So I'm flipping channels last night and I come across TBN, the Christian TV network, where they're interviewing members of the two Super Bowl teams who are Christians to get their witness. And Jeff Hartings, center for the Steelers, makes this statement:
I know that God didn't bring me to the Super Bowl one year before I was ready for it, he brought me here right when I was prepared.
It's just baffling to me how people can believe something like that. Do they put any thought into it at all, or are they just passive recipients of this nonsense and just repeat it by rote? In order for that statement to be true, in order for God to have any role in "bringing" Hartings to the Super Bowl this year rather than another year, he has to believe that God either intervened to insure that the Steelers didn't make it in past years, or that he intervened to make sure they did make it this year, or both.
But what does he think God did? Did he cause the ref to make the bad call on the Polomalu interception in the Indy game to make sure the Steelers won that game? Did he injure the QB last year to make sure they didn't make it? I suspect that the answer is that he doesn't believe any of those things, yet he still thinks that God is responsible for him not just being in the Super Bowl, but being there this year and not last year or the year before. I just don't get it.
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Neither do I. Does he also believe, along with all those other christian superbowlers, that their god will make one team win, and one team lose for reasons that are absolutely believable and hermeneutically sound within their faiths?? Is it because one team is owned by a Catholic family and the other by an agnostic man of stupendous wealth that god will choose who wins?? All that praying that goes on on the field, all that praise that is given for success, while not one bit is offered in failure??? It makes a bizarre spectacle for viewers outside the US.
Still, it would be odd if you believed God predestined and/or actively controlled all things, not to give him credit for a Super Bowl victory (or loss), the stroke of Israel's Prime Minister, as well as the typo that I just made and had to delete.
I think the problem is that they don't go far enough to see the idiocy of their position.
I think that people who have beliefs of this nature have thought processes that are in some sense the complement of yours. Just as you don't understand how they could possibly believe something like God being responsible for this guy's being in the Super Bowl, they don't understand how you can see that as something that's questionable.
Another, similar person, on hearing this expressed, will not have any available thought processes by which he could thing "hey, wait, did God injure the QB last year to do that?" Their thoughts will be essentially "Yes. Praise God." It's not a "rote" or "passive" response; they would characterize it as a positive affirmation, something that strengthens their belief. That it defies logic is not seen as a legitimate criticism; their worldview is built around things that defy logic, that depend on faith.
What puzzles me is that the seemingly random effect of faith permuting logic so often seems to result in them agreeing with each other. What if you got two such believers, each a fan of one of the teams playing in the Super Bowl, each believing that God will lead his team to victory, and put them together to discuss it. Could they have such a discussion? I don't see how.
When people say things like Hartings did on TBN, they are praised as having a deep faith, but it's really just shallow thinking. The perception of God's will is reinforced by the fact that all the attention is focused on the winners, not the losers, so it's almost always the winners you see praising God for his special favour. Plus it would be considered rude to question the accuracy of his supposition since it is a "personal religious thing".
I remember back on 9/11 one person praised God when he saw the plane that hit one of the towers veer away from him at the last moment, sparing his life. No thought whatsoever about why God would spare him and thus condemn all those others who *were* hit by the plane when it swerved away.
Well, maybe they would fall down on their knees after the beat the crap out of each other, and pray for forgiveness?? Maybe!. Still, i am waiting to see the first time a player looks up to the sky and praises his god for intervening and helping him miss a touchdown saving tackle. His god must have wanted that other believer to score, for some inexplicable, 'god's own business' reason.
I think it's cheating to have God on your side! If they want to get athletes who use anabolic steroids out of a sport, surely they should also ban those who credit God for their victory. Seems unfair to everyone else..
Yea...go figure. People believe the dumbest stuff. If something good happens, it was god's will. If something bad happens, it's god working in mysterious ways and we humans just don't understand. How about you made it to the superbowl cause that is just how things worked out...random events just ended up this way. I believe that a lot more readily than "the man upstairs" did it. If there is a "man upstairs" most times it can be deduced that either he can't be bothered in the events of humans or he doesn't care or he is impotent. Who the hell knows? Yet there are billions of fools out there who believe that earthly events are directed by god...go figure...
I saw a comedian do a bit on this once. He was complaining that athletes were always praising God for their victories but never blaming him when they lost. Just once, he said, he wanted to hear something like, "We would have won, but *Jesus* made me fumble."
That was Jeff Stilson, the comic I mentioned the other day in another thread. He also went on to talk about boxers thanking God after a fight: "Without God, I could not have crushed my opponent's skull and rendered him braindead. I am blessed by the Lord."
Ed, I hang my head in shame everytime a Christian makes statements such as this. Surely, there's no thought put into them.
While we're speaking of comedy, these Christians response reminds me a little of a Chris Rock routine. He talks about taking a black history class, and answers every single question with Martin Luther King.
"Who was the women that refused to give her seat up on the bus?"
"OOh. That's a tough one... Are you sure it was women? ... I know, Martina Luther King."
I think Christians begin to fit this comedy act when the answer to every event in life (like making it to the super bowl) becoms God or Jesus.
Did you notice that after the review of Ben's touchdown came out in their favor, Ben pointed up to heaven, I presume as a way to thank God for the call? Does he really think God changed the ref's mind to make sure the touchdown counted?
I prefer this kind of SuperBowl-related prayer:
http://faltertorise.blogspot.com/2006/02/please.html
"...Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love..."
etc..
"It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said."
Mark Twain, The War Prayer
I continue to think that for most people remarks such as the football player's are highly self-centered ones that are conventionally masked by being framed as humility and praise for a deity.
What they're saying is not so much "I am small and unworthy and my successes are really the Lord's" as much as "Look at what I've accomplished, I'm so damn good that God rides with me!"
Clearly, this is not true for some people, who really are humble and intend only to offer conventional (and, yes, rote) supplication to their God, but when you're talking about a professional athlete, a highly-paid, pampered and lauded celebrity at the pinnacle of his achievement, it's much more likely, I would think, that praising God is an acceptable way to praise oneself without looking too arrogant.
When I was growing up in the Catholic Church, we were taught it was actually sinful to credit (or blame) God for something as insignificant as a sports victory, and one certainly did not pray for a victory or an opponent's mistake, because that was a "gimme" prayer. Of course, we were also taught that it was vanity to be too "showy" with your religion, but that idea has flown the coop in this country.
But it isn't just sports - I live in DC, and when the snipers were attacking for those awful weeks in 2002, three people survived the shootings, including the only child shot, but 10 people died. The relatives of those who lived, and sometimes the victims themselves, often credited their survival to being "blessed" by God - which means, of course, that the dead victims were somehow condemned by God, and that just seemed offensive to me. It was particularly unjustifiable in the case of the child victim, who was not saved by blessings from God, but from the luck of not only having an aunt who was also a nurse on the scene of the shooting, but also of having an urgent care center very close to the shooting location.
It seems to me that this kind of thinking - that Jesus is your "personal Lord and savior" and is therefore involved in everything you do - is very negative about humanity. Apparently, humans are unable to do anything or achieve anything on our own. But that means, as so many have already pointed out, that all the bad things humans do must also be caused by God.
Did you notice that after the review of Ben's touchdown came out in their favor, Ben pointed up to heaven, I presume as a way to thank God for the call?
No, no. You misinterpreted it. See, Ford Field has a roof--and that roof was critical to the play in question. Imagine how that run would have ended if Roethlisberger had attempted to run and jump in the slush that Detroit has been mired in for the past few days! He would have slipped for sure and never been able to break the plane of the goal line.
So that finger-point was obviously just Big Ben saying "Thanks, roof." I feel the same way in the wintertime.
(But seriously, folks, my favorite NFL team used to have a Pro Bowl running back who was an atheist and an outspoken advocate of science and reason. Boy, I miss him.)
Just wanted to comment on your Big Ben post pointing up after he got the touchdown. Maybe if you would have done your homework just a little bit on this you would have known that Ben's mother had passed away and he points to the heaven in honor of her. Not to thank God for the call or to change the Ref's mind. Stick to freelancing ED cause you get in less trouble that way when you get your story wrong.
dustins wrote:
Was I really supposed to research the man's life history for possible clues to his intent? Lots of athletes point up to signify that they're giving the "glory" to God (as though He scored the touchdown). It was a safe assumption, and labelled an assumption. The fact that there is another explanation for reasons I can't be expected to have knowledge of is hardly worth this sneering reply.
Oh gosh, am I in trouble now? Are you going to tell your mom? *eyeroll*