Of princes and PKs

By now, you probably know all about the rowdy prince's trip to America. Fresh off his victorious stint representing Great Britain at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, he paid a visit on the former colonies. Along the way, he committed several tactical errors. Among them, he …

• Made a beeline to Las Vegas. Why, oh, why would a world-famous eligible bachelor spend his vacation in Las Vegas? Don't answer that. We both can think of zillions of reasons. And they all walk around in teeny-tiny skirts on stilleto high heels.  Although God may not tempt us with more than we can bear, Sin City doesn't follow the Lord's agenda. So, the bonnie prince must have forgotten to use his head for something other than a hatrack. He sure didn't think. Which led to his second mistake. He …

• Lost his knickers. Yep, that's right. He apparently went skinny dipping or at least took off his clothes in a Vegas hotel room occupied by multiple people. (If you think I'm going to provide a link to stories about his nekkidness , you're almost as daft as the young prince.) Drunken skinny dipping in the Sea of Galilee may or may not be sacrilegious, but going nude in Las Vegas is just plain dumb. What happens in Vegas rarely stays in Vegas. That's because nowadays, practically everybody has a telephone with a camera in it. This led to his third mistake. He …

• Got caught wearing his birthday suit. Or, to quote the late, great Ray Stevens, "He didn't have on nothin' but a smile." 

The reason I feel a little bit sorry for Prince Harry is I understand what it's like to grow up in a fishbowl. I'm a Baptist preacher's kid, or PK for short. OK, so the all the major media, gossip blogs, Facebook and Twitter monitor Prince Harry's fishbowl, which sits on a mantel visible to the whole wide world. The only people who monitored my fishbowl were the other members of our little Baptist church and a few nosy folks who cared what happened inside the Baptist preacher's family. And the mantel that held my fishbowl could only be seen from the borders of Ochiltree County. 

But still, a fishbowl is a fishbowl. And living under close scrutiny by anyone other than your immediate family never is easy and can be unnerving. 

Nevertheless, I can only muster a smidgeon of sympathy for the naked prince. He's 27 years old and should have grown up by now. He's a graduate of tony British schools, supposedly the best in the world, which theoretically teach about honor and duty and the "greater good." And he's a military veteran and should've learned something about both discipline and logical consequences.

The prince would have benefited by words of advice from my dad and a plea from my mom, which they invariably uttered at the beginning of weekends when I was in high school.

Daddy often said, "Know who you are and Whose you are." It was his way of telling me to remember the morals and principles every significant adult in my life tried to teach me and to recall that, as a Christian, my actions reflected on Jesus. Mother added the weightier, "Please don't do anything to ruin your daddy's ministry." To be honest, I resented the psychological tonnage of that statement, but it effectively reminded me my actions could and would affect others besides myself, including the people I loved most.

Who knows what Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles said to Harry when he arrived back home in London. I hope the queen cried and blew her nose and made him feel miserable. So miserable he'll finally act like a man instead of a spoiled brat.

And when the rest of us remember Harry (I get it; we'd just as soon forget.), may his behavior remind us none of us is immune to the consequences of foolishness. The sin and stupidity we do never stays hidden.  And even more importantly, our actions reflect on others—our families, our churches, our Lord.