“For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” — Matthew 23:12
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As an avid sports fan growing up in Detroit, my entry into sport was highlight tapes. I would sit and watch YouTube videos of my local high school heroes for hours.
If you are a fan of college and high school football, there’s one athlete who became known as having “The Greatest Highlight Tape of All Time” — Tavon Austin. A video of his senior year highlights at West Virginia has more than 26 million views on YouTube. It’s legendary in the history of football.
So when reading the recent Front Office Sports article, “AI-Enhanced College Sports Recruiting Reels Aren’t Fooling Scout,” I was completely shocked and disappointed to hear that athletes are artificially enhancing their film. In typical sport-purist fashion, my reaction was, “The game’s gone,” and, “This is what happens when we are in the wild, wild west of sports.” But it wasn’t until reading further that I learned the practice of enhancing footage has been going on since the days of VHS tapes. So it’s not new.
This made me pause and think about how, on a daily basis, many of us create our own artificial highlight tapes to provide a polished view of ourselves to the world. Some examples:
• Entering the day with ego and pride, instead of humility and grace.
• Masking our emotions instead of showcasing the power of vulnerability to our friends and loved ones.
• Choosing to set aside our testimony, an example of God’s salvation, to preserve our reputation.
• Giving ourselves the credit for a job well done, instead of giving God the glory.
The bottom line is we are imperfect humans living in a highlight-driven culture. As a result, we are destined to fall short when trying to enhance ourselves out of pride, ego and insecurity. But thanks be to God that Jesus has called us into humility, not as punishment but as a reminder that our ultimate goals should be to be an image-bearer of Him, not ourselves.
Our true highlight tape is not based on the metrics of the world, but when our Father in Heaven says, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:23).
— Seth Petty Jr.
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