Is Michael Irvin Sincere?

This conversation came up elsewhere when a couple of friends of mine who aren’t Church-going type of guys, and I were talking about Michael Irvin’s Hall of Fame speech. Especially the prayer at the beginning, the stuff he said at the end.

The real question came up as to whether or not he was sincere. I would like to believe he was. I’m a fan of the Cowboys, so naturally I’m always going to be hoping for the best with these guys. If it was a Philadelphia Eagle, I’d be skeptical, but with Michael Irvin? Oh, I’m convinced he’s telling the truth!

At least I hope so.

Maybe.

One of my friends wrote:
I was curious about your response and I can understand it.

I used to run a business and I had about 10-12 sales reps working for me at a time. I always found it interesting that the guys that talked a big religious game were also often the ones out late at night or the ones hitting on every female worker I had.

Of course there were always the real Christians that did walk the walk and lived the way they should, but I often seemed to notice that a large percentage of the big talkers seemed to need to balance out their mischevious behavior one day with religious talk the next.

And another friend agreed:
I used to [hit on] strippers with a bible thumper at my work! No one would have EVER guessed he was so wild. Me, they guessed!

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard stories like that, and it does make you think. How would you feel, looking at Christianity and seeing this from the outside? If you are a Christian, how many times has your own behavior made you into a hypocrite?

I wonder if guys like Irvin and the people my friends were talking about are trying to cover up their guilt and make themselves feel better by acting very religious? What I mean by that is this: I wonder if they ARE sincere, but when it comes to taking real steps to change your life, and giving up things you used to indulge in… well that’s easy to say but harder to do. Talking about dieting is one thing, not eating so much is tougher. I sincerely hope Irvin is the real deal now, but I think he still struggles an awful lot with it. He has said some things in the past year that were questionable, or downright objectionable.

Should we give him any credit these days for making real progress?

The forgiveness and second chance of Christianity makes it a natural attraction for people with huge amounts of guilt. Prisoners and people at the end of their rope often feel like they have nowhere to go and Christianity shows them a way to forget the past and move on like it never happened.

That part would be very attractive to a guy like Michael Irvin or anyone else.

Problem is, they also seem to be like those guys who are grateful for a job after getting fired from the last 3, who then start coming in late after a couple of weeks.

The Bible has a pretty big warning for those guys:

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world -the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does- comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” -I John 2:15-17

For those who continually say one thing, and continually turn back and do another, they are like Lot’s wife who looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah, (didn’t work out so well for her) or the man Jesus referred to when he said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.”

In the meantime however, I guess it makes them feel better to say the right things -or maybe as some would say, they are just con-artists? To be sure, for someone to be right with God there eventually has to come a time when you actually quit looking back. There must come a time when your efforts are focused on following God instead of being focused on living in two different worlds. I hope Michael’s efforts are focused on the former. I don’t want to believe he is a con-artist these days, not even with himself.

Given the lack of problems with the law, and many of the major problems Irvin ran into as a player, plus looking at the spiritual emphasis his life has had over the past few years with the Potter’s House Church, I think the score is in Irvin’s favor these days. I sure hope so.

Of course, I’m a fan.