The Gospel Coalition

Stories of implosion are almost as popular as stories of explosion. We love to read of the regular guy who becomes the hero (see I Am Ozzy); and we love to hear of how the former hero loses his luster (see The Politician). In Staying True Jenny Sanford tells about the rise and fall of her estranged husband, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Sanford was a rising star in the Republican Party, one who spent three terms in Congress and two in the Governor’s mansion. But his star fell when news came to light of his extra-marital affair with an Argentinian woman. And now his wife tells the strange and sad tale of the meltdown of a marriage.

If there is a theme in the book, a theme behind all the words, it is Sanford’s attempts to understand what went wrong. She seems to be constantly wondering, constantly asking, where did I lose him? Where did things go wrong? Should I have seen this coming? Those are inevitable questions, I think, that any woman will ask herself when she has been scorned and rejected, traded in for a newer, younger model. And as always, it is easy for the reader to look from the outside in and to see how things began to crumble and to wonder how it was that she could have been so blind for so long. But from real life we know that it is far more difficult in the moment, with all of the complexities of life.

Despite such reflections, Jenny often comes across as just a little bit less than genuine. While she uses a lot of ink to describe her husband’s faults and foibles (which, truly, are legion) she says very little about how she may have contributed to the meltdown of the marriage. This is not to defend her husband in his sin but just to say that she seems very willing to play the victim card. She portrays herself as a good and noble and pious woman who gave her life to her husband, her children, her country, only to be betrayed. And yet that is so rarely the way it really is. It is rarely so straightforward. Even acknowledging just a few of her own faults would have made her so much more human, so much more genuine. It would have given us so much more to learn about how a marriage really comes unglued from the outside in.

Whenever I read a book dealing with something as important as marriage, I am struck anew by the difference between a Christian worldview and a non-Christian worldview. Sanford often writes about her faith, but gives little evidence that she has a truly biblical worldview, a truly Bible-centered way of understanding the world. Raised Roman Catholic, she has held to the faith of her childhood but seems to have added elements of evangelicalism along with elements of the New Age. Her Christian thinking is at times Christianesque, but rarely distinctly Christian. And it shows as she talks about family, about marriage, about faith.

The book calls me to find joy in what God has given me and to keep my eyes focused on him, through all joy and pain, all success and failure. It calls me to be particularly cautious when it comes to success. It seems that Mark Sanford fell into the age-old trap of believing his own press. So many people told him of his own importance, that he began to believe it all. As his wife writes, “But now, the media, the hated media, was lavishing positive attention on him, and he found it irresistible. He was the man of the moment, the stalwart hero who was standing on principle and refusing to accept money from the federal government. In all ways, he was a man who stood apart from the quotidian world. He was lauded, celebrated for his constant seeking of new ideas, new horizons, and, unbeknownst to me, new sensations. Was it so much of a stretch then for him to think that if he worked hard enough at it, he might beat this aging thing too?” And so the story goes, time and time again. Mark Sanford loved to be loved and soon felt it was his right to pursue happiness in any way he saw fit. As any honest celebrity will tell you, success can very quickly beget entitlement. And entitlement, in turn, begets all kind of sin.

A sad story, as it must be when telling of the destruction of a marriage that ought to have been “til death do us part,” Staying True is sad also because of the lack of resolution, the lack of good answers. How I wish the author had been able to come to true, gospel-centered resolution where, even if she could not save her marriage, she could have taken comfort in the cross of Christ. She could have cast herself upon the one who will always stay true to her. Instead it seems that her primary concern has become staying true to herself. That may provide comfort for a time, but it can never fully satisfy.

Verdict: Read it if you’re ever tempted to vote for Mark Sanford