By now, most of us have been thoroughly inundated—thanks, largely in part, to ESPN’s wash-rinse-repeat approach of showing the elevator video—with coverage of the NFL’s domestic violence problem specifically as it relates to Ray Rice. The reaction against Rice was swift, virtually unanimous and severe. Understandably so. The reaction against the NFL could aptly be described with the same aforementioned adjectives. Yet when I thought about how people responded to the NFL, something seemed so off. And that’s when it struck me!
How is it possible that sportswriters and NFL fans who have said nothing about NFL domestic violence for years suddenly rise to the throne like a bunch of demi-gods and point out the NFL’s incompetence? Where was Bill Simmons when Brandon Marshall beat on women in his life? Nowhere to be found. Where were all of ESPN’s writers when Randy Starks punched his fiancée? Nowhere to be found. Where were all of America’s sportswriters when Dez Bryant hit his mom? Nowhere to be found. Where were all the sportswriters when Terrell Suggs punched his wife in the neck? Nowhere to be found. Where were all the sportswriters when Greg Hardy was convicted this summer? Nowhere to be found.
Got the picture yet?
The picture is disgusting. And honestly, it’s even worse than the NFL’s response.
But this isn’t just my attempt to bag on sportswriters everywhere. Because the truth is that they are typically just a reflection of their readership. These writers reflect public opinion. So when I say that sportswriters were nowhere to be found, I mean with steadfast equivocation that we as NFL fans were nowhere to be found. We as husbands were nowhere to be found. We as fathers were nowhere to be found.
And yet everyone is so quick to point the finger at the NFL. Part of me wonders if this because we are afraid to look in the mirror. Because if we look there we will find something too painful to look at. We will find that our love for this game we call football has stripped us bare of any principle. Then when you think about the fact that a silly game has robbed you of all moral perception, it can’t but shake you very deeply (assuming you actually reflect on it and don’t just jump to the next mentally stimulating blog after finishing this article).
This is not the end though. If we arrive at the point of having our souls shaken, it’s from there that change seems possible. Maybe that is the point where we can take Jesus words seriously when he says:
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye. You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
These verses are perhaps the most abused verses in the post-Christian American world. And yet I can’t think of another situation where these verses deserve to be heeded with such reverence and earnest application.
It is from here that we can become a people who aren’t eager to point out the speck in the NFL’s eye—at least they suspended him for two games, have any of us considered not watching football for at least two Sundays?—but rather a people who sit in humility waiting to have our own plank removed.
The Ray Rice situation has been a real life parable for those of us eager to judge and slow to look at our own ugliness. It has been a real life parable to us so that we might seek our own holiness, not demand it from others.
Some might wonder why, despite the general tenor of the article, I haven’t at least made a few clear unqualified remarks about the putridness of Ray Rice’s and the NFL’s actions. Shouldn’t I at least be clear about that even if that is not the main thrust of the article?
The answer is because when all the other domestic violence incidents happened in years past, I too, was nowhere to be found.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.