By Brad Locke
August 27, 2004

(AgapePress) - I'm a die-hard baseball fan, but I must admit that football season stirs my spirit in a way no other sport does. Maybe it's the numerous memories of watching that ball float through the crisp fall air as a child in my front yard, or the pageantry of Friday nights in small towns, or the rousing call of a game by the great Keith Jackson.

Or maybe it's the clichés.

Football reflects real life more than any other sport does, but it's also the most cliché-ridden. Oh, the yards of tape that have been filled on my recorder with phrases like, "We're taking it one game at a time," or, "We dug ourselves a hole," or, "We've got to play for four quarters." Just once I'd like to hear a coach say, "We're going to play our next three opponents this weekend, we're gonna dig a hole, and we're gonna throw 'em all in it in the first quarter and take the rest of the month off.'"

Clichés are a crutch. Such robotic responses keep reporters at a distance, plus it takes little to no effort to employ them. They're an easy out, a way to avoid dealing with the real issues at hand. When coaches and players actually give an honest assessment of what's going on and offer fascinating insight, that's when the sport comes alive for the rest of us.

Clichés inhibit communication. We can't know what's really going on with the struggling quarterback when all we're told is that he needs to just "fight through it and keep working hard." When a running back who bursts onto the scene unexpectedly says nothing more than, "I knew if I kept plugging away, my time would come," he is giving no clue as to what really triggered his success.

Clichés mask a coach or player's true feelings. Some games are undoubtedly more important than others. For example, a Michigan-Ohio State matchup has much bigger implications than a Central Michigan-Ohio State matchup would. And while the Buckeyes would admit that The Big Game is a special situation, they would also insist that they don't approach Michigan any differently than they would Central Michigan ("We don't overlook any team," the coach might say).

You may see where I'm going with this, but let me take it one point at a time.

Humans tend to live by a cliché creed. If what we say can't be simplified into a few trite words, it's not worth our time and effort. That's not to say that intellectual and philosophical discourse is severely lacking in our time. I'm talking about the everyday walk we take down life's road (ooh, that sounded rather perfunctory), the way we deal with real people. When we ask someone how they're doing, we usually don't expect more than an "I'm fine," and they don't expect us to press for further details (this is one reason I abhor small talk). A lack of honest dialogue keeps a wall of security between ourselves and the world.

If we don't communicate to each other what we're really feeling and the problems we're dealing with, how can we expect anyone to help us? That's the trouble -- we believe that we must "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps," as the old American ideal is worded. It's a pride thing.

This is a major obstacle in the faith of many Christians. We don't share with each other anything more than last night's baseball game or our child's latest accomplishment or who's going to teach Sunday school this quarter. When the individual members of the body of Christ aren't communicating, that body will fall flat.

Without real interaction with our fellow Christians, without the encouragement and spiritual vitality that interaction brings, our perception of reality remains veiled. When a moral decision commands our attention, we try to dispatch it as expediently as possible. Say a guy has to decide whether to take steroids or not. He knows deep down what is right, but he can easily justify his actions by saying, "Everyone else is doing it. I'm just getting an extra edge. I'm doing what it takes to win." (How many clichés did you count?)

Let's say this same athlete is later faced with some other sin that haunts him, perhaps a gambling problem or infidelity problem. When he's asked how he's doing, instead of admitting his struggle and asking for help in relieving his spiritual pain, he only says, "Fine."

That's not the right answer. But the right answer isn't always the easy one. That's no cliché -- that's the truth.