In case you didn't hear, Kansas City Chief's linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide at the Chief's complex this past Saturday. The Chief's then turned around and played the next day without their starting linebacker and beat the Carolina Panthers.
What "converted" me was not his ability to help lead his team to only their 2nd victory but what he said in the post game comments. Comments that had nothing to do with football but instead everything to do with relationships.
“The one thing people can hopefully try to take away, I guess, is the relationships they have with people,” Quinn told reporters after the game. “I know when it happened, I was sitting and, in my head, thinking what I could have done differently. When you ask someone how they are doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth?
“We live in a society of social networks, with Twitter pages and Facebook, and that’s fine, but we have contact with our work associates, our family, our friends, and it seems like half the time we are more preoccupied with our phone and other things going on instead of the actual relationships that we have right in front of us. Hopefully, people can learn from this and try to actually help if someone is battling something deeper on the inside than what they are revealing on a day-to-day basis.”
Here are some of my thoughts on his comments.
1.) First of all, I love how he is willing to try and learn anything from this malfeasance without assuming blame. Several folks noted that they deemed nothing wrong with Belcher or his relationship with his girlfriend. But obviously there was something wrong with Belcher, if not with Belcher and his girlfriend. And it is clear that someone knew about these problems and was seeking to do something about it. Apparently.......
That detail was among the troubling revelations about a relationship that had more problems than previously realized. According to Kansas City Police Sgt. Richard Sharp, the team knew about their issues and was “bending over backward” to help.
And so it cannot be construed in any way to be the fault of Brady nor any of his teammates, nor anyone else that Belcher followed through on such machinations. In my mind he avoids the "We can't learn anything from this" and the "It was our fault and his blood is on our hands," response that comes with situations such as this. Yet why not try to learn from the situation?
2.) In regards to "what we can learn," his wisdom exceeds his age (and career touchdowns) by a wide margin. More specifically as how it relates to truth in relationships.
When you ask someone how they are doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth?
A. Do you mean it? I appreciate his challenge to ask and answer questions with a deeper concern for the truth. We could all do a better job at that. As Christians who live in the time after Jesus' first coming and before His Second Coming, we experience both the joys of redemption accomplished and applied to us now, and but still groan and long for the final redemption of our bodies in new world then (Rom 8:18-27). So we can say, "Yes I'm doing well," or "No life is rough right now." Both are consistent of our Christian experience now.
B.Truth WILL ONLY be divulged in safe relationships. The deeper and more personal truths will only be revealed in really safe relationships. Surface relationships will lead to shallow truth about someone. What you will/can tell about yourself and what they will/can tell you about themselves is probably only going to happen, at least on a regular basis, if you and they engage in deep and safe community. And deep and safe community only results when folks make time and commitment to be in such a deep and safe community.
C. Deep relationships don't necessarily lead folks to know you.
I've been in community groups where I've come to know stuff about people. Sometimes more than I wanted to know (though I'm glad I did). I've been in community groups, as well, where I've known next-to-nothing about others. In such cases if they were to divorce or murder or commit suicide, or become depressed, I would have no idea. And that is sad but true. Deep relationships and community may be available and offered but just the presence of such a community does not mean folks will automatically take advantage of it. You and I may be in place to share our lives but stay silent or on the surface.
On the flip side you or I can be a part of a deep and safe community, but others may not divulge any poverty of spirit, material, joy, etc....Some folks, even despite deep and safe community, will divulge nothing. And it will be to their great loss.
D. Deep relationships and community always involve you taking the lead.
If you want to take seriously Brady Quinn's concerns, and he's only reiterating what it means to love your neighbor (you probably have heard that one before), then there is something you can do which may foster others being honest about their struggles. Someone has to take the lead. Such deep and safe communities/relationships don't automatically spring up. People will only go so far as you lead them. Yes there are exceptions for the guys/gals who wear hearts on their sleeves (or jackets for this time of year), but as a rule, people have to be led to share truth. And often they will only share something that is on the same level as that which has already been shared. For instance if you share, "I need prayer for Aunt Bessy, because she has hemarrhoid surgery," then don't expect to get back an, "I'm struggling with my child right now, as he is in a very difficult phase in my life, and I need prayer to love him through this, because right now I don't." Aunt Bessy's hemarrhoids will be covered in prayer, but the struggle of a parent to love his/her child will not. You won't even know that problem exists until you take the lead in sharing your personal struggles first. And this is hard. Very hard.
Deep relationships and community take time of course. But time alone is not enough. No one makes the "jump" unless you first lead them.
E. Technology and actual relationships don't naturally coexist. They don't appear to fight like cats and dogs, but the latter slowly loses that fight unless we intentionally value and prioritize real relationships. Emails and facebook can be very helpful, but they are at best only supplemental. You don't know someone, nor are you known by status updates. You know and are known by spending time together. The question is, "Is it worth it?" Brady says yes, and I think the "one another" passages in scripture suggest he didn't say it first. Again this is hard, and we have to get creative amidst certain seasons of life (and no matter how creative we get, some seasons don't afford much community/relationship development), but well worth it in the end.
We could all benefit from Brady's advice to intentionally put ourselves in the path of potentially deeper relationships not only to know but also to be known. Who knows what good could come? I would say a lot.
Consider me a Chief's fan for the rest of the season.
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