The Law and Death of Replacement Referees

The internet exploded yesterday. At least, the sports corner of it did. For those not in the know, the NFL has been operating this season with replacement referees, having locked out the unionized regular refs in a contract dispute. The replacements have performed, depending on whom you ask, anywhere from "predictably shaky" to "seismically catastrophic."  Monday Night's performance, though, was one for the ages.  Calls were missed or made incorrectly all game long, but the coup de grace was a time-expired Hail Mary pass that seemed, in replay, to be awarded to the wrong team, completely altering the outcome of the game. For the first time, it seemed inarguable that the replacement refs had cost a team a game.

The narrative after the game has only gotten more strident: these replacement refs are doing a job that they're not qualified to do.  Most of them are lower-division college or semi-pro refs; one of them even has the Lingerie Football League on his resume.  They're simply incapable of doing the job (controlling and administering the rules for the best, meanest, and most out-of-control athletes on the planet) that they've been given. Don't you feel for them?

St. Paul says that "sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death" (Romans 7:11).  When Moses came down the mountain with those commandments, and then Jesus clarified and sharpened them in the Sermon on the Mount, we were given a job that we're not qualified to do, a task that is beyond us. We look as hopeless in our trying as the replacement refs looked on Monday night. But, as Paul also says, "I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law" (Romans 7:7).  We wouldn't know how hard it is to referee an NFL game if the replacement refs hadn't failed so spectacularly. We wouldn't know how far from the righteousness of God we are if the commandments hadn't been brought down from the mountaintop to show us.

Failure, though, is the only thing that leads to an openness to salvation.  As NFL fans cry out (caution, naughty words) for the salvation of the real refs, they might as well be quoting Paul: "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24) It is to a dying man that a savior comes.  Jesus promises to be that savior for his creation (Paul rejoices, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!")...we can only hope that the real refs come back before He does.

Aristotle is of Two Minds about Jay Cutler

In sports journalism, athletes are constantly being referred to as "embattled." Perhaps quarterbacks are given this label more than any other athlete. It's safe to say then, that embattled Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler is one of the more embattled people in the world. Sort of like how The Dude is the laziest man in Los Angeles county, which puts him near the front in the running for title of laziest, worldwide.  Cutler is a highly talented thrower with a knack for juxtaposing every breath-catching feat with a jaw-dropping interception. It doesn't help that his default facial expression is "I am sorely annoyed that I must be in your presence right now; I'd much rather be yelling at my pool cleaner. Oh, and I just ate something sour and am considering spitting it out."  It seems, though, that that's just the face God has given him.

A couple of years ago, Cutler had to leave the NFC Championship game with a strained ACL, and caught hell for it across the league, in real time, on Twitter. Last year, Cutler had the Bears playing really well, and on the road to the playoffs again, when he broke his thumb making a tackle, ending his season and the Bears' hopes. This season, he has played one great game, leading the Bears to 41 points in a week 1 defeat of the Indianapolis Colts, and one terrible one, throwing four interceptions during a week 2 drubbing at the hands of the Green Bay Packers.  Grantland's Bill Barnwell wrote this week about the Cutler phenomenon:

The problem is that we've somehow convinced ourselves that quarterbacks mill around at one level until they have a notably impressive game or season and establish a permanent new level of play, like they were characters in an RPG. That's nonsense, but we've spent the majority of Jay Cutler's career trying to pinpoint the moment in time when he took that big leap forward. We were sure Cutler had emerged as a franchise quarterback when he won that epic 39-38 game over the division rival Chargers in 2008. We were positive Cutler had taken the leap when he pushed a team whose most notable receiver was Devin Hester to an 11-win season and the NFC Championship Game in 2010. And we were definitely 100 percent onboard with the new Jay Cutler who led his team to a five-game winning streak last year just as he suffered a season-ending thumb injury. We keep telling ourselves that we've found the real Cutler, a guy who has eliminated his old faults and won't go back up the pipe to World 1-1.

The reality is that Cutler has followed up each of those big moments with disappointments, and we've used them as proof that Cutler's really a fraud and that those triumphs weren't actually meaningful after all. That shouldn't be a referendum on Cutler. It should be a referendum on us, the fans who are reading good and bad games as unassailable proof of Cutler's ultimate value as a player when they're really just peaks and valleys.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argued that you could tell what kind of a person someone was by evaluating their actions.  Does good things? Good man.  Does bad things? Bad man.  This is what Barnwell argues we do with Jay Cutler: throws touchdown? Good quarterback. Throws interception? Bad quarterback. Since Cutler does both of these things (though, as Barnwell notes, Cutler's "peaks and valleys tend to be more extreme...than they are for other players") we constantly flip back and forth between regarding him as a quarterback who has "finally figured it out" and one who won't ever "figure it out." We never attempt to get down to the root of the man because we are blinded by Aristotle (slightly more specific than being blinded by science itself). It is as hard for us to accept a person doing both good and bad things as it us for us to accept a quarterback who throws both touchdowns and interceptions...but of course this is the way things are. Quarterbacks (even Tom Brady and Peyton Manning...see Monday Night's game) throw both touchdowns and interceptions. People do both good and bad things. We must be considered more thoughtfully.

God tells Samuel that he "does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam 16:7), and unfortunately (as Jeremiah put it) "the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (17:9) Perhaps a more properly ethical way for us to judge our quarterbacks is to see them as incurable interception machines who are miraculously given to throwing touchdown passes from time to time. From that vantage point, Jay Cutler looks more blessed than most. Perhaps, then, with that kind of eye, we can even turn a more merciful glance to our own interception/touchdown rate.

Drowning Swimmer or Swimming Drowner? Human Nature in the YMCA Pool

This post will be an embarrassing one.

I've started swimming at the YMCA in an effort to keep in shape.  I think my choice of activities is partly due to residual Olympic-watching  excitement, and partly due to my longstanding hatred of running without a goal to score or basket to make.  Swimming, I'm also told, is among the best total-body workouts. So I hitched up the OP board shorts, grabbed a beach towel, ordered a pair of goggles from Amazon, and made my way to that chlorinated paradise. After 50 meters, I hauled myself out of the water, (practically) crawled into the bleachers, and dry-heaved until I could see straight.

You see, it turns out that there is a difference between the swimming you see in the Olympics, wherein Sun Yang looks mildly under-rested after the 1,500 meter freestyle, and the swimming at the Y, wherein drowning and death are real possibilities after comically short distances.  Knowing this difference didn't stop me from thinking myself exempt.

First of all, let me be clear: no matter what I write in the following paragraphs (during which I will no doubt succumb to the temptation to write in such a way that you'll think I'm a good swimmer), at no point have I yet swum more than 50 meters without stopping for a rest. Really, though, it's not that I'm a bad swimmer (see? There I go...), I'm just not in "swimming shape." My stroke is good, and I'm tall, so I cut through the water fairly well. It's just that my lungs and every muscle in my body scream in unison after seven or eight strokes. The result of this is that, for the first 25 meters (one length of my non-Olympic sized pool) after I rest, I feel like Michael Phelps.  For the second 25? I'm Homer Simpson finishing that package of expired ham.

This binary action in my swimming has shone a glaring light on my human nature: the fact that I am both sinner and saved, loved and human, justified and condemned.  As I swim up the pool after my rest, I literally find myself wondering if one of the swimmers in the other lanes will stop their own workout to tell me what a nice stroke I have, how powerful I look in the water, and have I ever considered swimming on the Y's adult team? I am not making this up...I had these thoughts this morning.  As I swim back toward the shallow end, in the second 25 meters, I catch glimpses of the lifeguard on the deck, and I worry that he's going to walk up to me during my rest and say something like, "Son, are you all right? You were flailing around a bit toward the end there...you might want to think about stopping." Then I rest, watching warily for the guard...and then the process repeats itself. 

I literally have those self-congratulatory thoughts every single time up the pool.  "I bet I look pretty good right now."  Even though I wondered, not three minutes earlier, whether I would meet the crew of the Andrea Gail as I drifted into Poseidon's oblivion.  This is what Luther called simul justus et peccator. We are two things at once: justified and a sinner. I am, at once, perfectly content in my ability to uphold the law: "I bet I look pretty good right now," and totally in need of a savior: "George Clooney at your grizzled handsomest...reach out your hand and save me!"

As we come to grips with our dual natures, we might reach out for a savior more readily, accept another's righteousness more freely, and actually make it to the end of the pool.

Note: This morning (after having written this last night) I swam my first 100 meters without stopping. What's the record for gold medals in the Olympics again? Asking for a friend.

The Scaled Law of Oscar Pistorius

The inspirational story of Oscar Pistorius has taken an interesting turn. For years, it seemed that "inspirational" was a legal part of Pistorius' name, included as a required element of every sentence in which he was mentioned. Pistorius is a double-amputee sprinter who runs on carbon-fiber "blades" that replace the lower half of both of his legs. For the first time, last month, such a competitor was allowed to compete at the Olympic Games. This didn't occur with no fuss; there was at least some question about whether or not the blades gave Pistorius a competitive advantage over runners forced to use their own, God-given, legs.

Pistorius acquitted himself well at the games, but didn't make the final in his only individual event, the 400 meter dash.  He seemed to say all the right things during each of his (seemingly several hundred) interviews, always remarking that he "happy just to be" there, and honored and humbled by the attention he was getting. For Pistorius, it seemed that it wasn't about winning.

Now it is.

Every four years, a month after the Olympics, the Paralympics takes place in all the same stadia. To same extent that he was an inspirational story at the able-bodied Olympics, Pistorius has been a dominating force at the Parlympics, winning the 100, 200, and 400 at the Beijing Games in 2008. The same was expected this time around, no doubt due to the fact that Pistorius had qualified (well, sort of) to compete against able-bodied athletes. On Sunday, Pistorius was beaten by Brazil's Alan Oliveira in the 200 meter dash, ending an almost unparalleled dominance. Check out this excerpt from the Associate Press story reposted on ESPN.com:

The "Blade Runner" had never been beaten over 200 meters until Brazilian sprinter Alan Oliveira came storming down the home straight to win by 0.07 seconds and dethrone the icon of the Paralympics.

Pistorius later accused Oliveira of bending the rules

Having won his own legal battle to compete wearing carbon-fiber blades alongside able-bodied rivals, Pistorius suggested that Oliveira ran with longer prosthetics than should be allowed.

Oliveira won in 21.45 seconds after overtaking Pistorius at the line at Olympic Stadium in front of a capacity 80,000-strong crowd.

"Not taking away from Alan's performance -- he's a great athlete -- but these guys are a lot taller and you can't compete (with the) stride length," Pistorius said in a broadcast interview. "You saw how far he came back. We aren't racing a fair race. I gave it my best. The IPC (International Paralympic Committee) have their regulations. The regulations (allow) that athletes can make themselves unbelievably high.

"We've tried to address the issue with them in the weeks up to this and it's just been falling on deaf ears."

For Pistorius, it is "ridiculous" that Oliveira could win after being eight meters adrift at the 100-meter mark.

"He's never run a 21-second race and I don't think he's a 21-second athlete," Pistorius said. "I've never lost a 200-meter race in my career."

Pistorius has since apologized for the timing of his comments, though not for their content.

I, for one, am glad that Oscar Pistorius has revealed himself to be a human being, rather than an humanoid "inspirational story." He's done what we all do: apply a scaled law to ourselves, and the full law to others.  A common human refrain is, "I'm not perfect, but..." It sounds awful put into words in the way that Pistorius did, but we all do it, all the time. Our struggle to self-justify finds its most habitual form (we know of course, that we cannot completely justify ourselves) in the desire to at least be better than one other person. This is the theological version of running from the bear: you only have to be faster than one of the other people trying to get away.

Until we can start seeing the law as applying fully in all cases, and doing so to us, we'll always find ways to exempt ourselves (after all, don't we deserve it?) and to thereby put a band-aid on the gaping wound of our human need.