"Grace and mercy is real. You are forgiven."

George W. Bush may not have been a great president, but my sense is that he was a great man.

This account by Timothy S. Goeglein, who resigned in scandal from President Bush's staff after it was discovered that he had committed plagiary, of his interaction with Bush in the aftermath of the scandal sounds authentic:

I resigned, no excuses, on a Friday. On a Monday I came in to take the pictures off my wall and clear off my desk, and I received a call from the chief of staff, Josh Bolton. He asked me how my wife and children were doing and told me he forgave me. He said, "The boss wants to see you." That means the President. When I got there, it was just the President and me, and I apologized. He looked at me and said "Tim, I forgive you." I tried to apologize a second time, and he said, "Grace and mercy is real. I've known it in my life and I'm sending it to you." And I said, "Mr. President, I apologize. Please forgive me." He said, "I'll say it again: Grace and mercy is real. You are forgiven. Now we can talk about all of this, or we can talk about the last eight years." We spent 20 minutes together. We prayed and we embraced. I cried when I was looking around the Oval Office for the last time. And as I prepared to leave he said, "By the way, I want you to bring your wife and sons here so I can tell them what a great husband and father you've been." Sure enough, he invited them to come. He was the leader of the free world, validating me, after I did what I did, before my wife and children.

Liberals mocked Bush for having been a drunk, or being a "dry drunk," but it seems that Bush did something that too few do after such an experience; he learned from it and projected his lessons onto other people.  That is true greatness.

There is also this insight about sin from Goeglein:

You write, "It is as if God worked through me for years and then one moment allowed me to be stripped of worldly masks, reformed and new." What masks were stripped away?


The capacity for self-deception can be huge, and it can be incremental. I came to a moment where I was truly exposed, and I had a choice. The choice was to continue along that trajectory or to admit that what I had done was an absolute failure in my life. In that was my confession, not confessing to a friend or confessing to a pastor or confessing to a confidante, but confessing in a way that you know will become public.

"The capacity for self-deception can be huge, and it can be incremental."

True.