BRING MARION JONES BACK

The TV news tells us about Olympic multi-Gold-medal winner track runner Marion Jones Compton’s supposed steroid issues. What a shame. This lady ran and hurdled herself into our hearts.

Then we’re told about talented singer-dancer Britney Spears’ problems with the father of her children, Kevin Federline, and her own addictive substance abuse and lewd partying behaviour.

What is going on? The media monks call Britney a “party animal.”  She needs help, may have let her children down. But she is still a bright and clever singer, dancer, and star. No one can take her talent away from her.

Marion Jones held a news conference to say she was sorry for fibbing to federal investigators about steroid use and announced her retirement from the track-field sport after being a champion for so many years. Such a shame. She is  a true champion athlete and has been a wonderful role-model to many youth. We should join together to help her come back.

Marion Jones is effervescent and fun, a good person. As a lifetime news reporter, I have watched and gauged people, not judging but soaking up information in a non-judgmental way as a reporter must do. My lifetime belief is never judge a person by the way they look or behave. This person could be Jesus sitting there.

Marion Jones is a true athletic champion and alternative to the vacuous mindless Hollywood types, unfortunately including Britney Spears. We need to join together to help bring Marion back. She is a role-model we need for our children, a lovely person and great athlete in every respect.

There’s a part of Laura Hillenbrand’s book about the champion racehorse Seabiscuit that I cannot get out of my head, which  epitomizes Marion Jones if you watched her master the track and hurdles for many years, and truly earned every Olympic medal awarded to her. She’s like a Thoroughbred racehorse. Forget the steroid issue. She did it on her own.

Laura Hillenbrand wrote: “A Thoroughbred racehorse is one of God’s most impressive engines. Tipping the scales at up to 1,450 pounds, he can sustain speeds of forty miles per hour. Equipped with reflexes much faster than those of the most quick-wired man, he swoops over as much  as twenty-eight feet of earth in a single stride, and corners on a dime… To pilot a racehorse is to ride a half-ton catapult. It is without question one of the most formidable feats in sport. The extraordinary athleticism of the jockey is unparalleled… Jockeys may be, pound for pound, the best overall athletes.  They have to be. To begin with, there are the demands on balance, coordination, and reflex.”

Marion Jones is a human Thoroughbred.

So what’s the story? It’s in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 3:

“There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave. With their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the path of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:10-18).

Then we get the crescendo in Romans 3:19-20: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, that every mouth my be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God, because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”

So Marion Jones is a hero who we should embrace. Britney Spears is wounded, and we should help bring her back as well. What is the lesson here?

It is in our Baptismal Catechism and celebration of the Eucharist (if you are Anglican): “There is one Body and one Spirit. There is one hope in God’s call to us: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” And our creed:  “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”