Hard Discipline or Easy Money

My sister told me that on a recent youth pastor test (whatever that is) she saw she thought of me when looking at it. One of the questions was: Are you always making sermon illustrations out of movies that you watch? I’ve been known to sit down with a pad of paper when watching a movie because I like to write them down. Now maybe it’s not always a sermon illustration, but I just find it captivating how a movie can sometimes grasp truths in our every day present lives that are hard to point out with mere words.

I watched Coach Carter tonight. I recommend it (if that means anything). There was a basketball player named Timo Cruz. At the beginning of the movie he was quite ticked off at Coach Carter for the high expectations that he quit the team. Slowly throughout the beginning stages of the movie you see him getting involved in selling drugs and with his drug lord cousin. He doesn’t look happy anymore, and he looks at his basketball pals with a sense of jealousy and disappointment that he isn’t part of their fun. Finally he has enough; he wants back on the team. Coach Carter makes it next to impossible for him to come back on the team. He makes him do 1000 suicides and 2500 pushups. With a tear-filled touching moment his team helps him complete the requirements and he gets put back on the team.

Later on in the movie Coach Carter starts to crack down on the players because their marks suck and he cancels basketball until they improve. Cruz quits again. We see him back out selling drugs. In the same scene we see him sticking up for this basketball buddies by pulling a gun on a few guys. He turns around and sees his cousin get shot. He is crying in confusion and doesn’t know what to do as he holds his dead cousin. The next scene you see Cruz standing outside the Coach’s door saying he wants back on the team. In fact his line was something along the lines of “Coach, I want back on the team *sniff* I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

One of the better, more emotional scenes in the movie is later on when Cruz stands up and thanks the Coach for saving his life and quotes some kind of cool quote that I have no idea where it came from. I find this scene interesting for a number of reasons. First of all. The Coach didn’t save his life. He didn’t pull him away from an oncoming bus. He didn’t tip him off and tell him to get out of his house because it was blown up. The only thing the coach did was embrace him at his front door and allow him to be back on the team.

Timo Cruz is a perfect example of our struggle between communities. He was being torn back and forth between selling drugs and working for his cousin who was taking care of him and playing basketball with his teammates under the care of Coach Carter. When things didn’t go well with one, he ran to the other. When discipline got hard, he took off and went to where there was no discipline, just instant pay off. This scene in the movie gives us the lesson learned. Thank-you coach for saving my life. Eventually Timo understood that living a life with his friends that he cared about more than anything under the discipline of a coach he knew cared for him but the discipline hurt and was not always understood was better than living a life of supposed freedom. Cruz saw that ‘freedom’ be snatched away from his cousin with the squeeze of a trigger. He wasn’t about to allow that to happen to him.

If you watch this movie, follow the semi-plot of Cruz closely and watch his struggle. It is the same one I go through every day. Parts of me want to just throw up my hands in surrender and give in. It’s way easier. The pay off is instant. I get what I want and I feel good about it. Of course there is consequences. I’m not really free. His freedom is controlled by the drugs and the money and his boss. Or in my case my freedom is controlled by how much alcohol I consume, or how my current relationship is doing, or how I feel at any given time. Yes Timo cared for his cousin, but just because he cared for him didn’t mean that he had to follow in his footsteps. On the other hand I can choose to be with my friends that I care about deeply and struggle through life. I can allow Christ to discipline me and mold me and shape me for things that are coming in my life.

It’s a decision that we have to make everyday. Some days we have and some days we will make the wrong decision but like Coach Carter, Christ will accept us at his front door in an embrace that loves us for who we are. Even if we are covered in sin from moments before. Praise God his discipline shapes us to be better and doesn’t just weigh on us unattainable goals that only disappoint and discourage us.