cktimes.ca Archives for The Pastoral Lens
The Pastoral Lens
A Promise Is A Promise
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Like many people in the world who follow professional sports, I am getting so tired of cranky sports icons defaulting on their contracts because of their desire for more money. Where is the integrity when a professional player signs a contract for a specific salary for a specific time period and then decides to sit out and not play when he finds out that someone is going to be making more money than he is?I had the pleasure and privilege a few years ago, 1997 to be exact, to speak at chapel services at Toronto's SkyDome prior to a game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Florida Marlins. There was a certain player on the Marlins' team who at that time was the third highest paid player in baseball (at a cool ten million dollars per year!). He had a stipulation in his contract that if at any time his salary fell below the third place ranking, his agent was to meet with team officials to see that he was bumped back up – or he didn't play! Give me a break! By the way, for those of you who follow baseball and understand statistics, his average was .235 with 15 homers and about 70 RBI's (at the end of August). Yeah, like the Marlins were really going to miss him if he sat out!
As a father of five children, I believe it is so important to instill in them the value of integrity. Integrity is a lot of things, but simply stated, it is the practice of keeping your promise. If a ball player says heíll play for a certain amount of money over a given period of time, then he should keep his word and not change his mind if a better offer comes by. My three daughters have a paper route that they deliver twice each week. When they signed up to do the route five years ago they pledged to deliver the papers each week, regardless of weather. If they were going on vacation, it was their responsibility to find a reliable person to take their route for them and compensate them. Many times, the papers are easy to deliver and the weather is favourable. However, there are also those times when weather isn't great or friends come calling to play or they don't feel like it, or – you get the idea. I remind them that they donít have an option. They promised to deliver the papers and deliver they will! Of course, dear ëol dad is there as their human sag wagon just to make sure the job gets done. Nevertheless, it is a good lesson in life for them about keeping their promises.
I once had a professor at seminary who flat out refused to accept any term paper late. His logic was simple: "If you, once you are in the full-time ministry, can go before your congregation on a Sunday morning and with all honesty tell them you donít have a sermon that day because you didn't feel like preparing one, or because you didn't want to miss the big game, etc., then you can hand your paper in late and I'll still accept it." Of course, this "throne speech" at the start of the semester set the tone and as far as remember, NOBODY handed in their paper late to this professor.
Psalm 15 in the Bible is a passage of Scripture which outlines the attributes of a true Christian. In the fourth verse it describes this person as one who "swears to his own hurt and does not change." I call that keeping your promise. I call that integrity. Perhaps the owners of professional sports teams should adopt a policy based on the principle of this verse. I think it would result in a lot less whining and a lot more playing, don't you? Your kids and mine need to see examples of people who keep their word, people of integrity. Why not be one of them?
