It’s so easy for people to forgive you—if you’re a professional athlete, that is.

Ryan Lochte, 12-time Olympic medalist and four-time world record holder, found himself in hot water this past summer during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. Lochte claimed that he and two of his fellow U.S. swimmers had been robbed by armed men calling themselves police officers.

The claims were found to be false, sparking actions that extended beyond Olympic competition. Brazilian outrage concerning the smudge on their already highly critiqued hosting of the Games elicited an apology from American Olympic officials.

Flash forward.

Here we are many weeks after the Closing Ceremonies and Ryan Lochte is dancing on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. When I saw that Ryan was a cast member on this season of Dancing with the Stars, the cynic in me laughed.

As we might expect, this casting was almost certainly little more than a ploy to 1) increase the show’s ratings and 2) clean up Lochte’s bruised reputation.

In my head, I could see ABC producers approaching Ryan and his agents, promising to cast him in the role of “good ‘ole boy” to regain his lost fans—maybe even win him some new ones.

To date, I’ve watched one episode of Dancing with the Stars. Ryan Lochte danced a quick step to the Muppet Show theme song while channeling Kermit the Frog. I felt like this confirmed my assumption that the casting was a ploy to have Ryan come off looking squeaky clean while boosting TV ratings.

But why did I assume that the public’s forgiveness would come so easily after showcasing Ryan as a positive, happy-go-lucky, affable guy on the show?

Because we, as American fans, love to forgive our professional athletes after they fall from grace. History demonstrates over and over our willingness to forget our sports heroes’ social sins.

It Happens All the Time

Think about it. What do Michael Phelps, Kobe Bryant, Ryan Braun, Ray Lewis, Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, and Pete Rose all have in common?

All were spectacular athletes and all were publicly exposed for committing scandalous behaviors—cheating (in sport and marriage), substance misuse, criminal behavior (gambling to DUI). Yet, all have managed to garner public forgiveness and their stardom has been maintained or has even continued to rise after their public disgrace.

I want to be clear: as a Christ-follower, I believe we all need forgiveness. What I’m challenged by is what motivates us to forgive others.

Mark 11:25 tells us: “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may you your sins." Are we motivated to forgive athletes and others because we seek to live like Christ? Is our motivation grounded by the love of Christ or is something else encouraging us to release athletes from their mistakes?

Here are four possible ideas on why we forgive athletes so easily and the motivations behind them:

Cognitive dissonance or “I just want this bad news to go away!”

The first motivation—and most scientifically based—stems from a psychology concept called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance can occur when individuals—in this case fans—experience anxiety due to misalignment between two contradictory beliefs or values.

Fans may be “stressed out” by the fact that they want to celebrate the athlete for their athletic talents, but admonish them for behaviors that the fan does not support, like cheating or doping. In order to buffer these feelings of anxiety, fans often choose to deny the bad behavior exists or that punishment is necessary.

Through denial, a fan is able to focus on their positive feelings of admiration and respect for the athlete and leave in the past the negative feelings brought on by the inappropriate behavior.

Emotional Connection or “I’m a part of the team and we have to move on!”

Sports fans worldwide love to put athletes on pedestals, idolize them, and believe that perfection is achievable. Professional athletes become heroes to fans, heroes that fans form emotional connections with.

These emotional connections often become self-perceived personal connections with the athletes and their teams. Though not true, the fan feels he or she is a part of the athlete’s journey or a member of the team.

Every sport-loving person understands this idea as we often use first-person pronouns when referring to teams: “My team won the game,” “Our team played awesome,” “We played a hard fought battle,” “The refs made some bad calls on Us,” etc.

By personalizing the bond, we make offering forgiveness easy. When it comes to mercy, most of us are way harder on others than we are on ourselves. Said another way: As fans, we grant forgiveness because we have to move onto our next competition. In a weird twist, when we forgive players we identify with, we are forgiving ourselves!

Relatability or “You’re really not all that unlike me after all!”

We extend forgiveness to athletes easily because through their faults, they become more relatable.

Take substance abuse for example. When an athlete publicly discloses that they’ve struggled with addiction, we’re already predisposed to acknowledge as a society that addiction is hard and a part of the human condition.

We sometimes like it when athletes fall from the pedestal we’ve put them on. It makes us feel like they are like us because we all stumble, fail, and have to get back up and recover from our offenses too.

By offering our forgiveness, fans can experience feelings of closeness with athletes because they can empathize by identifying a similar feeling that connects them to the athlete’s struggle.

Repayment theory or “You give and make me feel good so I’d like to give back too!”

Finally, I wonder if part of the reason we “forgive” athletes is as a form of repayment?

Professional athletes have “gifted” us with entertainment. They bring groups of people together: families, friends, friends of your friends, neighbors, fellow season ticket holders and the list goes on and on.

We enjoy watching, celebrating, commiserating, and critiquing the athletes and competitions. Since they offer us entertainment, could it be that we love to forgive because it puts us, as fans, in the driver’s seat to offer something back to the athlete?

We Really Do Need Forgiveness

But what does all of this have to do with Christ-centered forgiveness?

At the end of the day, we don’t need to forgive athletes or celebrities.

We don’t know the people—we just like to let them off the hook because they make us feel good on the weekends. It’s not really “forgiveness” at all.

It’s really just saying I’ll choose to ignore the disorienting feeling I have because of something bad you did because I want to watch you play sports and feel good about it. That’s all. Instead of forgiveness perhaps it’s really forbearance—I’ll endure bad behavior because the games mean so much to me.

But here’s an unavoidable truth: in real life, with real people, and in real relationships we need forgiveness.

Whether in my marriage, relationships with my family and friends, or interactions with my colleagues, I need to genuinely give and receive forgiveness every day. It’s absolutely critical.

Ironically, thinking about the Lochte situation is actually challenging me to think about the ways in which I harbor resentment, hold grudges, or struggle to forgive others.

I’m reminded of Matthew 6:14-15 which states, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” This isn’t optional for a Christ follower—it’s an expectation built into the DNA of the faith. It means setting others free from their debt to us when we are wronged, and it means requesting that others will do the same for us when we hurt them.

The grace of Jesus faithfully forgives us time and time again despite our unworthiness. We are sinful, we screw up all the time, and we struggle to forgive others—yet we are forgiven.

While our release of athletes from their public sins may not count as actual forgiveness, it is nevertheless an opportunity to practice and create muscle memory for much truer acts of releasing others when they sin against us.

Maybe that makes having Ryan Lochte on DWTS more worth it in the end than people even realize!