“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.” (Matthew 5:38-39, N.K.J.V.)

One Friday night several years ago, Tonya and I attended our local high school’s football game. Our son, Ryan, was playing on the varsity squad. Obviously, that wasn’t the only one of his games we ever attended, but that night I saw something I’d never seen. I saw the visiting varsity players using the public restroom during halftime.

It all started when the scoreboard buzzer sounded to end the game’s first half. At that point, the visiting team didn’t run toward our visitors’ locker room the way visiting teams normally did. Instead, their players stayed on the field and headed down to the corner of one of the end zones. I thought that was odd, but I figured their coaches were just going to give them a brief pep talk and then lead them through an extended time of halftime stretching or going over some play formations. Since the team was in the lead and had played a pretty good first half, I thought maybe their coaches didn’t require the confines of the walls of a locker room to chew the players out over poor play.

So, I put the matter out of mind and headed for the public restrooms. Like a lot of men, I usually take a bathroom break during halftime. When I opened the door to the Men’s room, however, I saw that there was a long line of guys waiting. That wasn’t necessarily so strange, but the odd thing was that it was some of the players from the visiting team who were making the line so lengthy. There they were, still wearing their full uniforms, standing in line amongst the ranks of enemy fans. I asked myself, “What in the world is going on here? Is there a problem with our visitors’ locker room? Are the toilets not working in there? Has a pipe burst and flooded the place?” This inquiring mind wanted to know.

I got my answer after the game. According to Ryan, our j.v. team had traveled to that visiting school to play the j.v. game the night before and hadn’t been granted access to that school’s visitors’ locker room. As a result, our j.v. players had been forced to get dressed in that school’s gym, a fact that hadn’t gone over well with our varsity coaches. Consequently, they had decided to get even the following night when that school’s varsity team made the trip to our school. In order to get their revenge, our varsity coaches had refused to allow those visiting players to use our visitors’ locker room. That, in turn, had forced those players to not only have to use our gym for dressing before and after the game but also use our public restroom.

Now, I don’t even pretend to know why our j.v. team hadn’t been allowed access to the other team’s visitors’ locker room the previous night. Perhaps it had been an oversight or perhaps it had been intentional. But what I do know is that no matter how wrongly our j.v. team had been treated, the Christian way was not to go “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” the following night. That’s the point I made with Ryan during our conversation after the varsity game.

I’d like to say that my beloved eldest son had recognized that the way our coaches had handled the situation had been wrong, but that would be a lie. When he had seen the visiting team’s bus struggling to work its way through all the traffic after the game and get backed up to our gym, he’d thought it was funny. As a matter of fact, he was still laughing about it as he explained the whole story to me after the game. I guess he’d figured that all was fair in love and football.

That’s why I had to raise my voice a touch that night and explain to him how authentic Christianity gets fleshed out in such real-world situations. Apparently, the 75 sermons he’d heard from me over the years hadn’t done the trick. I said, “Son, no matter how badly someone treats you, if you are a true Christian, you can’t get down there in the mud with them and start slinging. Jesus expects us to take the higher road and be the bigger person.” I recall letting the lecture go at that, but hindsight being 20/20 I should have also explained that Jesus expects us to love our enemies and pray for those who do us wrong (Matthew 5:43-44). Ryan had heard a few sermons on those topics too, but they’d probably registered with him about as well as those on turning the other cheek had.

Of course, the problem that night was the fact that not everybody involved in the situation was a Christian. After all, it’s futile to expect lost people to live out the values and principles of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. That’s like asking zebras to change their stripes. Am I saying that all of the football coaches of the staffs of both of the schools were lost? No, my guess is that some of them were born-again Christians. What I’m saying is that a very, very bad example was set that Friday night for a lot of highly impressionable young men.

I was old fashioned enough then (and still am) to believe that any coach should be a good role model to his or her players. You can agree or disagree with me on that, but if you are a Christian you’ll have to agree with me that Jesus taught that His people should turn the other cheek rather than get even. And that definitely wasn’t a word that was exclusively for the ancient world of the Roman empire, was it? Nope. It was one that applies to today’s high school football games as well, not to mention any and all other situations.