Tuesday, September 9, 2014

The sin of Ray Rice

The Bible isn't clear on some things, taking a great deal of effort to come to grips with what it really means by study, prayer, mediation. 

This isn't one of them.

The Bible says this: Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

The writer of First Peter is clear there. Show honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. Some would moan about the language, but the meaning, at least to me, is clear. 

This morning the news is filled with the Ray Rice news. Rice, a running back for the Baltimore Ravens in case you're living under a rock somewhere (in which it would be odd that you would have internet in order to read this), is on video in a casino elevator months ago in Atlantic City, N.J. hitting his then fiancé so hard he knocked her unconscious.

Previously the NFL saw another angle of the incident, so officials say, and suspended Rice for two games as he sought counseling. With this view, the NFL officials suspended him indefinitely, and his team cut him loose. Many say Rice, just 27, will never play in the NFL again.

This from a league that welcomed back Dante Stallworth after a one-year suspension in 2009 for a drunken driving manslaughter conviction. Manslaughter!

But this is not a column about the NFL or even domestic violence. No, I want to go a bit of a different way.

This is a column, a blog, about the magnificence of the plan God has for us, those of us like Ray Rice who have fallen short.

Paul wrote this: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b]God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

God forgives where man condemns. God acted so that those who have great, abundant issues, even those as heinous as Rice, can find forgiveness and acceptance and even something we all need to uncover and deliver in our own lives -- understanding. I find it very interesting that many on social media wanted to punch Rice for what he had done. I find that as reprehensible as the offense Rice committed in many ways. That it be man on man, well, isn't that where we are with violence in this country?

Without condoning or saying ultimately it matters I point out that no one knows what led to that moment on video. No one, except the couple, knows what has happened since. No one knows if this is one incident or a pattern. No one knows if Rice has anger issues or was drunk or whatever, and Rice wasn't exactly forthcoming in his few statements since. No one knows. 

No one except a God who in the greatest example of the father, the parable of the prodigal son, runs down the road to get to the son who left the father and wasted his life in prodigal living.

Rice might not play football again. I would suspect not. But eternally the thing he must do is simply turn to Jesus and say words that he has said in public, I'm sorry. Believe Jesus to be Lord of his life, profess that with his mouth, and he will be saved.

That video will be there the rest of his life. No question. But so will that forgiving Father.

Today as we condemn Ray Rice, let us remember or even understand for the first time that all of us are sinners fallen short of a forgiving God. All of us. His sin is no worse than our sin. His sin is no different than our sin. His sin can be forgiven even as ours is.

The world just does't have video of our own.


1 comment:

Kevin H said...

"The world just doesn't have video of our own." Wham!