WHEN THE GAME STANDS TALL -- FAITH WITH EXCELLENCE

WHEN THE GAME STANDS TALL – FAITH WITH EXCELLENCE

By James Wilson

            As a college student in my pre-Christian days I was mega moved by the film, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.  A breakout role for British actor Tom Courtenay, the story depicts young juvenile delinquent Colin Smith sentenced to a reform school run by a tyrannical thug of a governor whose passion is marathon running.  After several attempts to break Smith the governor discovers his talent for distance running and offers enticements if Smith will run for the school.  It is all about the governor’s vanity and nothing to do with the welfare of any of his charges.  When Smith realizes how thoroughly he has sold out for a few privileges he stops in the grand race just before crossing the finish line.  In this climactic moment he refuses victory to assert his independence and to spite the authority figure who has used him.  His gesture is all about the power to say NO when all other options are cut off.  He considers his NO a victory though he returns to the bottom in the reformatory culture with an extended sentence.

            2014’s When The Game Stands Tall – available on DVD and Blu-ray – has a similar climactic moment whose meaning makes all the difference in the world.  A primary subplot involves a fictional running back – Chris Ryan – whose father is abusively obsessive about the son breaking the all time scoring record for California high school footballers.  Ryan ties the record in the last game and is poised to carry the ball into the endzone in a walk near the end of the game.  He too stops – and runs out the clock – after making sure his team wins the game.  But his act is not defiance; it is submission.  He says in the huddle – before taking a knee on the next two plays – that he is a member of a team and not interested in it being all about him.  He has all the glory he needs already; he gives his tribute to the team and the coach who brought him all the way to where he is.

            Chris Ryan is the only fictional character in the film.  His story is truer than the facts – because fiction at its best tells the truth more clearly and more fully than mere facts.  Every other character and incident is true and correct.  The Ryan subplot simply draws the whole truth from the history in more living color.

            This is no one-dimensional march to athletic glory as a reward for clean living and dedication.  The story actually begins after the one hundred fifty-one game winning streak ends and a new team must discover how to live post-streak.  Meanwhile, every character is flawed or struggling or both – like real life.  TK spends his young life trying to climb out of the ghetto and wins a scholarship to the University of Oregon together with his lifelong friend, Tayshon.  The latter continues to party with gangster wannabes in the ghetto and goes into a tailspin when TK – the innocent and responsible one – is randomly gunned down by a gang member while picking Tayshon up from a place where he should not be.  Their coach delivers the eulogy and confesses that – while he will continue to love and serve his Lord Jesus – he has no answers and nothing but despair over the senseless killing.  The coach himself has hidden flaws that bite him, his family, and his team.

            He secretly smokes.  Hardly a ticket to hell, but Coach is so image conscious he is living a lie – and that is a character issue.  His smoking leads to a near fatal heart attack, being unavailable to his team for several critical months, and the exposure of his hypocrisy.  He is already less than available to his family, and the confluence of consequences leads him to authentic repentance across the board.

            He will become a better husband and father, a better coach, and a better man.  He does this not because he is so good but because he chooses – repeatedly – to live a life referred to God and to the ones he is called to serve.  His choice is all the more important when it is clear and consequential that some past choices have been poor ones.

            This movie is well written, directed with vision, and tightly edited. The performances are crisp and natural.  That makes it an excellent piece of work and one all of us can enjoy.  But it also presents a powerful depiction of a prophetic community, a 1 Corinthians 12 culture, in which every one has a pivotal role and no one is expendable.  See it.   

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY REMAIN

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY REMAIN

By James Wilson

            The more things change the more they remain the same, or so it is said.  

Executive and judicial branches of government are not the only ones capable of lawlessness under color of authority.  The Jim Crow laws prevailing in many states until the 1960s were all duly adopted by state and local legislative bodies.  The Supreme Court ultimately overturned them, but we need to remember it was the Supreme Court that handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision – extending slaveholding authority even to free states – and that failed to overturn Obamacare even after a majority agreed it was unconstitutional.  (The Court literally re-wrote the law in order to uphold it.)  The equally infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 fatally compromised both the First Amendment and the political process as laid down in the Constitution and no court intervened.  The people intervened with the election of a new government after massive protests and that is the point: A government of the people, by the people, and for the people, must be restrained by those very people; waiting passively on government to restrain itself is waiting for a train that does not come.

            It is no different in any culture populated by people of God, by the way.  If the prophetic tradition in Old and New Testaments sheds any light it is that the people of God are rightly expected to hear Him for themselves and speak His Word for themselves.  The prophets were first and foremost people outside the established-by-God government who confronted that government when it forgot its servant status.

            Yet in California alone at this time we find measures like SB 775 winging their way through the legislative process.  Should 775 become law – and the odds favor it in this legislative climate – it will trample the free speech and association rights of every pregnancy care center in California by seeking to force them to make referrals for abortion services.  These issues have been settled law for decades with the US Supreme Court weighing in multiple times over the past five years.  Where are the massive demonstrations and civil disobedience that won basic civil rights over decades for black people and other minorities?  Is the freedom to practice our faith and preserve life without harming others less fundamental than the right to vote and support our families with decent housing and jobs?  Or does the one depend upon and backstop the other?

            California’s Department of Managed Healthcare has already pre-empted the Legislature and the US Supreme Court – which has ruled repeatedly against such administrative assaults on freedom – by requiring all California businesses and ministries to provide abortion and contraceptive services to employees whatever their religious convictions.  Asm Jim Gallagher has introduced a bill – AS 1254 – to overturn these regulations but it is unlikely to pass in this legislature.  Where are the crowds of Christians picketing the CDMH offices daily and blocking access to entrances with our bodies?  How did Dr. King get to Montgomery from Selma, much less to Washington?

            SB 128 is also fast-tracking through the legislative process.  This one enshrines in law the “right” to die as its foremost supporter, a group called Compassion and Choices, re-brands it.  This group is simply the re-named Hemlock Society and their cause is simply the “right” to commit murder armed with a piece of paper saying the victim wants to die.  The LA Times cites the hypocrisy of the group when they say they only wish to give a dignified way out to people suffering intractable pain.  Their editorial is written by a palliative care doc who has not needed to hasten death due to untreatable pain in thirty-five years of practice.  The San Diego Union Tribune notices the connection between assisted suicide and the profit-driven managed care industry.  I notice the reality that the poster child for 128 – the late Brittany Maynard – took her own life to avoid a disease only weeks before the announcement it is being successfully treated; she had yet months to live in untreated comfort at her death.  But my question is this: Where is the uprising in Church and society at the government’s effort to speed death for our vulnerable loved ones?  Where is the overwhelming resistance to a state-sanctioned plan for death with no safeguards – despite what proponents prattle – against misguidance, manipulation, or even a changed mind that somehow nobody hears in time to prevent needless death?

Restoring religious freedom to campus is the aim of yet another bill – the California Freedom of Association Act authored by Asm Shannon Grove.  This one addresses the action by regents of the University of California and Trustees of the State University system banning Christian groups from campus if they do not permit non-believers to lead their ministries.  Like the Gallagher bill it is unlikely to pass in this climate.  Where are the campus demonstrations by hordes of students – believers or no – who recognize seizing freedom from one group threatens the freedom of all?  Where are the marchers and demonstrators who fought to successfully to end a war policy makers never intended to win, bringing freedom and reconciliation to the races by placing their bodies in the path of the oppressors?  It was the Church spearheading these efforts in the fifties and sixties and seventies.  Where is the Church this week?

  On a more mundane but just as fundamental front, California’s governor has announced he plans to place meters on water wells found on private property.  Advanced as a necessary measure to address the drought, it seems reasonable enough until we recall these wells are not property of the state, nor is the water they draw.  Taxing the water – ultimate purpose for any meter the state installs – is confiscation of private property without compensation, whatever the rainfall totals.  Adding insult to injury, the State Resource Control Board is deciding whether to impose the $10,000 per business or household fine the governor wants for anyone exceeding new regulations to cut water usage by from 4% to 36% depending on the region of the state in which one lives.  California’s own drought court has already ruled such regs – with varying percentages – unconstitutional but this agency is unfazed.  One might ask why the governor does not call on the Israelis – who licked the problem of drought in Israel decades ago – for a little creative help instead of trying to hold his own thirsty people hostage to draconian conservation measures for water we don’t have.  Better yet one might ask – as I do – where are the hordes of Californians – beginning with the Church – surrounding the governor’s mansion and offices, sitting in if necessary, demanding the governor start using his much ballyhooed visionary thinking to solve the drought instead of punishing the innocent and trashing the Constitution with one act of political violence after another.

And no – I won’t be organizing the demonstrations.  I am a writer and pastor, not an organizer.  But you can bet your sweet bippy – with apologies to Rowan and Martin – this Baby Boomer will show up for them.  Any other takers amongst the clergy?  Laity?

Some Christians may think it unseemly to do or propose what I propose but they need to read the Book of Acts.  When Peter and John are hailed before the Sanhedrin for unauthorized preaching the Name of Jesus that august body orders them to remain silent.  “But Peter and John replied, ‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you or God.  For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”  Christians are likewise exhorted in 1 Peter 3:15 to be always ready to account for our faith and for our hope.  We are to do this without repaying evil with evil; in other words we are to resist tyranny without resorting to anarchy or even some other form of oppression.  But make no mistake – we defy our Lord if we permit injustice to be unaddressed.  Speaking out and walking out come under the Great Commission rubric of teaching one another to observe all things commanded by Our God and King.

So let the powers that be beware.  I have no clue for how many I may speak but I am going out on a limb and prophesying if SB 775 or 128 are adopted you will reap a firestorm of non-violent but authoritative opposition and resistance.  Ditto if these regulations stand.  Christians brought down the segregationist establishment in the US.  We brought down the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines and the Iron Curtain throughout Eastern Europe by putting flowers in the rifle barrels of the guards.  (You thought only American hippies did that?)  More important, we brought new freedom for ourselves and new glory to God.  Does it get any better?

The more things remain the same the more it is our privilege to walk with our God as He changes them into His likeness – beginning with us.    

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net