Who needs a second chance?

By Ted Werth

After what I thought was an unfair comparison made of the Oregon football player LaGarrette Blount, the Oregon player who punched another player, I wrote a short note to the columnist at the Statesman Journal and offered the thoughts that I posted on my blog earlier.

To make a long story short they used one of my comments in a larger list of reader comments in the paper this morning. I had half expected this after the columnist wrote me during the week to ask permission. I had speculated to myself what they might use. I was pretty sure they would use one of three thoughts and sure enough, they took what I had quickly jotted out in my email which was:

"I'm a Duck fan and like to win as much as the next guy but my motivation for giving Blount a chance to redeem himself has nothing to do with winning. I just believe, based on my own life experience, that it is the right thing to do."

I had been referring to the examples in my blog post regarding foster kids who often have repressed anger that comes out. So reading that last sentence in actual print, without that context, I did one of those internal gasps for just a second thinking, what will everyone think I did?

It is human nature to be concerned with the image we project to others. That is what drove my initial reaction. But it is also true that we are not really the image we project. I suspect your LaGarrette Blount moments, like mine, are just not as public. Maybe they are bigger, maybe smaller. It really doesn't matter. I told my wife about my initial reaction and we laughed for a moment. Then I said, you know the truth is we all need second chances. Cheryl replied, "yep, its called grace."

~ But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
John 8:6-8 (NIV)