"I'M GETTING ARRESTED TONIGHT"

America is football hungry. During the season, television treats us to Sunday games, Monday night games, a Thursday game, and then we finish the week with Saturday games. Television delivers hours and hours of pre-game prognostications and hours and hours of highlights, lowlights, then we get the post postmortems of games played, strategies employed or ignored. When mid-February rolls around we listen to experts discussing what players will be playing for what teams, what players got traded and what players signed up or quit. Football is a year-round billion dollar beast.

HECTOR AND ACHILLES

Then, there's that football related elevator video which shows a player, in the off-season, throwing a left hook which sent his finance crashing to the floor unconscious, so coma-like that he dragged her by the hair from the elevator in a tawdry imitation of Achilles' mockery of the defeated (and dead) Trojan hero, Hector.

Television made sure we all saw it. Over and over again.

After the knock-out blow, the football player dialed a number, roused somebody from bed, and said, "I'm getting arrested tonight." Police arrived in 10 to 15 minutes and the player proved himself to be a prophet.

This was no 15 round, heavy weight fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney; the fisticuffs lasted all of 30 seconds. It was no contest; in that pugilistic encounter, the "winner" was a forgone conclusion. (If pastors could bet, I'd bet on any football player over any female any time.) Prior to the left hook seen round the world, the two engaged in a spitting contest, which was a draw with no declared winner. There was a prelude to all this.

Half a minute is a short time, but those 30 seconds have wreaked wreckage of biblical proportions in private and corporate lives. The aftermath is an on-going hell for the two, for the image of the NFL, and for a commissioner who may have to resign a $40,000,000 a year job. That's no fun. All because of those 30 seconds in an elevator. Or is it all because of a thirty second elevator ride?

THE UNMENTIONABLE

In all of the TV reportage, in all of the commentators who have commented with comments on and on, have you heard one, just one, say that all this wreckage could have been avoided by reading and heeding the Bible? I haven't. But what we have here is an avoidable 30 second soap opera preformed in an elevator from which we all can learn. That elevator wasn't a boxing ring; it was a stage, a stage for a graphic morality play.

PRELUDE: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Where is this elevator? It's in an Atlantic City casino, hardly a place of wholesome morality or righteousness. They chose to put themselves in a place which isn't conducive to "walking by means of the Spirit," to "setting one's affections in the heavenlies," and to thinking about those things which are "true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and of good repute." If someone wants to quit smoking, the enclosed designated area for smokers at an airport isn't the wisest place for him to sit.

PRELUDE: ALCOHOL, ALCOHOL, ALCOHOL

According to the winner of the fight, we learn that, before they entered the elevator, they'd been "drinking heavily," and he emphasized "heavily." Solomon talked to his readers about alcohol: "Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler. And whoever is intoxicated by it is not wise."

Now we have a compounding problem--being in a casino in which the "strong drink" is flowing. This is like nitro and glycerine combining and waiting to explode, which it did in the elevator.

LOCATION + ALCOHOL + ANGER = ?

Add the choice of location and the choice of what to drink to anger, and the morality play begins. Without those elements, there would have been no explosion. Are these two basically angry people? I don't know, but Solomon has a warning for us about those who are and we need to read and heed:

"An angry man stirs up strife,
And a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression."

Oh, man, is that ever true! Ever been around a hot-head, a basically angry person? They make your life miserable, don't they, as they stir up one needless argument and altercation after another, and heaven help you if they get on the board of your church. They cause one explosion after another for others to clean up. Yet, in spite of that fact, we ignore what Solomon tells:

"Do not associate with a man given to anger;
Or go with a hot-tempered man,"

If you're in single bliss, you need to heed this bit of godly wisdom--do not, I repeat, do not, marry a man or a woman "given to anger." To do so is to ask for a marriage of walking on egg shells, innumerable arguments, daily or weekly screaming matches, the risk of blows to the head and shoulders, and maybe even homicide and you're the victim. To disregard Solomon is to bring on disaster.

THE END OF THE MATTER

To date, those short 30 seconds have cost the couple at least $4,000,000, the right to ply his trade, public shame, and videoed humiliation. Who knows what else will come? But, in retrospect, it all started long before they entered the elevator. It began when they decided to ignore the Bible, and when they or you or I do that, the price is always more than we want to pay.