Team Talk: John Terry - Public or Private?
John Terry - Public or Private?
A journalist in the Observer once wrote 'Fame is like watching someone ride past very fast on a horse. It looks exciting and you think: 'I want to do that' but the actual experience can be frightening and a substantial pain in the rear'. Without in any sense wanting to trivialise the seriousness of the situation, this quote seems to fit the past week for John Terry.
Last week John Terry's life seemed near perfect. Chelsea sat on top of the Barclay's Premier League. England's hopes for the World Cup looked better and better as Rio Ferdinand returned from injury, Rooney and Defoe continued their rich vein of goals, his Chelsea team had won six games on the bounce, and to top it all he seemed a shoe-in for England captain. Then a week ago allegations hit the front pages of the tabloids about an affair with Wayne Bridge's former girl-friend and everything changed.
Since then the press have been continuously debating whether Terry should retain the England captaincy. Now my aim in writing about such a well known issue is never to comment on the specifics of a person's life. Two Christian principals warn me about that: First I know the depth and depravity of my own moral failure - Terry may have had an extra-marital affair but Jesus teaches that even looking at another with lustful intent is committing adultery in the heart, and tragically who of us hasn't done this? Secondly the Bible warns us against judging, I'm not in possession of the facts and I certainly can't see into Terry's life to know what is really going on. So why write about this issue then - wouldn't it be best to leave it alone? Like it or not this is the issue that UK sport is talking about at the moment; it's the subject of changing room conversations and debates between players, and our aim in these team talks is to engage with the issues that sport is engaging with, but to do so from a Christian perspective.
At the heart of the debate about Terry's fit for the England captaincy has been the public-private life distinction. Some argue that what a man does in his private life is his own business and has nothing to do with his public role. Others argue that Terry, as England captain is a role model and so he has to be above reproach. There's a tension here that's difficult to resolve but I wonder if that's because both views are unrealistic. On the one hand there's a curious hypocrisy in our media that pursues our sports stars with telephoto lenses, bribing ‘friends' for sensational stories and then when the story breaks they slam these same players for ‘being bad role models'. The writer Arthur Conan Doyle once played a practical joke on his friends, writing letters to each of them saying ‘All is revealed. Flee'. The joke went too far because many fled the country! Who of us if someone were to see us behind the closed front door of life wouldn't be deeply ashamed of how we act?
However, at the same time the so called public-private life distinction completely misunderstands human nature. The Bible's clear that our desires drive our actions and our character drives our desires. We only have one character which is fundamentally the same whether in public or private. All I can do is to try and put a public veil on certain unpleasant aspects of my character but eventually (especially under stress) the veil slips and my real character is revealed.
This is why Jesus' agenda for our lives is to save us from our character failure, to reconcile us to God, and to transform our characters into what they should be. God knows that we're fooling ourselves to think that we can somehow keep a lid on our character flaws. Eventually they will spill over into the public arena. So he offers us unconditional forgiveness for this ‘sin' in our life and spiritual strength to change. Whoever we are, we all need this forgiveness and transformation to become the people that we should be - and that's even true for the England captain.
Pete
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