As a boy and even into my teenage years, I was always a huge football fan. I never played the game in an organized manner; I was fast but my slight frame carried all of 115 pounds on my heaviest of days back then. I did however love to watch it and my favorite team was always the Dallas Cowboys. Those were the years of Roger Staubach, Leroy Jordan, Ed ‘Too-Tall’ Jones, and Bob Lilly. The coach was Tom Landry and he represented all that was good in our country at the time. At least he did so to me.
The game has changed and it no longer seems as innocent as it did back then. These are the days of free agency and an almost constant barrage of off-the-field problems for a lot of the players. The athletes have changed and it seems as though very few play the sport simply for the love of the game. I still watch it throughout the season but my viewing is now centered on my lovable losers, the New Orleans Saints. Watching or going to a Saint’s game, and I’m borrowing an unknown quote, is like going to a piano recital that your kid is not performing in.
But there are some players out there that have a resolve to do the right things and it is apparent in not only how they play the game, but how they handle themselves off the field. One of my favorites is Kurt Warner, although I seldom pull for the team he happens to be playing for. He is an obvious victim of free agency as well; moving from one team to another over the last decade. The difference in his case is that he moves from team to team when he is given up on by his current team and it never appears to be about the money involved. He admits as much and in a quote he stated, “I believe in things that are more important to me than money or fame. I’m grounded in what I believe in, and my faith and my morals are all going to stay the same.”
That sounds like an old-school player to me, and I like it. It reminds me of some players that are mentioned in the Bible. Three Hebrew children found themselves captives in Babylon. The Chaldean king made a decree that everyone was going to bow down to his statue at a certain time and the penalty for not doing as commanded was certain death. By the way, this death wasn’t going to be by lethal injection, no sir, it was going to be excruciatingly painful. It was death by being thrown into the middle of a fiery furnace. The time for homage to the statue came, and the boys did not bow and worship as they had been instructed to do. The king gave them another chance, and they still didn’t conform. Meanwhile everyone around them was very busy bowing and praising the statue – the threat of a fiery furnace will have a tendency to do that to people.
But what did the three children (teenagers) do? Their answer is given in the book of Daniel, chapter 3: “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” This is one of the most profound quotes you will find in the entire Bible. No matter what it cost the three boys, and even if God did not choose to miraculously deliver them – they were going to do the right thing regardless. The king was furious, and he pretty much lost his self-control at that point.
In the world today we do enough bowing and playing homage to all of the wrong things around us. We need to be more careful in what or even whom we choose to worship. I have been guilty of this many times in my life, sad to say. Oh to be able to stand and say, ‘Enough! I will not succumb to what the world has to offer me’ and to mean it no matter what the cost entails me.
The boys were thrown into the fire, of course. But God did deliver them. And what is important to note here is that when the king peered into the midst of the fire, he not only saw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego; he saw a fourth person that in his own words looked very much like the Son of God. I can’t help but get the message here that when we do take a stand and things seem to be falling apart (or burning down) around us as a result – Jesus is right there beside us, watching over and taking care of us.
I don’t know Kurt Warner personally but I like what I hear. A man that cannot be bought by what the world has to offer is my kind of guy.
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