If any of you guys have been reading our blog from the beginning, you may remember this picture:
A few months before we came to China, Allie and I did a half-ironman race, and this is our victory picture! As someone who is interested in endurance athletics, I made myself get up extra early this morning to eat breakfast before the Lance Armstrong interview (we're 12 hours ahead of EST, so it was at 9:00am for us). And yes, I did just say that I got up "extra early" to eat breakfast before 9:00am... when you have a newborn, everything in the morning seems to be extra early.
Anyways, back on track. During the early parts of the interview my mind was filled with thoughts along the lines of "Of course he cheated... we already had the evidence.... What a liar.... How arrogant...." But as the interview continued, my mind turned to thoughts of "How sad... how misguided... how lonely."
I think we all have an inate desire to seek out greatness, to seek out perfection. However, it can be easy to forget that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." You see, this desire was placed in us because our souls long to be with God. He came to earth as the ONLY perfect man. The problem comes when we try to fulfill this inate desire with imperfect humans. I should not be surprised that Lance Armstong did drugs, broke the rules, and lied about it. He is but a man, no more or less sinful than myself.
I did learn one important thing from Lance during the interview. He said that he was trying to live in a "perfect story." To him, his perfect story included beating cancer, having the perfect marriage, and doing something athletically that had never been done before. That was what he based his life upon. The reason that he lied, cheated, and called others liars was because they were establishing a reality outside of his "perfect story." You know, I have a perfect story that I base my life around too. It's the most widely published story in the history of the world. It allows me to fulfill my inate desire to serve the one perfect man that has ever existed. Am I willing to defend my perfect story with the same passion that Lance defended his? I should be.
The perfect story that I base my life on requires me to extend to Lance the same grace that I have received. "If anyone one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her... At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time... until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there."-- John 8:7-9
No comments:
Post a Comment