Remember P.E. class? Remember the sweaty uniforms that were worn and re-worn for weeks before any of them saw the depths of a washing machine? The colors may vary, the locations may as well, but there is one thing that every single P.E. class across our great nation has in common: that unspoken hierarchy of athletic prowess that exercises absolute influence over the daily ritual of “picking teams.” I remember it probably all the more clearly as a consistent and proud member of the “picked last in gym class” club of which so many of us have been card carrying members at some point in our lives. In an age of equal opportunity and political correctness, no process defied the ideals of modern society with quite so much audacious flair as that of picking teams. The old adage that “everybody is somebody” was swiftly drained of truth when you found yourself under the scrutiny of the team captain. Social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest reigned in the place of equal opportunity and, if nowhere else in the world, here there was no shame in working your way systematically down the ladder of ability until every shred of dignity of those picked last was whittled away by the pitying gazes of those already selected.
There were some, however, who never suffered such injustice. They were the Hercules and Achilles of their own generation. Athletes with such boundless skill that, regardless of sport, they were the guaranteed saviors of their team. With these sinewy gods of bats and balls on your side, victory was certain, and glory for each team member assured. The coin tosses were never about who would pick first, oh no, they were an appeal to the fates for the temporary invocation of their heroics on behalf of your faction. They came in many shapes and many sizes but all were united by their ability to hit homeruns at every bat, score goals with their eyes closed, drag multiple would be tacklers into the endzone, and dodge balls while hog tied. They were your proverbial Ace-in-the-hole.
It was as much in the selection of those first picks as it was in the specific rules of the game that most contention was found. While every boy loves to watch the mighty ducks, glory road, and Rocky, the disillusioning reality of true athletics is a lesson learned early at the hands of middle school P.E. class. Just as much as it is true that victory with the best players on your team is assured, the converse is as well. We learn from a very early age the seeming importance of victory over others as well as the sting of failure that comes from not quite measuring up to the competition. And while we found ourselves then as well as now consoled by the famous platitudes of our elders that it “isn’t whether you win or lose, but now you play the game,” all of our actions speak of a different law…that second place is just the first loser.
Constrained to sports and games, and within reason, there isn’t necessarily too much wrong with this attitude. After all, games were created to give us a healthy venue for our shared competitive natures. Yet as with numerous other things, our tendency is to allow things to spread beyond their boundaries, and so find ourselves living in a culture where everything is a competition, everything can be failed or passed, and it all comes down to who you have on your team that determines your status as winner…or absolute failure.
I’m sure you’ve figured out where I’m going. Ah sports metaphors. But this problem moves beyond sports metaphors. With the gospel’s expressed purpose to unite all the world under the loving banner of God and his son, we, his church, are guilty of endlessly and creatively finding new ways to pick teams, and race to invoke God on their side, establishing them inarguably on the side of right. And it has fractured the body of Christ.
God saw this coming and addressed this problem thousands of years ago, around the time he was telling the wandering Hebrews not to kill each other, worship idols, not to spoil the Sabbath, envy their neighbors…etc. He slid one in there, towards the top that has come to mean something far too trivial to have earned at spot at number three: “Thou Shalt Not Take the Lord’s Name in Vain.” And while we’ve been dutifully worshipping only God, melting our idols into gold bricks for currency, making sure not to murder anyone, we’ve gone ahead and sworn off swearing. Fecal matter is a “bowel movement”, “poo”, or if we’re feeling really edgy and want to walk right up to the precipice…”crap”. An ass is a donkey, but it’d probably be better if we just said “donkey,” and OMG for the love of the man upstairs stop saying Oh my God!
If you were God and you wanted to say ten and only ten things to mankind, would the third thing on your mind be to remind everyone to talk pretty…and if you get all the way down then I guess don’t kill, cheat on your spouse, lie, or steal? I suspect there is more going on here. Which brings me back to the whole idea of invoking God for our side of an argument. This is kind of a sticky subject because of that ever present post-modern danger…relativism. What I am NOT saying is that there isn’t a “right” side. I’m saying that we are far too concerned with making sure that the side that we like is the side of right. We determine our views and then claim God to it instead of allowing our love for God and his work on earth to be the tie that binds us together in spite of our denominational, political, or social alliances. I’m afraid that our concern with being right (we picked the right religion, we live in the right country, we have the right laws) has overshadowed our concern with our fellow man. For too long the approach to our muslim brothers has been “God says we’re right and you’re wrong and he wants us to shoot at you until you understand.” For too long our approach to homosexuals has been “we’re living right and you’re living wrong and God wants us to prove it by denying you rights that others enjoy.”
Election years are the worst. Then we find people on the left and on the right of our political arena invoking God as a political entity. During the 2004 election sermons pervaded through the Bible belt that it was God’s will for us to support George W. Bush and the conservative agenda. Jesus Votes Republican stickers abounded on numbers of gas guzzling SUVs and sporty convertibles that defied reason. Dubya prayed in public and on TV invoking God to his cause and convincing thousands if not millions of well-meaning Christians to vote for him claiming they’d take a president who prays over one who doesn’t (regardless of his policies or platforms). The Bible had some characters who were notorious for public prayer and Jesus had something to say about them. It wasn’t “pray out in the open for all to see and you will be guaranteed to be a superb president," to be sure.
Its not that the left has done much better. For they are just as guilty of invoking God for their own gain. What I want is a church that is cognizant of the truth that God transcends our petty differences. A church that realizes God doesn’t fit into a two party system that inevitably pits a set of good and bad ideas against another set of good and bad ideas. Our job in election years, in fact our job all years, is not to win debates with clever use of logic and a well played “God card,” it is to be Jesus to our culture’s “women at the well” and shine the love of their father on to them. The conviction, the judgement, the vengeance for past sins, all have been claimed by God as his sole domain. Our charge is simple. The weekly benediction at my church goes like this: “Go be the hands and feet of Jesus.” Jesus himself put it like this: If you love me, feed my sheep. And hopefully, if all goes according to plan (and haven’t we learned that when God’s involved it does) then maybe one day we will learn that we are, at the end of the day, all on the same team anyway.
