Faith and Football
Who is the best player in NFL history. Clearly, it is Barry Sanders. Now I have been a Detroit Lion fan for the past 25 years so you may say I am biased. But I think I am being completely objective. No other star has had to cope with such weak teammates and coaches. He has done the most with the least and is simply the best ever. It is clear.
But there are people who argue this. Now if you hang out around Lion fans you won’t meet many of them but they do exist. Some Packer fans say Brett Farve is the best ever. They seem intelligent but are obviously biased. We shouldn’t think of them as evil although such feelings come quite easily. They are just blinded by their presuppositions. Still we can be confident that Barry Sanders is the best player ever. It is an objective truth. It is clear from the evidence. Why should we doubt it?
Now we have Lutheran, Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. They all have their own truth that seems clear and objective to them. Just like football fans they can see the bias in the arguments of others but they think their own arguments are pretty objective. Endless arguments don’t resolve anything. But there is a difference. Questions of faith are important. We need to get them right. We can be wrong about football and all we suffer is the indignity of being a Packer fan. Now that is pretty serious indignity but being wrong about faith can put our eternal soul at risk.
So we need to step back and admit at the very least that logic that seems crystal clear to us could be somehow mistaken. That is an act of humility. To admit that contradictory traditions imply a lack of clarity in the scriptures. That there is at least a question to be addressed that cannot be resolved by endless exegetical arguments. That there needs to be a certain charity required in speaking about our brothers in Christ. We tend to do just the opposite. We tend to live in denial of the problems and cover them up with bravado. By feigning great certainty we try and prevent ourselves from addressing the obvious question: What if I am wrong?
We like to wrap that question in guilt. Faith is about not asking that question, isn’t it? But faith and reason must work together. We must not be afraid of any question. The truth is God has answers. They can be mind blowing answers that involve crucifying our old self. But they are also beautiful and life giving. It is when we are afraid to ask that we end up with a truncated gospel. That is ultimately more dangerous to our faith than asking questions could ever be.
