Peyton Manning, Myself, and Worship

It's a common cliche that being a fan comes from the root word fanatic. Color me fanatic then.

I blame my parents, really. I grew up mostly in Knoxville, Tennessee, home of the University of Tennessee, also my alma mater. My mom graduated from there. Both my sisters graduated from there. So I'll pass some of that blame to my sisters too. On top of that, my dad was always a huge sports fan. Ever since I can remember, I was wearing orange and rooting for the Vols.

Some things just always seemed constant: the Vols had a great quarterback, we always beat Kentucky, and I always told every other elementary school kid that Tennessee was better than their school (especially when I lived in Ohio for a while).

My journey with Peyton (for he only needs one name to be known in my parts) began when I was in fifth grade. Already being fanatical about the men in Orange and White, I was at the very first college football game that Peyton ever started, against Washington State in 1994. I remind you, fifth grade.

I suppose it's rare that someone's boyhood sports hero grows all the way into adulthood with you. I mean, I'm a father now, and Peyton is still playing football. And I'm still fanatical. I went to the Broncos-Colts game 2 seasons ago with a close friend. Did I wear a Broncos shirt? Yes. Yes I did. Under my #16 Peyton Manning jersey from the University of Tennessee. Some loves seem to only grow with the sweet passage of time.

And now my boyhood hero "follows" me to Denver to play his remaining days of professional football. Truly, I love the Broncos. They were the first and easiest team to rally behind once I moved here. Loving this city meant loving it's teams. But some loves have a ceiling when the one you really want is so far away. But no longer. Now I really love the Broncos.

I'm not sure if I can get to the place in my sports-fan experience to truly comprehend the day when Peyton Manning will no longer play football. It's an emotional place I'm probably not prepared for. So, I'll enjoy these waning days like there is no end. I'll just be naive about the deeper things.

The deeper things: what an odd phenomenon sports and sports heroes are.

I used to never understand the concept of idolatry. All over the Old Testament people find wooden poles or golden things and they worship them. Always seemed bizarre to me. A wooden pole isn't that exciting, after all.

So when I read the passage in Exodus about Moses and his people, I'm confused. Moses is hanging out on the top of a mountain with God. It's quite the thunderous experience as Moses receives the law with which to give his people from his God- the exclusive, the God. God tells Moses to go down though, because the people are practicing wickedness. They collected everyone's gold and decided it'd be a good idea to melt it and make a golden calf and talk about how awesome it is.

Over 400 years of slavery, and the golden calf they just made gets all the credit for the miraculous events they've witnessed. That story used to make no sense to me. That is, until I understood sports in my life. Until I came up close and personal with my emotions and with my boyhood idol.

When my beloved Volunteers won or when Manning won, my heart was filled with glee. When they won. Oh, when they won. Joy. Inexpressible joy. But, when my beloved Volunteers used to lose or when Manning lost, I'd be sad. I'd be angry. There wouldn't be words. I wouldn't want to talk to anybody about it. But since when did the outcome of a game have to affect my whole sense of contentment? How did that happen?

Consider Aaron. He responds to Moses about the whole calf deal:

"Do not be angry, my lord...You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, 'Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.' So I told them, 'Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.' Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!"

I'm not sure if my sense of contentedness, as it's so connected to Manning, is so different from people throwing some gold into a fire.

We humans will worship anything. We all worship. My temptation is to not make Peyton Manning god, but just let him be a guy that throws an oblong ball to other people, and to enjoy it as mildly as possible. That's so hard for me.

There are other gods afoot, most of them of my own creation, you see.

Looking Out For Greed: Occupy

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness...No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Jesus in Matthew 6:21-24

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Jesus in Luke 12:15

No one thinks they are greedy. Generally speaking, you know if you've lied or committed adultery, but greed is much more insidious. As far as greed goes, it takes quite a bit of thinking, introspection, and personal honesty to admit greed. That's why Jesus constantly has to talk about eyes and "watching" when it comes to money, because none of us would naturally think that we are greedy.

The most public example of this is the current Occupy movement now happening across the globe. It is so easy to look out for Western materialism and corporate consumption and to label it greed. Much of the time, that assessment would be correct. It is simple to see greed in others. But to see it in ourselves?

For instnace, have you noticed the language of the Occupy protestors? The top 1% need to give their "fair share." The path to widening income gaps is "unfair." To be sure, it is Robin Hood language writ large across the American landscape. And it's greedy. The irony here is that the Occupy movement is made up of folks from many social strata, and yet all their ire is fixated upon the top 1%, as if the more lowly folks deserve it simply because they want it. Or simply because they aren't the 1%. [Leave aside the fact that top income earners in the United States already pay more of a percentage of their top wages anyways. Yes, I believe, in principle, that a progressive income tax codifies greed into law, pragmatics and federal budget aside momentarily. Anyhow, it's not the actual tax income that I'm really disputing at the moment, it's the attitude towards wealth that all of us have that reveals our greed.]

In other words, you don't have to be rich to be greedy. That's why we must "watch out" for it. If we level a charge of greed against others, we must take extra measure to make sure it can't apply to us.

Just a little while later, after Jesus discusses the lightness of the eyes, he proclaims this about his own judgment of us:

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Shall we apply that standard even in our use of money?

Christian Situational Ethics and a Government's War

What hath Saint Francis of Assisi to do with Deitrich Bonhoeffer? I've been thinking about both gentlemen recently. First, who are they? Saint Francis was a devout Christian in the 12th-13th centuries who started a religious order within Catholicism called the Franciscans. Coming much later in history, Bonhoeffer was a devout German pastor and theologian mostly during the Third Reich in Hitler's Germany. And they handled similar (though not completely comparable) historical situations very differently.

First, St. Francis. During one of the Crusades, as a European army was sieging an Egyptian city, Saint Francis went to go speak directly to the Sultan of Egypt to try and talk to him earnestly about Jesus, to "convert" him as it were. It's important here to remark on one of the historical misunderstandings about the Crusades here. After the rise of Islam in the mid 700s, Islam spread often through war and forced converts, including the areas around Egypt and what today is now Israel. Why is that important? Because despite all the historical complexities, the Crusades were not simply a mis-spent religious war. The Crusades were not simply about Christian aggression, but about defense of indefensible people. No doubt, much of the Crusades were a mis-adventure and an unfortunate blight on Christian witness in the world. And that's where Assisi's model comes in. Despite some just causes for the war, we still applaud his peaceable attempt at resolution. He was embodying non-violence to try and make a difference in the world. And we love St. Francis for this. Even though his visit to the Sultan did not change his views, we respect St. Francis. We ought to.

And then we come to Bonhoeffer. But before we come to Bonhoeffer, let's note that many German and American pastors had chances to entertain an audience with Hitler prior to WWII, and tried to "convert" him and show him the error of the ways in how he was managing his government, with particular reference to the Jews. But because Hitler is Hitler, we view those pastors more as spineless. They didn't do anything about the problem, they just tried to change Hitler's mind. Bonhoeffer didn't. He always suspected Der Fuhrer, and eventually joined the Resistance movement in an assassination plot to kill Hitler. To Bonhoeffer, what was happening was so atrocious, so ungodly, that action and not mere words was needed. Indeed, Bonhoeffer even felt the call of God to join the assassination plot, even though his attempt failed and he was ultimately martyred for it, weeks before the war ended.

Somehow, we love St. Francis and Bonhoeffer for what they did. We admire them both, even though they went about the work of God, so to speak, in radically different ways.

More than anyone I know, I try to conceptualize principles for living, economics, politics, Christian involvement in the world. I love to come up with a set of principles that will tell me beforehand what I should do or believe in certain situations. But the more I read of history and of Christian saints, I'm convinced that the only true and right principle is to listen to God and to do what he asks. It might be completely different in different situations, but which of us has truly enough wisdom on our own to determine how God will use us? What principles could we live by that would give us the courage to do either what St. Francis did or what Bonhoeffer did?

Truly, we must listen to God, even as to how we involve ourselves in our culture and the major issues of our day.

Doubt Can Be Good

The following is a guest post by Daryl Kapp, friend and fellow thinker. Enjoy his ruminations.

Death is always hard for me. I have a hard time understanding and coping with it. Not one person, save for Jesus, comes back from the dead. No one comes back to tell us if religion and this whole Christian life is truly worth it. Yes, I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose again on the third day proclaiming victory over death. Yes, I believe that His sacrifice is enough to set me free from the bondage of sin. Yet sometimes I wish that there was more evidence to affirm those beliefs.

I wish perhaps my Grandma could come back and tell me one way or another if following Jesus is really worth it. I want to be sure. I want to know if the God of my Bible really exists. I want to know for certain that there is more to this life than a simple evolutionary process.  I want to know.

If I am honest with myself the need for this type of knowledge stems not from an intellectual level but from a deeper level of control. I want to be able to control my life as I see fit.  I don’t want to place my trust or faith in anyone but myself. I want to be the master of my universe. God, however, continually reminds me that He has and does prove His existence every day. I need only to think of the birth of my daughter to be reminded that God is in control, not me. God breaks down this selfish need by reminding me of the mystery of forming a baby from a sperm and an egg; the beauty and majesty of the mountains; the vastness of the cosmos; the mathematical equations that are able to describe the world we live in. I confront the reality that God is in control and I am forced to give up my own desire for it. 

Questioning the existence of God is not, as some think, an indication that one does not believe in God. In fact, God invites questions and doubts because He knows that He is the answer to all the riddles. Mark Buchanan, in his book “Your God is too Safe” puts it this way: “the holy wild is where we have driving and haunting doubts, God-hungry doubts that pull us to our knees, forces us to the Word, makes us wrestle all night and not let go until He blesses us” (p. 66). Doubts and questions are a sign that we are wrestling with God, trying to discover more of who He is and how He interacts with us. Doubts, questions, and riddles, are what drive us towards God, not away from Him. Buchanan also says this on the subject:

“Perhaps that’s a general principle: The depth of our doubt is roughly proportional to the depth of our faith. Those with strong faith have equally strong doubts. That principle bears out in the other direction as well: People with a trivial and shallow faith usually have trivial and shallow doubts” (p. 67-68).

Meaning that the kind of doubts we possess is a good way to measure what type of faith we have. 

God's Geopolitics and Osama Bin Laden

How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice?  Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

The prophet Habakkuk (NIV)

This guy with a funny name, back a little before 586 BC, cried out to his God. Why? Because he had seen the oppression and violence all around him. It was the oppression and violence by his own people against his own people, the Jews. Habakkuk cried out for justice, and justice was forthcoming. God responded:

“Look at the nations and watch— and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own. They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor... "

This was not quite the expected response of Habakkuk. Habakkuk saw the misery and corruption in his own land and cried out for justice, and God was telling Habbakuk that he will bring justice, just not in the way Habakkuk expects. God will bring an even more wicked nation to destroy the nation of Judah, in order to bring them to justice. A people even more ruthless than the Jews were coming for recompense. God will bring justice geopolitically, even if that is through other humans, albeit wicked ones.

Some American Christians think God works geopolitically, but usually have a misunderstanding of that application as it relates to the modern nation-state of Israel. I think most other American Christians- very individualized in their faith- forget that God works geopolitically at all. Non-Christians, except Muslims, probably don't even accept the premise that God works geopolitically. But if there is truly a personal God and he created this whole universe, then it makes sense that he also governs it, and governs it completely. Christians call this God's sovereignty. He is sovereign over something so small as me and something so big as the killing of a terroris who murdered thousands of civilians.

So today is not merely a day of American victory. Indeed, America, just like any other nation that no longer exists (wherefore hath Babylon gone, after all, but to the grave?), will someday no longer exist. But God has and is still working his plan, and he will accomplish his ends in whatever way he seems fit. It is just that this day, he has chosen to use an imperfect country, one I love, to bring an end to someone who killed innocent Americans. Today God's geopolitics seems just.

But God was just as in control on September 11, 2001. What I am not saying is that God punished America for some reason, like some televangelists proclaimed. What I am not saying is that God is somehow pleased with innocent folks dying. He isn't. But, at that moment nearly 10 years ago, God's geopolitics did not seem just, if indeed he is in control.

So hear me clearly, since my premise is small: my point is not that I know why God does things or allows things as he does on a geopolitical scale. I am not a prophet, and I am not Habakkuk. I just know that God controls and allows things on a geopolitical scale. The worship of that God should increase our awe and worship of Him.

Furthermore, let us not allow our nationalistic feelings or our fervent, patriotic self-righteousness to cloud the fact that God has wrought what he has wrought, and we don't always know why. In the end, Christians affirm that all evil will be brought to justice, and not just the obvious evil done by Bin Laden or Hilter. In other words, we might be surprised what God might say to us, who at this moment feel so vindicated and self-righteous.

There is none righteous. Nope, not one of us.