WHERE IS RESPONSIBILITY?

Having been around sports most of my life, earlier as a participant, and now as an observer, I confess to a pet peeve. That peeve is the seemingly endless portrayal of poor sportsmanship and refusal to take responsibility for their failures of athletes.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in football, where almost every pass play, in both college and professional games, an incomplete pass will be accompanied by the receiver jumping up and pumping his arm up and down, asking for a penalty flag from the official.

It is rare these days to see an incomplete pass where that does not occur. Every dropped ball or every not quite perfect pass that falls to the ground has the receiver jumping up pumping his arms the way an official does when he throws a penalty flag.

What that says to me is that no receiver seems to feel an incomplete p[ass could be anything but a poorly thrown ball or an interference penalty. Never could it possibly be that the receiver just flat missed the ball or dropped it.

That seems to be the order of the day. “I am not responsible for any incomplete pass. If the ball is not completed it is not my fault. If we miss connecting on that pass, it is someone else’s fault, not mine.”

From athletics to politics no one wants to accept responsibility for mistakes. Whether it is in the corporate world, the halls of congress, the Oval Office, the fields of athletics or even the church, acceptance of responsibility for errors in judgment or for just flat “dropping the ball”, are always someone else’s responsibility, but surely not mine.

I am not sure where we learned this refusal to take responsibility, but it is becoming rampant in our society. Criminals want to blame society for their criminal behavior. Athletes want to blame officials. Corporate moguls want to blame underlings. Deacons want to blame preachers and preachers want to blame deacons, etc.

No one wants to say, “My bad.” No one wants to look like they failed in their tasks. So, we blame failure on everyone except ourselves.

Taking responsibility for ourselves, for our own failures, for our own shortcomings and, yes, for our own sin, is a very important aspect of receiving forgiveness.

Almost every scandal in our history would have gone away much more quickly if the perpetrators would have owned up. Instead, they tried to cover up. The cover-up is always worse than the “crime.” It is the failed attempt to cover up that got Richard Nixon to resign the presidency. Likewise it was a failed cover-up that got Bill Clinton impeached (even though the senate refused to convict him for political reasons).

Owning up is the way to go. No one thinks you are perfect, so there is no need trying to make them think otherwise.