People magazine about 15 years ago listed the "100 top romances of the 20th century." Over half were adulterous, but People treated all of them as glorious. More pictures in our heads.

What's missing in Sanford's emails was reliance on Christ. The riptide analogy: If you're caught in one and try to swim directly toward shore, you'll just tire yourself out fighting against the riptide's power—and you might drown. But if you keep your head and rely on God's providential limiting of the riptide's breadth, you'll know that by swimming parallel to shore you can escape the water's pull and make it home safely.

Sanford did what all non-Christians and many Christians do in emergencies: He depended on his own strength and his own judgment, twisted as it had become. He was lost. When it was too late and he faced the press upon his return to South Carolina, he said truly that "God's law" is designed to "protect you from yourself"—but at a crucial time he forgot that, as we all do at times.

But here's one way Christians are different from non-Christians: We're bad liars. When caught, we confess rather than stonewall.

Reactions from secular liberal strategists late last month were telling. One Huffington Post pundit said of Sanford, "The executive leadership he showed in confessing to his sins . . . was really bad." Democratic politico Steve McMahon said on MSNBC's Hardball, "What I would have suggested is that he put out a statement which says: My wife and I separated two weeks ago. I left the country to have some private time, and I'm not going to have any anything further to say about it."

Christians tend to follow a different strategy, known as "confession," because we know that part of God's hard mercy is bringing into the light what we try to do in darkness.