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Championship Sunday, 2009
God, Eternal Life, Faith, Religion, Spirituality and
the Four-Point Lead with One Minute to Go
It is around this time each year that my heart is uplifted
and my soul redeemed. Everywhere I look, I see the magnificent
intertwining of Divine Will with Indifferent Chance to produce Human Joy.
My ears tingle to the myriads of voices that rise in unison as angelic
choirs to exalt the cosmic intermingling of countless souls. I reach
out ― and I can feel it! I open my mouth,
and I can taste the bounty. I breathe in deeply ― and am intoxicated
by the aroma of belief in the perfectibility of humankind.
I refer of course to the NFL Playoffs.
Naturalists of previous centuries and holy
men of all ages, as well as some scientists of our day, have studied and
pondered over every perceivable element of existence in an effort to "read
the mind of God." My own, meager talents fall far short of such a
goal. Rather than seek out the entirety of the Deity's consciousness,
I am content to revel in that smidgen of His libido that nurtures sports.
Especially those sports in which large,
grossly overpaid men hurl their bodies at each other in order to impose pain
and further the advancement of a uniquely non-spherical "ball" toward that
metaphor for nirvana called the end zone. (In Catholic terms, a
touchdown roughly equals Heaven, and a field goal Purgatory; a dropped pass
is a venial sin, a fumble a mortal sin ― and an interception returned for
touchdown is sacrilege unless, of course, it is your team returning the
ball.)
Problem is: you encourage an acquaintance
to tune in and watch a game, and that acquaintance is immediately confronted
with the terrible problem that bedevils religion ― the clergy. In
matters of faith, your acquaintance goes to a church and finds a minister
who tells him that his gay friend is a sinner because he is who he is, or he
tunes into a religious program and hears a televangelist tell him that God
wants him to be wealthy in this life, no matter that
Jesus encouraged the rich to give their wealth to help the poor.
In
matters of sports, specifically football, your acquaintance turns on the
television to hear sportscasters babble. Watch
enough football on television and you will hear the following:
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Some player or
team will do something that "is history," as if three touchdown passes in
a quarter somehow equates to the American Revolution. |
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"The finality"
of the playoffs will be intoned to impress upon you that a loss removes a
team from the playoffs. John Madden does this the best (and most
often) ― yeah, John, that's how single elimination
tournaments work! |
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You will be told that an agile and quick halfback escapes would-be
tacklers because he knows "how to make them miss." This awkward
phrasing ― which is, after all, how
most of us spoke when we were five-years-old
― is employed because sportscasters are
genetically incapable of using words like elude and evade. |
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In the last two minutes of a game, one team will have a lead of from four
to eight points, but the other team will receive the ball and start its
final drive of the game. The announcer will tell you that the losing
team is playing for a touchdown (worth from six to eight points, depending
on the outcome of the post-touchdown conversion) and not a field goal
(worth three points). The announcer will explain that the losing
team is behind by a score of, say, 21 - 17, and that the three points
generated by a field goal would leave them still behind, because, you see,
three is less than four. And your announcer will explain this one
more time, at least. Fifty seconds to go in a game, and the
announcer will spend half of them explaining that four is greater than
three! |
In
other words, your acquaintance will watch a football game at your behest and
will come away with the impression that your favored game is a pastime for
dolts.
Once the next high holyday of America, SuperBowl Sunday,
has passed, I think I may stop encouraging others to watch. There are
already enough people who think that I am a fool, and there is no need to
add to their number.
As for God, faith and spirituality
― it is religion, sadly, that gets in the way.
In practice, religion is a means to socializing, and ignoring scriptural and
philosophical paradoxes. It is a way of feeling better about ourselves
by looking down on the unsaved. It is a fantasy that allows us to
pretend that we can escape physical death by means of that intellectual
oddity known as "the Rapture." It is an excuse we give ourselves to
tell others that they must behave in the manner that we would if we had
sufficient will power (or ― Gasp! ― actual goodness).
Here, then, is the duality: Football
is just a game, and we need to stop making more of it than it really is ―
but if we indeed really do believe that "God
is great," then we need to stop trivializing Him with our petty
bickering.
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