Theology

The Super Bowl is today. In case it's possible that you don't know who's playing, it's the undefeated New England Patriots versus wild-card team, the New York Giants. Almost every time there is a major sporting event my brother and I get into a polite argument. It's the same argument every time. My brother roots for the team with the better record, on the assumption that if they have the better record they must be the better team and thus deserve to win. I otoh almost always root for the underdog.

My brother does not understand this. "Don't you want the better team to win? Are you gonna hold their superiority against them?" I've thought about this a lot now. Certainly some of it is just emotional. I feel sorry for the underdog team. I feel empathy for them. But then again, I feel sorrow for the team with the better record when they lose; how much more disappointing it must be when you were expecting to win.  Is it that I only like losers? because suffering is redemptive?

But there is something more than just the emotional reaction. My brother assumes the team with the better record has a better record because they're better. I assume that the team with the better record has a better record because they're lucky. By that I don't just mean that plays have gone their way. I do understand that sometimes teams will have a greater number of superior players. But that to me is luck too.  It's "luck" to have a wealthier owner.  Or, if it isn't luck that causes one team to be able to afford a better roster, it's still not something inherent.  

Deep down, I do not believe that any team is superior to any other team.  Deep down, I think they're all the same (unless it's my home team in which case they're not the same).  So if one team has a disproportionate number of wins, I am rooting to even things out.  And I'm rooting for the story, the story that no matter how the odds may be stacked against you - the other side may have better resources, more people backing them - if you perform well, then you can do well.  That is what I want to believe.  

And that's what makes sports so wonderful and relevant.  Just as in the rest of life, in the end, it doesn't matter how much talent you have or what your previous record was. In any given game, even the Super Bowl, it all comes down to who can deliver when it matters.  Even an under-dog can win.

One of my pet peeves about what passes for "liberalism" these days is moral relativism. Don't get me wrong, I am a post-modernist through and through. I do believe that things must be judged in the context in which they are created and that people with different experiences can interpret the same thing differently and both be right.

But it does not follow from that that anything goes. Even if morality is contextual, there are still some things that are always wrong. For example, I can think of no context whatsoever where torturing a baby for the fun of it would be considered ok.

I understand to some extent the motivation for eschewing judgment. So many times in the past, moral judgment has motivated great harm. If we say something as stupid as "Christians good, Jews bad" then yes, it is the judgment itself that is the problem. But it doesn't follow that all judgment is to be avoided. The laissez-faire kind of "liberalism" is morally lazy imo. If we can't respond to the immorality of something like the holocaust, then what good are we? When someone else is killing people, "live and let live" is not an appropriate response. And really, that kind of liberalism is an option reserved only for the privileged, only for those who do not suffer.

Another common argument that I've heard is that there is no such thing as right and wrong, that it's all a human construct. Ironically, many of these folks point to eastern traditions such as Taoism and Buddhism to bolster their arguments. But it's based on a false understanding of these traditions, imo.

For example, some people point to the balance between Yin and Yang in Taoism - between light and dark, male and female, heaven and earth - and extrapolate from this that Taoism advocates for a balance between good and evil. But comparing good and evil to things like light and dark immediately begs the question, which is which? Is darkness evil? No. In Taoism, "evil" is not darkness, or Yin. Instead, evil arises from the imbalance between Yang and Yin. Taoism, like all the other great religions, seeks the balance - the good.

I've also heard people use the parable of the blind men and the elephant as an argument for relativism. They argue that the parable teaches us that there is no objective Truth, and therefore we can't judge. This is a distortion of one of my favorite parables. Indeed, the story says we can never know Truth/God's will with certainty. By perceiving Truth subjectively we distort it, but subjectively is the only way in which we can perceive it. Therefore the story cautions us to be circumspect in our judgments, but does not negate their validity.

What some people forget in this story is that there IS an elephant. Our limited sense may allow us to only experience a small part of it, but the elephant (Truth/God's will) still exists. The corollary to that is ALL of the interpretations of the elephant are valid. They are REAL experiences of the Divine. The mistake is to then try to impose one's own experience and subsequent interpretations on others as the only valid viewpoints.

There IS an elephant. We ARE capable of perceiving it, albeit in our limited ways. And we ARE capable of perceiving what is right and what is wrong, albeit in our limited ways. It would be far easier to give up due to the difficulty in navigating this terrain. But as moral agents who carry the divine spark in each of us, we have the capacity and obligation to respond to injustice.

I am feeling that shiver of excitement that I feel every time I discover a connection.

Over the last few weeks, a discussion group at church, has been reading "No god but God" by Reza Aslan. For those of you who still don't know about it, I can't possibly praise this book enough. It's a loving yet critical overview of the history of Islam, starting with an account of the religio-socio-political environment into which Mohammed was born, then the Prophet's life, then the four caliphs up until the Sunni/Shi'a split. The insights that Aslan presents are astounding, describing Islam as in the throes of a Reformation, with its future dependent on which side wins.

But that's not why I bring it up tonight. I'm excited because of the following passage in his description of Sufism.

During the first stages of the Way (where the majority of humanity find themselves), the nafs, which is the self, the ego, the psyche, the "I" - however one chooses to define the "sum of individualistic egoistic tendencies" - remains the sole reality. As the disciple moves along the Way he discovers the ruh, or Universal Spirit. The Quran refers to the ruh as the "breath of God" blown into Adam to give life to his body (15:29). In this sense, the ruh is equated with the divine, eternal, animating spirit that permeates creation - that is itself the essence creation. The ruh is Pure Being. It is that which Hindus call prana and Taoists call ch'i; it is the ethereal force underlying the universe that Christian mystics refer to when they speak of the Holy Spirit.

Not only are there the wonderful similarities to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism with reference to the Way, ch'i, prana, and the expansion of the understanding of self from individual self/soul/atman to Self/Soul/Atman/God. But there is ruh, in Hebrew Ruach. The breathe of God. The Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Life.