THEY do mix. In fact, they have to mix. God and sports, just like God and everything else—business, politics, arts, etc.—need to mix. But they have to mix properly.
One of our challenges today is precisely to discover the right formula or recipe for this blending, given first of all the nature of each of these elements (sorry for speaking in irreverent terms, as in God is just one more element in the equation?) and the conditions and circumstances of the parties involved.
At the moment, there is a lot of awkwardness in this topic. Much of it is left to individual and highly private interpretations. Clear standards and sure methods in this matter are largely unknown.
In fact, there’s still a lot of unexplored area to be mapped, and I must say the general interest is rather weak. And so the dominant atmosphere is indifference to God, and widespread albeit quiet neglect of the duty to relate things to God.
If ever there is some God-talk in a sports event, it’s because the winner was thankful for the victory, giving the impression that God was only for the victor and not for the loser. Of course, many people don’t like that, and rightly so.
Same in political exercises. References to God are sometimes shamelessly used to bolster a politician’s credentials, as if he is the only one anointed by God to win. And if he does win, the situation can be a lot worse in that a greater distortion of the truth can happen.
God is always for everyone. He can be found everywhere and in everything and in everyone. He is always relevant to any situation we might find ourselves in—whether we’re up or down, hitting it big or small, gaining or failing.
Much of the problem can be traced to ignorance of the doctrine of faith and morals which is already in an alarming scale. Even our so-called educated and cultured elite are a know-nothing when it comes to relating their activities to God.
Of course, the worse cause is the lack of consistency in the moral lives of people. Many may have a good theoretical knowledge of God but bringing it to practice is completely a different story. This is the more rampant situation.
We have to find a way to spread the truth about God and his relevance to any human affair and activity, not only in the remote sense but also in the immediate sense.
Of course, this has to be done without falling into fanaticism, fundamentalism, integralism and other isms that distort the proper relation between God and our sports and other human affairs.
We have to do all this with a certain naturalness that knows how blend the supernatural and the human elements, the spiritual and the material, the global and the local, the social and the personal. We have to know which can be said in public and which is better kept in private.
And for this, everyone can and should always play a part, taking advantage of any circumstance and situation he is in. The big-shots as well as the small fries can say something.
The Pope, the bishops and priests, of course, can say a lot of things. And the sports managers, players, referees, waterboys, the winners and losers, can also say something, or at least give some personal testimonies.
This is what we need these days—a certain acknowledgement of the role of God and religion in all our endeavors, respectful always of the nature and will of God and the nature and character of things, so that we don’t cause unnecessary division and conflicts.
And thus I was happy to learn that in the US very popular Super Bowl, a sports superstar by the name of Tim Tebow, whose parents used to be missionaries in the Philippines, came out to talk about the danger of abortion.
When he was still in his mother’s womb, a doctor advised the mother to have an abortion because of a certain sickness she was suffering at that time. The doctor was afraid the baby might turn out deformed.
But the mother did not follow the advice. The baby was born, healthy in fact, and the rest is history. Besides, many details of Tim’s life of faith are worth telling, since they are edifying. I’m sure there are also dark spots. But who doesn’t have any?
The important thing is to know how to relate things, good or bad, to God. We are all saints in the making. We have to be!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Sanity amid insanity
YOU know that it’s an election year when many people start behaving, thinking and arguing in a strange way. Tongues are loosened. Thoughts are given a holiday in promiscuity. Lies, detractions and calumnies are given licenses and franchises.
All of a sudden the media get glutted by spins and hypes, exags and simplisms, ‘praise releases’ spewing thick and fast from different camps together with a torrent of ‘ad hominem’ attacks and insults against other camps. We have to be ready for a lot of pollution.
The ways of persuasion and deception are mastered and unscrupulously used. Public relations outfits with sophisticated weaponry are hired. Truth and charity are the first victims. Objectivity is in life-support, while the monster of subjectivism is released from the cage, or is it from hell?
Words and ideas get inflated to bursting point, aimed at revving up both good and bad adrenaline, giving us a flash that blinds us more than enlightens us. We may need blinders and beta-blockers for protection. Noise and excitement are staged, more to rob us of our need for reflection and discernment.
Rash judgments explode everywhere. Opinions are made into dogmas. Theories become laws. Suspicions turn into facts. Possibilities are now certainties. An isolated case assumes a universal application.
Clear fallacies and non-sequiturs are given the feel of logic. First, raw impressions are hardened into convictions. Civility is now just a mask, nothing more than a word. Reason and will are taken over by dark passions driven by things like greed and lust.
Roles get reversed and confused. Many politicians suddenly start behaving like saints and flaunt it. Even their efforts at self-deprecation are calculated to give them more political points. Priests sometimes stray into the arena, like fish out of water, as they make some partisan commentaries or worse, run for office.
These days it is going to be hard to distinguish between politicians and clowns, senators and entertainers, officials and thieves. We can expect all kinds of combinations between saints and sinners, decent citizens and criminals. Some politicians even dare to play God, acting and speaking as if they know everything and are omnipotent.
It’s an insane world that all of us have to suffer. We cannot escape it, as of now. The general culture, the mindset, the attitudes are such that we cannot avoid the circus. And yet, we can be sure, that some good thing always can come out. What it is, how it is going to be—all this will be a mystery for now.
Thus, we just have to take it easy to retain a level of sanity. We can always choose just to be amused at all these calisthenics displayed before us in this election year. Let’s be game. We can talk, discuss, exchange opinions, but let’s not get too serious as to create unnecessary tension and enmity among ourselves.
We have to be open to all people of all stripes. We need to respect each other in spite of our differences. Let’s try to cut out the puffed-up rhetoric, the shrill assertions, the barbs and the verbal molotovs. They hardly serve any purpose. We have to be quick to understand others and to forgive.
What we need to do is to pray for everyone no matter how sharp our differences are. In fact, the sharper the conflicts, the more prayerful we ought to be. This is the only way to keep not only our sanity and our humanity, but also our Christianity.
No matter how right we feel we are in our views, we have no right to take a break from charity, not even in the slightest way. If we have to suffer because of this way of acting, so be it. That suffering will be only in the short-run, in the temporal order. We will gain a lot more in the long-run, in the eternal order.
As priest, I keep quiet when the discussion turns into partisan politics. I allow everyone to express his views to the full. Even if I think there are already those things mentioned above, I just keep quiet. If ever I have to open my mouth, it is to evangelize politics.
In this regard, I quote what Pope Benedict said recently:
“I confirm the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics working in politics, that they be coherent with the professed faith, that they have moral firmness, the capacity of educated judgment, professional competence and passion for service to the common good.¨
All of a sudden the media get glutted by spins and hypes, exags and simplisms, ‘praise releases’ spewing thick and fast from different camps together with a torrent of ‘ad hominem’ attacks and insults against other camps. We have to be ready for a lot of pollution.
The ways of persuasion and deception are mastered and unscrupulously used. Public relations outfits with sophisticated weaponry are hired. Truth and charity are the first victims. Objectivity is in life-support, while the monster of subjectivism is released from the cage, or is it from hell?
Words and ideas get inflated to bursting point, aimed at revving up both good and bad adrenaline, giving us a flash that blinds us more than enlightens us. We may need blinders and beta-blockers for protection. Noise and excitement are staged, more to rob us of our need for reflection and discernment.
Rash judgments explode everywhere. Opinions are made into dogmas. Theories become laws. Suspicions turn into facts. Possibilities are now certainties. An isolated case assumes a universal application.
Clear fallacies and non-sequiturs are given the feel of logic. First, raw impressions are hardened into convictions. Civility is now just a mask, nothing more than a word. Reason and will are taken over by dark passions driven by things like greed and lust.
Roles get reversed and confused. Many politicians suddenly start behaving like saints and flaunt it. Even their efforts at self-deprecation are calculated to give them more political points. Priests sometimes stray into the arena, like fish out of water, as they make some partisan commentaries or worse, run for office.
These days it is going to be hard to distinguish between politicians and clowns, senators and entertainers, officials and thieves. We can expect all kinds of combinations between saints and sinners, decent citizens and criminals. Some politicians even dare to play God, acting and speaking as if they know everything and are omnipotent.
It’s an insane world that all of us have to suffer. We cannot escape it, as of now. The general culture, the mindset, the attitudes are such that we cannot avoid the circus. And yet, we can be sure, that some good thing always can come out. What it is, how it is going to be—all this will be a mystery for now.
Thus, we just have to take it easy to retain a level of sanity. We can always choose just to be amused at all these calisthenics displayed before us in this election year. Let’s be game. We can talk, discuss, exchange opinions, but let’s not get too serious as to create unnecessary tension and enmity among ourselves.
We have to be open to all people of all stripes. We need to respect each other in spite of our differences. Let’s try to cut out the puffed-up rhetoric, the shrill assertions, the barbs and the verbal molotovs. They hardly serve any purpose. We have to be quick to understand others and to forgive.
What we need to do is to pray for everyone no matter how sharp our differences are. In fact, the sharper the conflicts, the more prayerful we ought to be. This is the only way to keep not only our sanity and our humanity, but also our Christianity.
No matter how right we feel we are in our views, we have no right to take a break from charity, not even in the slightest way. If we have to suffer because of this way of acting, so be it. That suffering will be only in the short-run, in the temporal order. We will gain a lot more in the long-run, in the eternal order.
As priest, I keep quiet when the discussion turns into partisan politics. I allow everyone to express his views to the full. Even if I think there are already those things mentioned above, I just keep quiet. If ever I have to open my mouth, it is to evangelize politics.
In this regard, I quote what Pope Benedict said recently:
“I confirm the necessity and urgency of the evangelical formation and pastoral accompaniment of a new generation of Catholics working in politics, that they be coherent with the professed faith, that they have moral firmness, the capacity of educated judgment, professional competence and passion for service to the common good.¨
Monday, February 8, 2010
Bringing our fugitive justice home
POPE Benedict’s message for Lent is already out. It’s entitled, “The justice of God has been manifested through faith in Jesus Christ.”
My dear friends, it’s worth the read, and the corresponding reflection. Hopefully it can provoke deep changes in us. I think it’s really meant for that purpose. The process may be long and painful, but, heck, we truly need it.
For long, our concept and practice of justice has been like the prodigal son. It got its rich inheritance from its father, left him to be on its own, enjoyed a period of profligacy, and now is in serious trouble. It has to come home. We have to bring it home, to God, its source and end.
Our human justice is actually a kind of fugitive justice. It has flown the nest. So far it is surviving by dint of a series of disguises and masks that skillfully blend the true and the false, the good and the evil. But it is alienating itself from its nature. It cannot remain that way forever.
It, for example, has made practicality as its end-all, often deriving its strength from what is culturally prevalent or currently popular. It can never manage to render universal, lasting justice, and lends itself easily to favor the strong, the majority, the better endowed, the better placed and the plainly lucky.
It’s a justice that does not go all the way. It gets stuck somewhere, often in a dead-end, sweetening the situation with all sorts of human flavorings. But the human heart will always ask for more and sooner or later will find a way to get what it really yearns.
The main virtue of Pope Benedict’s message is that it has dared to remind us of this very basic, religious character of justice. Such grounding is often taken for granted by us nowadays to the extent that we make our own selves, and not God anymore, as the source and object of justice.
Our legal system, for example, is getting to be more and more enmeshed in what is called as legal positivism, an ideology that precisely sees law merely as a human invention. Faith and religion have no place in it at all, thus confining itself into a purely man-made world.
This ideology detaches law from morality and is responsible for the legalization of divorce and abortion, for example.
I’m happy to note that the Pope is bringing this crucial aspect of justice to public attention, letting it step out from strictly ecclesiastical or academic circles to impact on the real world of men in our actual, not theoretical, situations.
In that message, he makes a scholarly discussion of the true nature and foundation of justice that ought to be known by all in appropriate ways and dosages. Let’s hope more people in their varying capabilities will help to translate this truth into more concrete terms, providing the practical linkages.
In so many words, the Pope explains that if justice is giving to another his due, then human justice cannot perfectly fulfill it since man in the end needs God more than just things, and God can only be given by God himself through us.
Justice, by definition, is first of all a gift which we try to live as faithfully as possible, always relying on our relation with God first before we make use of our human efforts. It knows how to pray and use spiritual means. It blends easily with mercy.
Yes, for ages we have made this consideration as too good to be true, very improbable, too quixotic to be feasible. It’s true that there are intangible and mysterious aspects that will always elude our human formulation of justice, but our justice system should respect them, not negate them.
This is the challenge that we have—how to cultivate a culture of human justice that is respectful always of its divine origin and purpose, while its feet, so to speak, are firmly rooted on the ground, on the here and now.
We just cannot allow ourselves to simply drift along the mindless inertia of the current understanding of justice, tone-deaf to its authentic meaning. We have to do something to correct the situation. It’s a formidable task, all right, but not impossible.
The little thing we do in this regard, often regarded as insignificant, will always have cosmic effects. For this, in the end, is the system that works for and in us, whether we like or not, whether we are aware of it or not.
My dear friends, it’s worth the read, and the corresponding reflection. Hopefully it can provoke deep changes in us. I think it’s really meant for that purpose. The process may be long and painful, but, heck, we truly need it.
For long, our concept and practice of justice has been like the prodigal son. It got its rich inheritance from its father, left him to be on its own, enjoyed a period of profligacy, and now is in serious trouble. It has to come home. We have to bring it home, to God, its source and end.
Our human justice is actually a kind of fugitive justice. It has flown the nest. So far it is surviving by dint of a series of disguises and masks that skillfully blend the true and the false, the good and the evil. But it is alienating itself from its nature. It cannot remain that way forever.
It, for example, has made practicality as its end-all, often deriving its strength from what is culturally prevalent or currently popular. It can never manage to render universal, lasting justice, and lends itself easily to favor the strong, the majority, the better endowed, the better placed and the plainly lucky.
It’s a justice that does not go all the way. It gets stuck somewhere, often in a dead-end, sweetening the situation with all sorts of human flavorings. But the human heart will always ask for more and sooner or later will find a way to get what it really yearns.
The main virtue of Pope Benedict’s message is that it has dared to remind us of this very basic, religious character of justice. Such grounding is often taken for granted by us nowadays to the extent that we make our own selves, and not God anymore, as the source and object of justice.
Our legal system, for example, is getting to be more and more enmeshed in what is called as legal positivism, an ideology that precisely sees law merely as a human invention. Faith and religion have no place in it at all, thus confining itself into a purely man-made world.
This ideology detaches law from morality and is responsible for the legalization of divorce and abortion, for example.
I’m happy to note that the Pope is bringing this crucial aspect of justice to public attention, letting it step out from strictly ecclesiastical or academic circles to impact on the real world of men in our actual, not theoretical, situations.
In that message, he makes a scholarly discussion of the true nature and foundation of justice that ought to be known by all in appropriate ways and dosages. Let’s hope more people in their varying capabilities will help to translate this truth into more concrete terms, providing the practical linkages.
In so many words, the Pope explains that if justice is giving to another his due, then human justice cannot perfectly fulfill it since man in the end needs God more than just things, and God can only be given by God himself through us.
Justice, by definition, is first of all a gift which we try to live as faithfully as possible, always relying on our relation with God first before we make use of our human efforts. It knows how to pray and use spiritual means. It blends easily with mercy.
Yes, for ages we have made this consideration as too good to be true, very improbable, too quixotic to be feasible. It’s true that there are intangible and mysterious aspects that will always elude our human formulation of justice, but our justice system should respect them, not negate them.
This is the challenge that we have—how to cultivate a culture of human justice that is respectful always of its divine origin and purpose, while its feet, so to speak, are firmly rooted on the ground, on the here and now.
We just cannot allow ourselves to simply drift along the mindless inertia of the current understanding of justice, tone-deaf to its authentic meaning. We have to do something to correct the situation. It’s a formidable task, all right, but not impossible.
The little thing we do in this regard, often regarded as insignificant, will always have cosmic effects. For this, in the end, is the system that works for and in us, whether we like or not, whether we are aware of it or not.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)