Why I Stand

When I was a kid, sports on TV was a big deal.  The local colleges played football seasons that were eleven or twelve games long, but less than half of those games were on TV.  Only about half the people I knew had cable, so sometimes televised games weren’t even available to everyone.  When something was on TV, I made the effort to watch.  I liked watching BYU’s football and basketball games as well as Utah Jazz games with the occasional Oakland A’s game when they were featured on national TV.  As I got older, there were more things on TV, particularly more Jazz games, and I still tried pretty hard to watch as many of those as I could.  Nowadays, with work, family, and other more pressing matters, I hardly ever watch the Jazz games and watch BYU games less frequently than before.  I have never been an NBA fan or a college football fan, though, and, in general, couldn’t care less about other teams or what’s happening in various leagues or conferences.  I care about my favorite teams and that’s all.  Every so often, something happens in the sports world, though, that makes waves and casual fans like me or even non-fans have to take notice.

Why I Stand by Jonathan Isaac (ISBN: 978-1-956007-06-0) is a book that exists because of one of those moments.  After the protests and riots that occurred after George Floyd’s death, many athletes used their position (“platform” being the buzzword everyone liked to use) to advocate for a message they believed in.  One of the more controversial ways they did this was to kneel during the national anthem.  Jonathan Isaac, a very promising NBA player, chose to buck the trend and stand during the national anthem.  He stood out even more because he did not choose to wear the Black Lives Matter apparel that most others did.  Like most things, his decisions in that matter were not just sudden, spur-of-the-moment thoughts.  They were based on a lifetime of experiences and a large body of personal beliefs.  The book recounts Isaac’s childhood, high school and college experiences and rather meteoric rise in the sport of basketball from a no-name kid playing inconsistently in high school to a top-10 NBA draft pick.  It also discusses Isaac’s struggles with anxiety and belief in his own worth, which were ultimately helped more than anything by a spiritual journey that led to a firm belief in God.  He writes about going to church as a kid, but not really knowing why and not applying what was being taught.  Like many people, he had some negative experiences with organized religion along the way, and by the time he was playing in the NBA as a rookie, he was connected to religion in name only.  A neighbor who was a church leader and a few setbacks in his basketball career provided opportunities for Isaac to re-evaluate his relationship with God, and his honest approach to that led to a conversion that led to action that ranged from feeding the poor to becoming a pastor in his church.  Ultimately, those convictions led him to stand while his teammates knelt during the national anthem, but he believed that incident was just one instance of standing for truth and right and that God asks that of His followers in many other situations, too.

Charles Barkley, another famous basketball player, once said in an advertisement that he was not a role model.  It was a controversial advertisement because basketball players and other famous people in the spotlight are role models whether they want to be or not and whether they should be or not.  I find that most of them should not be, but a guy like Jonathan Isaac is a role model by virtue of his position and his actions.  His account came across and genuine and humble.  He was open about his struggles and did not shy away from the fact that he made mistakes in his life and is still far from the perfection that God has commanded us to stive for.  However, he has not tried to dodge hard work and responsibility at all and has put forth the effort necessary to effect change in his life for the better.  His willingness to stand alone for his beliefs is admirable, no matter where someone comes down on the issues (he notes in his book that many did not agree with him, but that some teammates and others told him they found his courage and determination to be character traits worthy of respect and emulation).  I thought he had well-articulated reasons for doing what he did, and I happen to agree with them, but I found the book’s message of finding one’s self-worth in Christ and in knowing that we are beloved children of God to be the main message.  The byproduct of knowing those things is that one is then willing to stand for truth and right even when it’s uncomfortable.  

 

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License and is copyrighted © MMXXI John Pruess.