LeBron and The Law vs. Gospel

Mockingbird Blog:

Our number one job as self-interested human beings is self-justification. It was a great comfort to be able to say, when confronted with a personal failure, “Well, at least I never jilted a city, joined another superstar, and then failed time and again in clutch moments! At least I’m not a championship level loser!” Now that LeBron is no longer such a loser, we are thrashing around, flailing, for some other poor (read: wonderfully talented) athlete on whom to pin our outrageous expectations, all in the hope that they’ll fail, so that we can look better by comparison. If we worry about living up to the law of “be good,” we can least be better than someone.

Tellingly, the thing that LeBron credits with enabling his success this year is his “owning” of his failures from years past. It is when we can stop our search for someone to whom we’re superior that we can have the freedom to be ourselves…and possibly succeed.

Read the rest.