"We have made him into a god, we have canonized him, but he's above all a man, and a man is fragile and breakable"
Michel Hidalgo, former soccer coach for France
wwAs expected, the story of World Cup 2006 is the ejection of French superstar and team captain, Zinedine Zidane. The story won't go away. -- especially in Europe.
Lesson number one. As I have said elsewhere, when the other team plays dirty and calls you names, you have three choices. 1) play dirty right back. 2) whine to the ref, 3) score.
Zidane chose number one.
Zidane was one of the world's greatest penalty kickers. As we now know, the game was decided by penalty kicks and his replacement in the penalty kick shoot out missed and France lost by 1.
Lesson number two. When is an apology not an apology? When you attach a "but" to the end of it. In other words, I'm sorry, but ... is not an apology.
The France captain stressed that he felt no regret about his outburst "because that would mean (Materazzi) was right to say all that."
"Above all, I am human."
Being human means we do sin ... but it is not an excuse to sin.
Zidane clearly feels bad, but the question is about what? In my opinion, he feels bad about letting his team and his nation down. But what about the vicious head butt? Apparently, he thinks he did nothing wrong and the other guy had it coming. This is known as false repentance.
Why the interest in this story?
Believe it or not, I am not on a campaign to villify the French superstar. I think he was an incredible soccer player. I was actually pulling for France in the final largely because I wanted a story book ending to the Zidane legend.
My interest in the story is because it offers such a clear picture of how people deal with sin and with the resulting guilt.
The human pattern is to minimize the wrong ... rationalize the wrong ... justify the wrong ... blur the lines between right and wrong ... and thus re-catalog the wrong until the wrong seems less wrong and eventually no longer wrong. Done often enough, and long enough, and the conscience becomes corroded and ultimately useless.
The story reminds me of my own sin pattern. Something happens. I get angry. I hurt right back -- not so much with a physical head butt, but with a verbal one. The intent is to injure using words. I feel bad though I still feel justified for my anger. I appease my conscience by offering a non-apology apology ... all the while, self-justifying myself and minimizing my sin.
The pattern of self-justification is entrapping. It keeps you in prison. There is one way out.
It is called confession, repentance and forgiveness. We ought to be people who are quick to humble ourselves, quick to confess our sin, quick to seek forgiveness and and doubly quick to grant forgiveness.
How do we live this way? We can't ... we need help. We die to self so that we might live in Christ. Humility. True repentance. Forgiveness. These are the fruit of one who is in union life with Christ.
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