As the athletic director at CU and as a male leader on our campus I feel compelled to say something today as we engage our culture:
Athletics
We need
different kinds of athletes and a different culture in our sports world.
Way too often athletics in our culture leads to a sense of entitlement and
arrogance that produces behaviors resulting in intimidation, abuse, rape and
sexual assault, and significant injustices toward others, often including
women. Sports is a powerful cultural icon, and is a massive force for either
good or evil based on how character is developed and how athletes are taught
and led and held accountable. It can be used to provide tens of thousands of
desperately needed life-saving bed nets while equipping its participants for a
lifetime of others centered leadership and service. And it can create cultures
where unspeakable acts of violence and personal life devastation can be
acceptable and encouraged. Winning does not ever make all things acceptable and
the Gospel calls us to play and compete and grow in ways that produce the fruit
of true righteousness in those who watch, those who play, those who coach,
those who administrate, and our very sports-crazed world...
Men
We need
different and we need better men. We don’t need men who are just workout
warriors in the weight room or geniuses beating the stock market or remarkable
video game savants. We need men who view and treat women as our God who created
them in His image sees them. Men who believe the women connected to them and
who work alongside them have incredible gifts and tremendous leadership
capacities that must be valued and leveraged and released and sought out. We
need a generation of men who stand up and both grieve and support #metoo
and gladly add their voice and behaviors in demonstrations against sexual
harassment and assault while modeling lives of purity and authentic biblical
love for and toward all women in our lives. It’s the right thing to do and we must
do it with great humility and sorrow at the ways so many in both our culture
and our churches have failed to do so. This is a moment for us to help create a
different, a better future for women and girls in our lives and our world as
men who know Jesus and seek justice and hope for all today...
