Meme creators were rubbing their hands with glee last week as the 15-second video of former Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his mistress, Kristen Cabot, being caught out on the “kiss cam” at Coldplay’s Massachusetts concert, went viral.
The still image of the deer-in-the-headlights shock on their faces as their adulterous affair was revealed is one that has already given rise to thousands of internet jokes.
I’m sure you have seen the footage but for those who haven’t, at one point in their concerts, rock band Coldplay will have cameras project images of concertgoers onto large screens, while the band’s frontman, Chris Martin, improvises and sings a few lines about those on screen.
When they noticed themselves on camera, Cabot hid her face while Byron took to the ground in order to avoid the attention. Martin’s response made clear what was happening: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” he quipped from the stage.
The video was posted to TikTok by another attendee, Grace Springer, and has since been viewed hundreds of millions of times around the world and has led to the resignation of Byron from his role as CEO and Cabot being placed on leave.
As satisfying as it may be seeing a multimillionaire CEO and “the other woman” be shamed in this way, I think there are a few things to remember.
The first is that behind the many, many memes, there are real people whose worlds were turned upside down by this moment, especially the spouses and children of the adulterous two. The families not only learned about this along with the rest of the world, but who have now also been thrust into the spotlight and are the subjects of some of the same unwanted media attention that Byron and Cabot have attracted, although they are innocent players here.
The second is that we all have sins that we keep hidden from everyone except our confessor. While they may not be as devastating as adultery, we shouldn’t take too much delight in a person’s worst sin being splashed everywhere—because there but for the grace of God go all of us.
The third is that their reaction to being caught made it so much worse. Imagine the same scenario, except that instead of trying to hide themselves, Byron and Cabot just stood there and accepted that they may have been noticed. Had they have done so, Chris Martin would not have called them out from the stage, nor would Grace Springer have shared the moment on her TikTok account.
Perhaps a handful of people in the crowd would have recognised them and reported the indiscretion to their respective spouses, but even so, they would have spared themselves and their families the broader public humiliation, the loss of a job and whatever else will come with their newfound notoriety.
To be clear, I am not advocating a defiant pride in one’s sin, nor am I suggesting that they should have continued the affair had the televised moment not been revealed to their loved ones. But it seems to me that the attempt to cover up their wrongdoing had the result of making a bad situation catastrophic.
This is a lesson for all of us.
In the moment when our sin is revealed to us, hopefully in not such a public manner but in a moment of prayer where God gives us the grace to acknowledge it for what it is, we have two options.
We can either react like Byron and Cabot (or Adam and Eve for that matter) and attempt to hide ourselves, or we can accept the consequences and seek to repent of and remedy them as soon as possible. While the latter might cause us immediate pain, it may just spare us and our loved ones future hurt and be an opportunity to commence the healing process.
