What with college bowl games, NFL play-offs, the Superbowl and the NCAA basketball tournament around the corner, God is pretty busy these days, helping teams win and athletes look gook. Maybe this accounts for His lack of attention to poverty, war, cruelty, hatred and every conceivable kind of tribalism. Of course athletic competition is pretty important and folks in Kansas take it pretty seriously. They also take religion pretty seriously, or so I'm told. So when columnist Bill Mayer at KUsports.com observed that athletes who thank the deity for scoring a touchdown in football or a three pointer in basketball may not have their heads screwed on straight, he drew comment (a lot of it, apparently, in his support). As for the criticisms and outrage, I have to say he took them graciously, so graciously that I appears the bite of the uber faithful is losing its sting, even in Kansas:
Had to chuckle long and hard about one reader. When he was a high school football player his team won the first game and the coach went around for a week spouting “praise the Lord!” Then the team lost its next eight games and suddenly it was the kids’ fault. Sound familiar?Another fellow, perturbed about post-game glorifications of alleged divine aid, said he’d yet to see some football star go on camera and declare, “I want to thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ for allowing me to fumble at the one and lose the game.” (BIll Mayer, KUsports.com)
Hey, Kansans. Welcome to the 21st Century.
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The temerity of our brand of ape is astounding.
Believing that there exists a being that created the entire universe. Believing that it requires your worship and offers an eternal paradise as a payoff for faith. Believing that it threatens eternal torture as a punishment for the infidel.
That's all pretty bold.
But believing that this all-powerful, all-knowing creator of everything that is, that ever was, that ever will be, that Almighty God Himself gives a damn which side wins a measly high school football game? That takes some big brass ones.
It does clear up any question of who is actually at the center of the believer's universe.
No kidding. Does god hate one team or player more than the others on any given Sunday? How ludicrous to suggest that one wins because god wants you to. A team or player wins because they played better that day or that tournament than anyone else. Period.
As has been shown, one can always lose the next time around. I've yet to see a player blame god for that ending.
or that arrogance of believing that we humans are made in it's image.
As a Kansan, I can say that the fact that the Jayhawks won the NCAA men's basketball national championship in 1988 means that there is a benevolent deity. You could run multiple entire blogs around how religious/crazy many of the folks in Kansas are. Every few years there is a debate about teaching "intelligent design" in schools. I think the only folks who are behind that are the nut jobs and the textbook companies.
There's a slightly greater level of sophistication in their beliefs. If you look at this blog from Fox Sports [with >2200 comments], one sees that many religious players are accrediting God with simply the opportunity for success and faith has a large part of this - not for allowing them to score.
The obvious other conclusion that can be made is that a generic faith helps people overcome obstacles that a rational mind might not attempt [i.e. faith in Chairman Mao & The Little Red Book was attributed for some people's successes 40 years ago].