We Are So Much More Than We Have Become
Ask any coach and he will tell you. The most disappointing thing about the job is an under-performing effort by his team.
Getting
beat is nothing to be ashamed of. Heck, that is the essence of
athletics, or as the intro to ABC’s Wide World of Sports used to
trumpet, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The human drama
of athletic competition.” The agony of defeat is what makes winning so
enjoyable. No one wants to be on the losing side.
But it is
especially true when we should have won. Those are the defeats that make
coaching so gut-wrenching. There is no feeling like walking off of the
field after your team has “let one get away.”
“Letting one get
away” is a lot more devastating than merely losing. There is no disgrace
in “losing,” but losing one that you should have won haunts a coach
forever. The feeling of regret that follows such a defeat does not
easily escape the soul of a warrior.
“If only we had done
this...if only he had done that...if only the ball had bounced this
way...if only I had taken our opponent more seriously....if only…”
There are no words to soothe the wounds of regret. “Boy, we sure let that one get away...”
Some
of you are nodding your head right now because you know exactly what I
am talking about. You too, have experienced that agony of defeat...a
loss that should have been a victory. Only the loss you are ruminating
over right now didn’t happen on the football field, but rather, in the
game of life. Our lives are strewn with the memories of the “one that
got a way” and no amount of rationalization can salve the sore that
still oozes the pus of what might have been.
It didn’t have to be that way.
I
remember one-such game a couple of years ago, when our new start-up
football program lost to what I considered the worst team to have ever
beaten a team that I had coached. After reviewing the film of the game
it was apparent that the defeat was not a result of what the other team
had done, but more a result of what we failed to do. Our lethargic,
cavalier attitude toward the task at hand had led to a half-hearted
performance in a game that we would never be able to get back. I
remember gathering our team together on that dreary Saturday morning
after the loss and sharing with them the reality of our lack-luster loss
the night before.
“Sadly Boys, we are so much more than we have become.”
That
is the same charge that I would lay at the feet of American Christians
and the pathetic performance that we have been exhibiting on the field.
It isn’t so much that the other team has beaten us, but more tragically,
it is a case of our team having lost.
There is a difference you
know, between getting beat, and having lost. Getting beat by a better
team is nothing to be ashamed of. Losing to an inferior team is.
We are so much more than we have become.
“I
returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches
to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and
chance happeneth to them all.” -Ecclesiastes 9
There is no
escaping the fact that the first two decades of the 21st century was our
time. The Baby Boomers I am talking about. It was, as GW Bush titled
his book, “A Charge to Keep”, or in sports terms, our time at the bat.
The scorebook will forever show that when the game was on the line we
came up with a big goose egg.
The Baby Boomers have gone bust. We
are the most spiritually under-performing team in the history of
America. We took a dive, were called out on strikes, fumbled the ball,
and dropped the baton. Instead of keeping the charge, we passed the
buck. The thought of what we have squandered makes me sick.
We are so much more than we have become.
The
self-sacrificing “Greatest Generation” produced the most self-indulged
offspring in the history of the world. The blood of our fathers
sacrificed on the sands of Omaha Beach was traded for the beer-soaked
sand of Daytona Beach. They saved the world and lost their kids. The
“shining city set on a hill” has transformed into a red-light district.
Those who should have been the “keeper of the flame” went on a drinking
binge and replaced the “light of the world” with the flashing neon’s of
Humanism.
We are so much more than we have become.
The
lips of mortal man have never uttered more profound words than those of
Winston Churchill in reference to the war effort in Europe: “Never in
the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
What
have we Baby Boomers done with what our fathers have left us? Time and
chance has happened to us all, and what is the fruit that our generation
has to show?
We have exchanged the soul-saving Gospel of Jesus
Christ for a life-enhancing, best-life-now pseudo-psychology
masquerading as “Church.”
We have rejected the time tested values
of the Ten Commandments and ruled our selves by the ever-evolving
opinions of black-robed “justices.”
We taken the principle of
God-granted liberty and used it as a right to licentiousness and an
unrestrained gorging on the lusts of the flesh.
We have “controlled” the blessing of children and turned them into a “right” chosen and possessed only by a woman.
We
have taken a Biblical-centric education system and turned it over to
cadre of harlots and Humanists who have indoctrinated our progeny in the
doctrines of demons.
We have filled our pulpits with prissy
pastors who have hidden behind the false doctrine of separation of
church and state. These spineless Evanjellyfish have pulled God’s team
off of the “cultural battle field”, hidden inside their stained-glass
fortresses lined with padded pews, and belched forth their “name it and
claim it”, self-fulfilling, counterfeit-Christianity.
We have taught our children to worship the Bengals, the Browns, and the Buckeyes, while ignoring the bulwarks of the Bible.
We have robbed them of the richness of self-sacrifice and promoted a culture of self-fulfillment.
We
have forfeited moral education for moral relativism by offering our
children at the altar of the educational establishment who are hell-bent
on denying the existence of the One upon Who’s Word all morality
stands. Our worship of higher education has directed our children into a
lifetime pursuit of lower living.
We have directed them towards bigger things, but not better things. We have cleaned up the environment and polluted their souls.
History will not be kind to the Baby Boom generation.
Proverbs
exhorts us that a “good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s
children.” To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Never in the course of
human conflict has so much, earned by so many, been wasted by so few.”
We will be forever known as the generation who spent the inheritance.
Shame on us Baby Boomers…we are so much more than we have become.
By Coach Dave Daubenmire
About The Author
Coach
Dave Daubenmire, founder and President of Pass The Salt Ministries
www.ptsalt.com and Minutemen United www.minutemenunited.org, is host of
the high octane Pass The Salt radio show heard in Columbus, Ohio.
In
1999 Coach Daubenmire was sued by the ACLU for praying with his teams
while coaching high school in Ohio. He now spends his energy fighting
for Christian principles in the public domain.
