Currently, the people who sit in cushy offices high above the empire that is NFL football are kicking around the idea of penalizing teams 15 yards every time one of their players uses the N-word during a game. Like most people, I think the N-word should be stricken for all time from every language known to man, but something about this penalty just feels bad.
I think it’s because it can’t go far enough to deal with the real problem.
There’s an interesting conversation recorded in the Bible between Jesus, his disciples, and a really big crowd. Ultimately, the topic of conversation turned to the religious leaders who were always walking around looking all uptight and stuff, and Jesus started using word pictures to help the crowd understand the truth about religious people (and themselves). He compared them to tombstones, to dead bones, and at one point – in an image that almost all parents of teenagers can understand – really bad dishwashers.
I know what you’re thinking. What do religious dishwashers and a 15 yard penalty for saying the N-word have in common? A lot more than you think.
Back in Jesus’ day, the religious leaders loved to throw flags because they were very concerned with how things appeared. They started with the 10 commandments and then over time that got bloated into 613 rules that they felt could help them live out the heart of the original 10. I’m not saying that they were wrong in their desire to be holy, but I do think it got a bit out of control.
Ultimately, the people were getting flagged for all kinds of stuff that they never even knew was wrong because of how much the rulebook had been tweaked by these guys. Take, for instance, the command of God to have clean hands. By the time the religious leaders were done with that one, they were flagging people for not washing all the way up to their elbows.
Imagine, you’re standing there with clean hands feeling pretty good about yourself and then the whistle blows and you’re penalized for not doing more than you even knew you had to. You’d be about as confused as the Raiders were over the tuck rule or Calvin Johnson when his game-winning catch was ruled a non-catch.
Religion, even with the best of intentions, always results in rules. It always polices, which leads to policies. And while most of us love to throw off on religion because of that, when Jesus came, he said that he had come to fulfill the law, not ignore it.
And he started by pointing out why the N-word penalty can’t be effective in dealing with the real problem. It’s because – just like all those other rules – it deals with the wrong side of the cup.
Remember the picture Jesus used to describe the crazed flag-throwers of his day? Bad dishwashers? Here’s the way he put it:
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. (Matthew 23:25-26)
Jesus knew that keeping up the right appearance without first dealing with our wrong heart was just a show. It makes us like the lazy teenager who washes dishes just well enough to get out of the kitchen but not well enough to actually remove the crusty food from the plate.
Penalizing behavior without purifying the heart behind the behavior just delays the inevitable. So while a 15 yard penalty may shut the mouth of a racist for the rest of the game (and make the NFL appear to be more politically correct), temporary change isn’t what Jesus is after and ultimately won’t make our society better.
But thankfully, Jesus had a better plan. He didn’t come to sanitize our mouths. He came to purify our hearts. He didn’t come to make us better for a day. He came to make us new forever. He didn’t come to give us more rules, but to be the ruler. And Jesus never intended to rule us with penalties. He came to rule us with peace.
The apostle Paul put it like this in Colossians 3:15:
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
The Greek word for “peace” means “to act as an umpire.” In others words, to referee. That means that the closer I get to Jesus, the more my heart is changed by him and the peace he gives, the less I need other people to police me and the less I need to police other people.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t have laws or the need for accountability. But it does mean that Jesus’ plan is that we would all grow to the place where we would flag ourselves more than we would need to be flagged by others.
In religion – just like in the NFL – the people with all the power referee behavior. But in a relationship with Jesus, the peace of God referees the heart. It challenges us and changes us. And instead of marking off 15 yards for making God look bad, he leads us in peace toward a life that is more holy for all the right reasons and brings God more glory as a result.
And that is the biggest difference between flagging the N-word in the NFL and truly allowing Jesus to rule our hearts. Because when Jesus rules our hearts, we don’t need to try and keep a bunch of rules so we can look a little less like the dirty cup we really are on the inside.
What we say will match who we are, and when it doesn’t, we’ll find ourselves repenting faster than a referee’s flag can hit the ground.
