Mike Singletary Stands On Faith In CBS' 'Beyond The Edge'

A man wearing glasses and a red cap — Mike Singletary. Photo: Robert Voets/CBS ©2021 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mike Singletary, a linebacker known as “The Heart of the Defense” for the Chicago Bears’ “Monsters of the Midway” in the mid-1980s, has faced some tough guys on the field.

But it was the little things he couldn’t see that kept him up nights while competing in the jungles of Panama for the CBS reality-competition show Beyond the Edge.

“The biggest thing I had was sleeping,” says the Super Bowl XX ringbearer and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee. “I just felt like I don’t care what happens during the day. If I can see it, I can do something about it, I can react. But when I’m sleeping, that’s the thing I was concerned about.

“Of course, I got back home with a ton of bites all over the place.”

Beyond the Edge takes celebs into the unknown to benefit charities

Beyond the Edge premiered on March 16 and airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS (it can also be streamed on Paramount+). Nine celebrities brave the mud, bugs and unknowns of a Panama rainforest, and face various challenges, to raise money for their favorite charities.

The rest of the cast includes country stars Lauren Alaina and Craig Morgan, NFL legend Ray Lewis, former NBA player Metta World Peace, model Paulina Porizkova, actress Jodie Sweetin, reality-TV personality Colton Underwood, and lawyer/TV-host Eboni K. Williams.

Showtime sports announcer Mauro Ranallo is host.

Singletary hopes to change our perspective

Along with being a top football player and coach, Singletary is a strong Christian. His charity is one he founded along with his wife, Kim, called Changing Our Perspective.

The website describes it thus:

Changing Our Perspective tackles the educational and social-emotional disparities plaguing America’s youth. By incentivizing consistency and rewarding effort, we aim to equip and empower adolescents with the ability to thrive autonomously as students and ultimately as the next generation of leaders.

So, instead of just giving young people material goods, the program also imparts essential knowledge and skills that will serve them throughout life.

Singletary describes Changing Our Perspective as “all about equipping our youth in America, the marginalized youth, changing their paradigm and redefining the disadvantaged communities in our country.

“So, it’s all about equipping our youth with resources, tools, education, health and mental wellness, financial literacy — those are the things we really feel that are going to change our country.”

The value of faith when facing the unknown

CBS says that the second episode of the show, airing March 23, features the celebs trying to sleep through a fierce rainstorm on their first night in the jungle.

For Singletary, it was important that he brought his faith with him, especially when it came to the first time he had to leave his hut for a bathroom break in the wee hours of the morning. He realized that, once outside the hut, he was in a land of unfamiliar creatures.

“Well, you know what,” he recalls, “I just began to pray about it. ‘Lord, what do I fear here?’ … God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a strong mind. To be able to realize, ‘Hey, God created this.'”

Singletary imagined God’s voice in his head, saying, “I created that. Yeah, I know it’s dark, but I created all that. So, trust me, get up and go ahead and do what you got to do. Take care of business. I’m with you.”

He continues, “My mindset, from the time that I got there until the time that I left, I walked differently. That jungle that I was in, and all the animals and everything else, my Father created this. This is part of my domain, and I can walk differently.

“I don’t have to walk like I own the place, but take a stick and protect yourself if you have to. But, it was a kind of transformation while I was there, in that process.”

Talking with Papa

Singletary formed a bond on the show with Lewis, a fellow linebacker, Pro Football Hall of Famer and Christian. Also, Singletary coached Lewis when he worked as a linebacker coach for the Baltimore Ravens from 2003-2004.

“His hut was right next to mine,” says Singletary. “So, we were in talking distance, where we woke up in the morning talking and went to bed at night talking. We had a lot of really interesting dialogue.”

Asked if Lewis still calls him “Coach,” Singletary says, “No, no, he calls me Papa. So, we had a lot of really great dialogue about life, about God, about football, about the disparity in our country.”

God and the gridiron

In 2015, I talked to another former Raven, Matt Birk, a Catholic, about the connection between faith and football, and he said,

“I’ve always said football’s a very spiritual game. The game will bring you to your knees, so you might as well start there.”

Many NFL players are openly Christian. Like all of us, they’re imperfect people, but there does seem to be a strong link between God and the gridiron.

Says Singletary, “When I think about football, it is not exactly going to war, but in many ways, no one really knows, when you go into a game, if you’re going to come out of that game healthy.

“There are guys that have gone into games and didn’t finish the season. So, it’s one of those things where it causes you to have a strong relationship with God.

“You can play this game, you can prepare for this game, but no one knows the unknown. Only God knows that. So, you pray for help and sustainability, being able to provide for your family and walk away from it in good health.

“That’s truly a blessing.”

Reaching the next generation

Now that he’s working with youth in difficult circumstances, I asked Singletary about how he witnesses to them.

“Not every young kid is going to be a Christian or a faith person or even go to church,” he says, “but that’s OK. It all comes down to being able to help those who have no idea about God, have no idea of spirituality, but hoping they see something in me, my example, that really makes them want that.

“[I want them to see] something attractive in me, that really is a light to them that’s saying, ‘Man, there’s something different about this person. I would like to have that in my life.’

“To me, that’s more of evidence that I’m really who I say I am. I really living my life the way that I should live it, that it makes a difference to someone, and it makes such a difference that they’re saying, ‘Hey, man, I like that. How do I do that? How do I get that?’

“I have a hope and a faith that surpasses all understanding and allows me, somehow, some way, to make it.”

The Singletary way of evangelization

Before they started filming, Singletary said he and Lewis talked about how they wanted to present their faith on the show.

“The thought process was,” he says, “we’re just going to be who we are. We’re going to let our light shine. We know that people come from different backgrounds, different points of view, different lifestyles.

“But, the most important thing for us, particularly for me, was not to judge anyone. I’m there to have a great time. I’m there to experience. I’m there to grow with whoever is here.

“And, hopefully, we’re all better for getting through it.”