c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the publisher of Religion News Service.)

UNDATED _ In the end, it was a greasy doughnut that brought me down.

After weeks of resisting gourmet offerings and home-cooked temptations, it was a Dunkin’ Donuts presentation in a cardboard box that undid me.

There it sat, in front of me on the conference table. I resisted as everyone else in the meeting grabbed for a favorite flavor. I tried not to savor the aroma, forced myself to look in other directions. But finally I had to pass the box to someone else _ and touching it was more than I could take.

I snatched a humble vanilla frosted number, tore it in half and took a bite before I could think about it.

Later, when the meeting had ended, I ate the other half as well. It was easier this time. My resolve had been undermined.

I am not proud of this episode. Despite days of discipline I was reduced to my most basic needs by a chance encounter with a circle of fried dough.

So it was with a sense of lingering shame and growing heartburn that I sat down to finally read the Starr report.

As seemingly one of the last people on earth to read the account, I had heard enough jokes to be inured to its grossities and adolescent romance.

But as the doughnut caused a chemical reaction in my gut, the report connected with me on a similar level. I read about a man who knew he had a problem but had resolved to do better. A man torn between lust and legacy.

I learned that the president of the United States wanted most to be a good husband and father. I saw that despite the illicit nature of the relationship, he was trying to draw boundaries that may seem pathetically legalistic now, but were his way of doing better.

President Clinton’s internal debate was evident even to Monica Lewinsky. She seemed to admire his desire to make his daughter proud of him. She was willing to go along with his notion of safe sex. Whatever, she seemed to say.

And as I read the tragic commentary, I had a growing sense that I knew how he might have felt.

It’s not that my obsession with a doughnut was anything like his fling with an intern. But the nature of temptation _ no matter what the objective _ is surprisingly similar.

There’s the internal debate, the external control and then the lack thereof. There are the deals that you make with yourself.”Just once.””Only half.””Maybe a little.”And the shame combined with excuses.

There are the lies you begin to tell yourself and the promises for next time. And finally there is the gut ache that comes after the sweet taste is gone.

We all have our weaknesses. Some are more damaging than others. But if we can learn nothing else from this sleazy episode, perhaps it will provide us with a close-up view of someone else’s failure to be who he wanted to be.

Perhaps, like the investigation of a plane crash, it will help us see just exactly how things go wrong and then spiral out of control. And then we may be able to use that knowledge to prevent the next tragedy.

Part of the mystery of our free will is this strange tendency to be less than the people God created us to be. And part of the mystery of faith is how it allows us to rise above our human frailty and be more than we can be on our own.

Faith does not just give us hope for the future, it also gives us help to make it through each day. It allows us to stop and ask for divine assistance when we are tempted by a doughnut, or something _ or someone _ far more toxic.

Faith can help us keep from making a mess of our lives, but only if we allow it to intervene when we are inclined to be very human.

A prayer for restraint might have saved me from the doughnut and President Clinton from Monica. It might have saved us all from a tremendous amount of heartache.

IR END BOURKE