Honesty guides good people; dishonesty destroys treacherous people. Proverbs 11:3 (NLT)
Say it ain’t so, Joe was a phrase made famous for fallen
heroes like Shoeless Joe Jackson, those whose reputations suffered
because of the less-than-honest ways they made that reputation. Shoeless Joe and the 1919 Chicago WhiteSox
reportedly conspired to “throw” the World Series that year, causing 9 of the
team members to be banned from baseball for life.
Professional sports and scandal are certainly old friends.
I know a little less than nothing
about FIFA (Fédération
Internationale de Football Association), but many news outlets are reporting this week on the
scandal.
According to the BBC[2], It seems a
number of top level officials of the FIFA group that controls soccer’s
“superbowl,” The World Cup, are under indictment for corruption, including
ten million dollar bribes to fix where the next big event will be held; it’s the
kind of intrigue which would make the court of Henry the 8th proud.
Now, I’m a working-class guy, and in
America football is played with helmets, huddles, audibles and
lots of grunting. I’m not sure where the
line got crossed when we named our game "football"….European football (soccer)
has been around a lot longer…and is a lot bigger on the world scene than the
NFL.
Worldwide, however, the “scandal list[3]” is not short;
start with:
· Shoeless
Joe Jackson and the White Sox in 1919
·
Mark
McGwire’s 70 steroid home runs in 1998
·
Lance
Armstrong’s 7 consecutive drug-driven Tour de France titles
·
World-class
figure skater Tonya Harding paying a thug to break fellow skater Nancy
Kerrigan’s leg so she couldn’t compete against her in the ’92 Olympics
·
Ben
Johnson’s drug-enhanced world sprinting records
·
Boxing,
Horse racing, UFC (sorry Drew) and Stock cars…, well…enough said!
Back to the scandal of the hour at
FIFA; it’s not unusual to find corruption in an organization. If there’s big money at stake, there will
always be those who will find a way to get more than their fair share.
This is as old as the serpent’s plot
in the Garden of Eden to take God’s place (which was a LOT more than HIS
share!
What really tweaks me is the
trickle-down tarnish that comes out of this stuff. You take a ball and a kid who likes to kick a
ball, and run until he’s exhausted…a completely wholesome, body-building,
character-building, mind-cleansing activity….dress it up with flashy uniforms,
sports gloves and nets…put up gazillion-watt lights for night games, turn on
the cameras, and pay for it all with beer commercials…and, voilà – the innocence
of childhood disappears, as the money-grabbers kick into high gear!
And for what? 16 minutes of fame on Youtube or David
Letterman?
Is that what selling our childhood
innocence (and the resultant non-existance of adulthood integrity) is worth?
Pass!
For You Today
If you have a tendency to grab for the brass ring in
your trip on life’s merry-go-round, I really don’t want to rain on your parade;
I would only suggest you study carefully what the end result will be, and what
you have to do to wind up on top.
Once you’ve done that, measure what you’ve found against
what your LORD said in His Sermon on the Mount:
Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will
give you everything you need. Matthew
6:33 (NLT)
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