, that time of accountability is now. Edwards’s career as a public figure is over. It will take a very long time for his wife to trust him again and for his children to trust their father’s judgment and his promises.
I ask that you pray for John and Elizabeth Edwards and for their children. John Edwards has violated their trust and failed as a role model. But God’s grace is sufficient for him and for his family. Pray also for Rielle Hunter. She has bought the lies of the New Age and she gives every appearance of a woman on the path of self-destruction. Pray that God’s grace will reach her, for it is only Jesus that will give her the enlightenment that she seeks.
King David said of the slain Saul and his son, Jonathan, “How the mighty have fallen.” There is no more appropriate characterization of John Edwards than that epithet.
See Jonathan Darman in Newsweek (18/25 August 2008), pp. 42-43. |
