Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon. Right now we're going through the first book of the Bible,

Genesis. It's not how you start, but how you finish. I think it's unwise,

unfair even, to define a person's life only in terms of how that life ended.

Should a marriage that ends in divorce cast the whole marriage in a bad light?

Well, maybe not, but the reality is fair or unfair. That is how it works.

How something ends affects how you think about everything that came before it.

Consider an example from sports.

Alex Rodriguez, he came up into the major leagues in 1994.

He played shortstop for the Seattle Mariners. And a lot of people thought he might become the best baseball player in the history of the game

Alex Rodriguez. He was known as A-Rod. He played over 20 years in the major leagues. He was a-rode. He played over 20 years in the Major Leagues. He was a fabulous hitter and

fielder. He really was one of the best baseball players ever. But his career ended in an embarrassing way.

His career ended when it became known that he was using performance enhancing drugs.

But a lot worse is that he lied extensively about how he used those drugs.

He was finally busted, exposed.

And how he finished his career tainted his whole career. His nickname went from being A Rod to A Fraud.

Or what about an example from entertainment? Let's take Bill Cosby.

Bill Cosby spent decades as a well-known, a well-loved stand-up comedian.

He became America's father, Cliff Huxtable, on the Cosby show.

But then several women started to say that Bill Cosby had taken advantage of them, even sexually

assaulted him.

He denied it, but eventually went to court and he was found guilty of sexual assault.

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