On Sunday, Sept. 29, tensions were high as eight undefeated teams hoped to keep their spotless record. Only three of them managed to do this: the New England Patriots, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the San Fransisco 49ers were desperate for a winning season and a chance to prove themselves. The Oakland Raiders took on the Indianapolis Colts at home, walking away with a 31-24 win, but that win came at a cost. In the heat of the competition, linebacker Vontaze Burfict initiated an intentional helmet-to-helmet hit against Colt’s tight end Jack Doyle. This hit resulted in a season-long suspension for Burfict, but this wasn’t the first time a hit has gotten him in trouble.
Currently, Burfict leads the National Football League with 23 personal fouls as of his entry into the league in 2012, and has accumulated over $469,000 in fines over the course of his career. When signing with the Oakland Raiders in March, Burfict told reporters, “I am not a dirty player, but I can’t go in there playing patty-cake. If I go out there playing patty-cake, then I’m going to be getting run over. I have 300-pound linemen, 300-plus-pound linemen coming at me, trying to block me. If I play soft, then I am not doing my job. Every team plays a little bit after the whistle. It’s just a matter of if the ref catches it, you know what I mean?”
Football is a competitive sport that requires discipline and self-control. Otherwise, your team ends up with a laundry list of penalties and a player who’s out for the season. Despite what the referees see and what they don’t, there is a certain moral understanding that you are endangering other players when you play dirty, whether you have an excuse for doing so or not. Even though new rules have been put in place for player safety, it seems as though more and more players are ignoring them and playing as though the ref isn’t looking.
When I was little, I used to live as though the ref wasn’t looking, because in order to get what I wanted in the moment, I had to break the rules a little bit. Due to my sweet tooth, I was a repeat offender when it came to stealing candy from my family’s snack stashes. Each time I stole, I did so as if no one even knew about it, but deep down I knew it was wrong. Sometimes my parents would catch me, and sometimes they wouldn’t, but either way, I continued to do it because I didn’t have self-control.
As I got older, it wasn’t really candy that tested my self-control, rather a new funny movie that came out that I knew I wasn’t allowed to watch or a video game my friend had that I knew I wasn’t allowed to play. These were things I knew I could get away with because my parents wouldn’t know — which is false, parents always know — but even though I got away with these things, I always felt awful about doing them.
I was manipulating God’s grace and mercy in order to justify my behavior. One bad movie isn’t going to kill me, I would tell myself, although I knew it was never going to be just one bad movie. With each bad movie I watched and each rule I tried to tiptoe around, the less guilty I felt doing those things. I normalized it, telling myself that there are worse sins than watching a movie.
Just like the NFL makes rules for player safety, God has set rules for our spiritual safety. He knows what will benefit us, so he gives us that unsettling feeling in our stomachs when something isn’t good for us. God wants the best life for us and wants us to be filled with goodness and holiness, so when we disobey him, we are only losing the best life we could have asked for. This isn’t an easy life to live, but it is by far the most rewarding.
So the challenge I give to you is the same one I give to myself: Do not live like the ref isn’t looking, because he is. Even when life hits you as hard as a 300-pound linebacker, get back up and keep on playing.