George O’Leary probably holds the title for the shortest term football coach in the world. He was hired in 2001 to coach the Notre Dame fighting Irish, but resigned only five days later. The reason for his resignation? Instead of telling the true story of his worth, he lied about something he felt was more important.
George O’Leary was a good football coach, but he had not been a good football player. He had done a terrific job of coaching at places like Syracuse, the NFL’s San Francisco Chargers, and Georgia Tech. But when it came to his record as a player, it was pretty dismal. While O’Leary had been given the spot on his college team at the University of New Hampshire, he had never played outside of practice. But despite his never playing a game, O’Leary put on his resume that he had earned three “letters” (an award given to players for outstanding performance). A New Hampshire newspaper outed O’Leary after he was hired, and 5 days later, O’Leary was back looking for a job.
Sometimes we can feel like O’Leary. There’s probably plenty of good stuff going on with us, there’s plenty that we can point to that is going well in our lives. But if that one thing isn’t going well, we feel like a failure. We feel like we’re not good enough, despite all of the good things that are very obvious in our lives. Maybe that one thing is your salary, or how many people like you, or the state of your romantic relationship, or your grades. or maybe it is just something that haunts you from your past. Whatever it is, there’s that one thing that can really mess with your perception of your own worth.
The sad thing about O’Leary’s story is that by all objective markers, he was a really good coach. After his debacle with Norte Dame, he ended up being the champion of the University of Central Florida’s up and coming football team. Had he not lied about something that didn’t even matter for his job as a coach, his prowess as a player in college, there’s no telling what Notre Dame could have achieved. O’Leary’s story is sad not because he was a failure, but rather because he let his failure define him to the extent that it crowded out his worth.
As Christians, we all recognize that we have failures that mark our lives’ resumes. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, says Paul to the Romans. But we don’t confess the truth of our sins because they are things that define us, rather, we tell the truth of our sins precisely because we are not afraid of them defining our worth. Had George O’Leary had the courage to own up to his lack of personal football playing skills, he probably could have said, “I know what it is to play poorly, and that makes me a better coach because I know how to move people forward.” The same is true of our sins. We confess them, we own up to them, not because they define us, but because they are a part of our true stories that have already been defined by the worth of Christ’s sacrifice for us.
What defines our worth is Jesus’ love for us. What defines us is that God has brought us into His Kingdom. All this despite our pock marked resumes. He redeems those moments of our lives then and makes them useful for His Kingdom’s work. Not only are you forgiven for your sins, but God actually uses the memories and consequences of those sins to further His Kingdom through us. That is a story worth telling.