I was a student at Penn State from 1968-72, the years during which Joe Paterno led Penn State’s football program to national prominence. Penn State didn’t lose a football game until my junior year. We won 2 Orange bowls and the Cotton Bowl during my 4 years. Franco Harris was in my graduating class. There is a lot of pleasure in winning—and Joe brought the Yagel family (my father and brothers are PSU grads) a great deal of enjoyment over the years. He also did a great deal over 61 years to build character into young men and build PSU as a university.
Yet Joe’s horrific moral failure enabled the rape of children. Here are a few of my thoughts about this tragedy. I’d love to hear yours.
1. Moral failure is not just a matter of what I do; it includes what I have left undone. Lord, forgive me for the times I have failed to protect my children—the days when I don’t battle for them in prayer as I should, the occasions when instead of manning up and standing for truth I cave, the times when I have allowed evil to triumph because I did nothing to stop it.
2. It is dangerous to be so successful that there is no place in our lives for accountability. Penn State football was so big and so powerful that it answered to no one. The biblical lens of the Reformed faith takes human sin so seriously that it always resists vesting too much power in one man or group of men. This view led the framers of the US Constitution to create 3 branches of government accountable to one another and still leads my denomination (PCA) to have no one man as our leader—only an elected moderator who serves just 12 months.
How could there be no one in Joe Paterno’s life strong enough to challenge him with the thought that by protecting his friend Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State football program, he might be causing future children to be raped?
Lord, forgive my fierce resistance to accountability. I HATE accountability. But I need it. My heart is deceitful above every living thing and desperately wicked. Never let me be so consumed with my mission that I carelessly ignore my need for accountability. Please, please bless the efforts of our ministry to get men connected for encouragement and accountability.
3. Eventually, our secret sins will become known. It is true that the Penn State leaders succeeded at covering up Sandusky’s behavior for 14 years. But eventually, it came to light. Prov. 28:13 warns “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find mercy.” ESPN commentator Matt Millen, upon hearing Louis Freeh’s report, quoted Numbers 32:23 which he had learned in childhood, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Lord, help me to fear the consequences of my secret sins and to turn from them. Help me remember that hidden, secret sin has enormous power to control. And help me to realize that my instinct to cover up the truth of my guilt leads me away from spiritual wholeness. You tell us “If we walk in the light, as you are in the light, we have fellowship with one another…If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Lord, help me to walk in the light. Help me trust my brother enough not to hide my sins from him. Hiding sin is the way of death.
Joe Paterno had feet of clay no less than Gary Yagel has. May this Penn State sinner learn some sobering lessons from this tragedy.
Lord, how much I need my brother—to watch my back, because I may leave something very important UNDONE, because I NEED ACCOUNTABILITY, and because to walk in the light I need a brother who will LISTEN TO MY SIN AND STILL LOVE ME.
