There’s no shortage of stories of sex scandals involving famous people, but one that sticks out to me is David Petraeus.  You’re probably familiar: He’s an American 4-star general who led (at different times) the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, then served as head of the CIA. A brilliant guy. He literally wrote the book on counter-insurgent warfare. He was touted as presidential candidate without people even really knowing what his political views were.

Then, just after last November’s election, Petraeus suddenly resigned after only a year at the CIA. It turned out he had had an extramarital affair with a woman who wrote his biography. The affair was discovered by CIA investigators, who look into these things because the last thing you want in the intelligence community is skeletons in the closet that open you up to blackmail.

Now this guy is talented, high-achieving, promising, disciplined, and smart. (One of my favorite stories: In the early 90’s, Petraeus was accidentally shot in the chest with M-16 rifle during a training exercise. He had major surgery, then left the hospital early after showing doctors he could do 50 pushups, without a break, a few days after being shot in the chest with an M-16.) He knows how to defeat terrorist organizations on their own turf. Yet he was brought down by a run-of-the-mill sex scandal, a series of stupid decisions, and some embarrassing emails with an attractive woman who fawned over him.

A fairly obvious point from this: Sex makes very smart, very wise, very competent people do very stupid things. That’s because sex is very good and very powerful. It’s kind of like a nuclear power plant: very good when working properly, very difficult to restrain when things get out of hand.

It’s designed that way.

adapted from the intro to a recent sermon on the 7th Commandment