[Darris McNeely] Scandal, scandal, scandal. It doesn’t seem like a week goes by that there is not some famous person, political, entertainment, or otherwise, who is involved in a scandal. This past week, no exception. The former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2016 Presidential candidacy in the United States has been embroiled in a problem the past several days because it was revealed that, while she was Secretary of State, she kept all of her correspondence – email correspondence – on her own private server in her own home, rather than using the government channels, government servers, which is required by law, by federal employees. In the revelation of this, the discussion back and forth, a lot of questions that have been raised as to why and all of this, that she finally came out and made a public statement about it, but it doesn’t seem to have died down. Nobody knows what the ultimate impact will be upon her run for the presidency, which is yet to be announced, but time will tell. Who knows how this will all play out? But there’s a lesson here – not just in this one, but in all scandals. In my lifetime, I can go back to Watergate, the resignation of President Nixon, and all kinds of political scandals involving famous people.

When something happens – and you know, even at our level, we make mistakes. We get caught with our hand in the cookie jar, and things happen to us that might be not on the front page of the newspaper, but impacts our family and our relationships and our job or school or whatever – we get caught, we’ve made a mistake, and at that juncture, we have a choice what to do. Because a lot of times, how we handle it, how we respond to it, what we say about it, will have sometimes even bigger consequences, good or bad, as opposed to what we actually did. We may have to serve a penalty and it may cost us in certain ways, but how we deal with it is what’s really important. How Secretary Clinton or any other public figure deals with the scandals of their own lives will be something that will determine exactly whether it goes away, cripples their chances to be a president of the United States or some other figure, or maybe even whether or not you will be able to continue on in your job or your role or with the esteem of your colleagues, family, or friends.

Here’s a tip – here’s three tips, actually, when it comes to dealing with scandals and what might be there: first of all, just admit it.  Admit and be honest – cauterize the wound, stem the flow of the blood and the loss that is pouring out of you or of your company or of the entity that you represent. Admit it, get to the bottom of it, and then deal with it at that particular point.

And if you are guilty, and if it does cost you, take the medicine. Do some good. Do penance. Take whatever time, rehabilitate yourself, redeem yourself. In America, and in many other places, there is redemption. And people can earn their way back to self-esteem, to credibility, even to positions of influence, depending upon the situation and who they are. But do some good and serve your time, and see what time will actually bring about for you.

And thirdly, a good dose of humility. If you do come back, if you are reinstated, come back with a good dose of humility. There’s a Proverb 16:18, it says this: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride can get us in trouble beyond even the actual misstep that we might take – the sin, or the crime, or the infraction of the rule, whatever it might be.

Admit it, watch our pride, be humble. It can take us a long way before or after, whatever the scandal might be in our own personal life, and it’s good advice for us all at whatever level we have and occupy.

That’s BT Daily. Join us next time.