As many of you likely already know, last week we enjoyed our annual “The Body of Christ and the Public Square” (BOCPS) conference here at Our Savior in Hartland. For me, personally, what made the day truly extraordinary was not only that each speaker’s topic worked well with the others, ultimately building a stronger structure along the way, but that each used the mortar of encouragement while they worked. In other words, each made clear the importance of engagement in the public square. But then they also reminded listeners that God has promised the necessary courage for doing so. Resting in that promise, the encouragement became, “Go and be who you are in Christ. Go and be who He’s made you to be by His truth.”

I was the first to speak that morning. I’ll let you in on a little secret. My speech was a whole lot longer than what the attendees actually heard. Go figure, right? Well, just know that I skipped over a section for the sake of time.

If you were there, you’ll remember I shared a seconds-long video I thought captured something hopeful concerning the forthcoming generation. It showed the Hartland and Brighton football teams kneeling together in prayer after their game a week earlier. In context, these were young men who’d spent the evening in competition, and yet, even after beating each other up for an hour, they gathered together at center field, bowed their heads, and acknowledged something greater than the competition—the truth of Christ.

The primary thrust of my speech was allegiance to truth no matter what. And so, the video worked. It showed the importance of truth in a divided world. But then there was the section immediately afterward that I skipped—a story I was going to tell but didn’t. Had I shared it, it would’ve shown a striking contrast to the previous video.

Essentially, the Thursday before the BOCPS conference, my wife Jennifer and I attended our daughter Evelyn’s volleyball game. She plays varsity for Linden. It was a home game against Swartz Creek. While there, we sat maybe four or five rows from the floor, directly behind a group of about ten Linden football players who had come to watch the girls play.

Near the end of the final match, a parent—the father of one of the Swartz Creek players—walked past the group of boys, as anyone might when heading to concessions or the bathroom or stepping out to make a phone call. But as he walked by, one of the boys made a crass remark about him to the others, loud enough that Jennifer and I could hear it over the gym’s noise. The other boys erupted in laughter.

The man paused, looked back, paused again, but then decided to keep walking. There’s no question he’d heard what they said. Unfortunately, they kept looking and laughing, so he knew they were mocking him too. He glanced backward a few more times as he left the gym, as if he wanted to return and say something. But he didn’t.

Eventually, he did return. The boys started back up again. Walking by, he gave a few looks, showing he’d heard them the first time, but he still didn’t say anything and went straight to his seat. In my humble opinion, he showed incredible restraint, especially since he didn’t make a scene during the game. However, when he finally sat down a section and a half away, he didn’t position himself to watch his daughter play. He positioned himself toward the boys. In other words, he sat and stared them down the rest of the game. The boys saw him, but only did what they were doing before.

Now, Jennifer and I were not the only ones aware of what was happening. The group of parents just to our right saw the whole thing, too. At one point, one of them, one of our team’s bigger, more muscular dads (a man I thought at first was one of the Linden wrestling coaches but learned later wasn’t), moved down several rows and positioned himself directly in the offended man’s line of sight, effectively shielding the boys from his stare. Of course, the boys kept at it.

When the game ended, the Swartz Creek dad immediately went to the boys to confront them—as any man would. But here’s the thing. The Linden dad got up just as immediately, and no matter how the Swartz Creek man maneuvered, he positioned himself between him and the boys. As you might expect, the man inevitably started speaking his mind with some volume. The Linden dad finally told the man, in no uncertain terms, to get lost. Then he turned to the boys and assured them they had nothing to worry about because, in his words, the man was “obviously a goofball.”

Those were his words. Jennifer and I heard it all. And we couldn’t believe it.

I went straight down the rows, cutting between the boys, to the Linden dad who, again, I thought at the time was one of our coaches who might correct them, and said very plainly in front of all of them that the Swartz Creek man was in the right. I told him the man had every reason to be upset for what our team’s boys had said and done. I told him my wife and I were sitting right behind them, and that we’d heard and seen it all.

Interestingly, the Linden dad didn’t suddenly reverse course or see error in his efforts. He sort of laughed it off. Even worse, he seemed genuinely surprised that I would defend someone from the opposing team rather than the boys from our own.

Now, I suppose someone might argue that the Linden dad was simply trying to defuse the situation. Maybe that’s what he thought he was doing. But I don’t think he defused anything. In fact, I think he made matters worse, especially by turning to the boys and calling the man a name, just as they’d been doing. First, by participating in the behavior—the name-calling—he reinforced it and added insult to injury. And second, by shielding the boys from the consequences, he gave them permission to do it again.

As for how I know he didn’t defuse the situation, when Jennifer and I got outside, the Swartz Creek dad was still in the parking lot. And by the way, I haven’t mentioned that he was by no means a non-intimidating gent by appearance. Inside the gym, he had clearly been limiting himself. But here he was now, waiting in the parking lot, stewing furiously. His wife was furious, too, as were two other people who were with them. I can promise you, the situation was far from over.

Nevertheless, Jennifer and I went to him anyway. And listening through some extreme profanity, we eventually told him we saw what happened and that he had every reason to be upset. We told him Linden had been a terrible host, and we apologized for how he was treated.

After a few minutes of conversation, guess what happened next.

He was grateful for the understanding, the temperature dropped, and the tension finally dissipated. Essentially, what was about to become an uglier confrontation in the Linden parking lot ended with a measure of control.

We finally parted ways, thanking each other for the time. They all got into their cars. We got into ours. And we all went home. End of story.

Now, I realize this may seem like no big deal to some. I’ll bet some of you are even reading this and thinking, “Boys will be boys, and that man was an adult. He should’ve known better and just ignored them. Sticks and stones and all that.” I suppose if that’s your position, then you definitely need to keep reading. Yes, teenage boys will do stupid things. I’ve raised two of them, so I understand immaturity as a sign of teenage territory. What’s more, I know this in myself. Looking back on my own life as a young man, as the meme goes, I’m glad smartphones didn’t exist.

That said, the situation is a troubling one, and not only because of what the boys did, but because of what none of the parents seemed willing to do.

Here was an opportunity for Linden parents, at least the ones who knew what had happened, to teach their own a little something about respect, decency, and personal responsibility. It was a chance to remind them that wearing a Linden jersey—bearing the community name—carries with it a responsibility to represent their own honorably. Even better, it was a moment to experience the heavy, but also quite valuable, weight of apologizing for being in the wrong.

Instead, those boys learned something that I believe is terribly dangerous for our society as a whole. They were taught to defend their own regardless of what their own have done. When we as adults do this, in a sense, we’re teaching them that truth only matters when it serves them—and that’s a very bad lesson to carry into adulthood. It’s one that the rest of society will pay for in the end, because ultimately, it teaches that right and wrong depend on our own established loyalties. This is the absolute opposite of what I talked about in my already lengthy speech last Saturday. I made the point that objective truth doesn’t belong to us. We belong to it. We did not invent it. We are not its authors. We are its witnesses and, at crucial moments along the way, we are called to be its unflinching servants, even when that means we’ll have to eat some crow.

I suppose this is maybe where the whole thing extends beyond a varsity volleyball game and into the rest of our individual lives. We all tend to excuse behavior in people we like that we would almost certainly condemn in people we dislike. Indeed, we all have an innate tendency to defend those who share our convictions, even when they have plainly violated the very convictions we claim to hold.

I started my speech at the BOCPS conference talking about how parents bear the most responsibility in a society. Considering what I just shared, I’m not so sure we can, as parents, expect our children to develop the moral courage our society so desperately needs if we’re going to excuse moments like the one beside the volleyball court in Linden—especially if that behavior is the rule more so than the exception. We need kids who can speak truth to anyone, even when the wrongdoer is wearing the same jersey.

Now, do you see why I cut this from the speech? There’s a lot here. Still, the contrasting images remain relatively immediate for me. I watched that video of those Hartland and Brighton football players kneeling together in prayer two days before I experienced what I did at the volleyball game. The first was a moment when young men from opposing teams acknowledged something that superseded their loyalties. Then along came the second, one demonstrating the exact opposite.

I suppose I’ll leave it there. Or, at least, I’ll close by saying that if we want our boys to become good men, we’d better, as parents, have the courage to teach them what that means. In this case, it means standing against our own, especially when our own are clearly in the wrong.

The world already has plenty of people willing to throw their whole selves into defending their side. What it desperately needs is people willing to throw their whole selves into defending what’s actually true, even when it comes at a personal cost.

That kind of courage, no matter what anyone else might say, always begins at home.