COMMENTARY: Basketball, War and Prayers

c. 2003 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) INDIANAPOLIS _ While my mother naps in her hospital bed, I drift to the fourth-floor lounge to catch the college basketball match between powerhouse Louisville and giant-killer Butler. Having grown […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

INDIANAPOLIS _ While my mother naps in her hospital bed, I drift to the fourth-floor lounge to catch the college basketball match between powerhouse Louisville and giant-killer Butler.


Having grown up near the Butler campus, I am intrigued. I remember a Butler game 40 years ago when a 5-foot-10 high-jumper named Gerry “Muffin” Williams shut down a touted All-American from Bradley named Chet “The Jet” Walker. Took him to school.

It’s the same scenario today _ like a reincarnation of “Mighty Milan,” when tiny Milan High School vanquished haughty Muncie Central 32-30 for the 1954 Indiana state championship on a last-second shot by Bobby Plump (who later starred at Butler and played in the gym where the Milan-based film “Hoosiers” was filmed). Five short guys against five tall guys; five guys with heart going toe-to-toe against five guys with tattoos. Butler wins 79-71.

Basketball is proof that anything can happen. A 12th seed can knock off a fourth, small school can defeat large, an unknown can tame a star, and when teams are evenly matched, the outcome is never certain.

Teams often pray before games. Afterward, many a victor has thanked God for making it happen. Losers rarely give God credit for their defeat. I think we all know that God doesn’t play favorites in basketball or determine games’ outcome. We pray because we are excited and nervous.

Are there occasions when God does intervene? Does God determine the outcome of wars, for example? Does God hire one candidate over another? Does God heal this person’s illness but not that person’s?

Does God favor one faction calling on his Name as opposed to another? If Christians and Muslims are sending prayers to the one God of all creation, does God hear the Christian prayers but turn a deaf ear to the Muslim? Each side believes so, and each evangelizes as if its narrow gate were God’s only gate. But is that conviction anything more than excited zeal?

Quoting our sacred texts against their sacred texts strikes me as inadequate. We need to do the harder work of looking beyond our preferences, even when we label them “divine revelation.” Blaming God for our wars succeeds only in demonizing God. We need to ask what is God’s real stake in humanity’s conflicts?


When we search beyond self-affirmation, our sacred texts sound different. Take the feeding of the 5,000, for example. To the author of John, this was one of the “signs” that proved Jesus was Messiah.

But more happened than that. Jesus saw that people had misunderstood his miracle, and so he “withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” He criticized the people for coming to him because they “ate their fill of the loaves,” “food which perishes.” Like their ancestors, they sought that which satisfied their hunger, but didn’t accept that which God truly wanted to give them.

This isn’t to say that God doesn’t care. My point is that if God has no particular stake in Butler vs. Louisville, what is God’s stake? If God loves all of humanity and not just those who bear this or that standard, what is God’s stake? If God watches mayhem on the road to Baghdad and receives fervent prayers in all languages, what does God actually hear?

To many believers, it is religious treason to ask such questions. As far as they are concerned, God is their partisan, their patron, their champion, and no one else’s. They are right, and all others are wrong. End of story.

But if human history teaches anything, it should teach us that Butler vs. Louisville works in basketball, but viewing humanity’s travail as all-or-nothing, winner vs. loser, truth vs. untruth, us vs. them has done nothing but justify slaughter and pride. Holy wars are demonic, not sacred. Holy wars make us cruel and arrogant and draw us away from God, not toward God.

Religious triumphalism has done little of what Jesus actually did, which was to feed all of the hungry, to embrace all people, to push beyond conventional piety. Religious triumphalism has made us blind to what the Scriptures actually say _ and deaf to God’s weeping over all of humanity.


DEA END EHRICH

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