By Brad Locke
May 23, 2005

(AgapePress) - There's this silly, hilarious website (despair.com) that offers posters and other products with twisted adages that tout mediocrity and the qualities composing it.

One poster, titled "Dysfunction," says: "The only consistent feature of all your dissatisfying relationships is you." Unlike many of the site's maxims, this one -- intentionally or not -- is as true as a Phil Mickelson flop shot. For certain, the one constant in Terrell Owens' litany of strained relationships has been Terrell Owens. And the one constant in Barry Bonds' ongoing saga has been Barry Bonds.

Darn those inadequate, gutless quarterbacks Owens has always been stuck with. Namely Jeff Garcia, whom T.O. once insinuated was gay, and Donovan McNabb, whom T.O. insinuated tuckered out in the fourth quarter of the Eagles' recent Super Bowl loss.

As for Bonds, darn that persistent media, daring to question the source of his Herculean home run power just because his ear lobes grew muscles and his associates keeping getting nailed to the wall by steroids investigators. This is the same media that ignored for so long the obvious signs that the power surge of the '80s and '90s couldn't possibly have resulted from merely hitting the weights. It's the same media that enthroned Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998 as faultless kings of sport -- Sports Illustrated, which broke the Ken Caminiti story in 2002 that really touched off this juiced-up avalanche of steroid coverage, named the pair Co-Sportsmen of the Year for their unprecedented 136 combined roundtrippers.

For all the qualities lacking among our big-time athletes, the most striking absence seems to be that of accountability. When you make so much money, and so much is expected of you, you can't afford to fail. And if you do, you'd better find a scapegoat quick.

That's what T.O. has done, not surprisingly. He said Garcia, a three-time Pro Bowler, wasn't very good and that Owens' stats suffered for it. Now he's saying that McNabb, his current QB, is a sellout for the sake of Eagles coaches and management. You call throwing four touchdown passes on a broken ankle, as he did in a 2002 game, selling out? You call converting a hopeless fourth-and-26 play late in the fourth quarter of a playoff game, as he did in a 2004 win over Green Bay, being a puppet?

You do when you're paranoid, which Owens obviously is. Bonds is too, but his is understandable. His career and legacy are on the line. Owens, meanwhile, creates controversy ex nihilo. Why does he even need a scapegoat? He's put up all-star numbers, reached a Super Bowl, and yet he feels the need to belittle others who have never said a cross word to or about him. This tendency to cast blame at innocents, coupled with his curious demands for a restructured contract only one year after arriving in Philly, points to a severe self-esteem problem. Perhaps Owens is so insecure about himself, for whatever reason, he fears that being perceived as no better than equal to his teammates in either skill or salary stymies his quest for singular stardom.

I digress, but Owens' case points out the complete absence of personal accountability in his life, at least in regard to how he handles relationships in public. He seems to be preempting the possibility of character strikes against himself, working from behind a fortress built upon implicit self-glorification and, well, the need for lots of money. Even his elaborate touchdown celebrations imply that mere athletic feats, in his eyes, are not enough to validate his significance.

Bonds, conversely, is supremely confident to the point of arrogance. He scoffs at all criticism as if it were expressed by a cowardly playground bully. By doing so, he scoffs at responsibility. He refuses to come clean (in more ways than one), dismissing the mounting evidence of his steroid use as a massive conspiracy. How many of us, though, have been cornered by the truth and desperately denied it for our own selfish ends? Or even if we wanted to confess, the impending fallout was too terrifying to imagine? I've been there; I'm sure we all have.

Proverbs 12:19 expresses a simple truth too often forgotten by many of us: "Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment." That's a lot deeper than you may realize. If it's not a parallel to the eternality of Heaven versus the temporality of this world, I don't know what is. What Bonds and Owens and many of us are chasing in this world is temporary, and when selfish pursuits turn upon us and consequence catches up to us, we must either bow to the power of truth, or we shall be stung by what our own tongues have wrought.

And the tongue, remember, is the only consistent feature of lies, and the end product is much worse than mere mediocrity.