A Lamp Unto My Cleats

Christian McCaffrey back in his Stanford Days. Photo by Michael Li, used under creative common license 2.0

One Sunday at church, an elementary aged boy came up to talk to me.  He said to me, “I know we’re not supposed to hate.  But I hate, hate, hate Ohio State.”

In the sports world, we throw around that word “hate” quite often.  Growing up an Eagles fan, I was taught to hate the Dallas Cowboys.  As a High School student in the late ‘90s, I joined nearly everyone who wasn’t a New York Yankees fan in hating the Yankees as they rattled off three straight world series wins.  After Tom Brady defeated Donovan McNabb and the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, I joined the bandwagon of people who claimed to hate Tom Brady – until Nick Foles led my Eagles to victory over the Patriots over a decade later.  After that, Brady was okay in my eyes again.

But the boy who approached me after church that one Sunday morning had it right. We’re not supposed to hate.

That’s a message that San Francisco 49ers Running Back, Christian McCaffrey, knows well.  He was raised Catholic – a faith that he still clings to him to this day.  He says: “There’s a lot of hate going on in the world today, and I think it’s really important that everybody takes a step back, looks themselves in the mirror, and when they wake up, just try to be the best person you can be. Treat people with respect, put a smile on somebody else’s face.  I’m a religious person, and I think The Bible is a great place to start; spreading positivity, and being selfless and being giving and being kind, that is the main thing I want to dish out.  My Favorite chapters in The Bible are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, just because they’re all a different perspective of Jesus’ life.  Whether you believe in it or not, the kind of person He was, it gives perspective on how we all should live.”

McCaffrey’s favorite Bible Verse is Proverbs 1:7: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.  McCaffrey explains that “if you fear God, it’s not like you’re scared of him, but it’s a respect thing.  As an athlete, it tells you not to fear anybody. I’m not scared of anybody, and it can kind of give you that confidence booster that you need in life, that there’s only one person that you should fear and respect in that high of a regard, and that’s God.”

In these two quotes, McCaffrey sums up God’s law quite well.  We’re call to love each other and to love God.  Jesus teaches us this very message in Matthew 22:35-39.  In this account, He is being challenged by a group of Pharisees.   ³⁵And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus teaches that everything that God asks of us is based on this principle: Love God.  Love each other.

In the sports world, we toss the word “hate” around loosely.  But, in the real world, we should never hate.  Instead we ought to love God and love each other.