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.

Summer Film Series: The Adjustment Bureau

The preview for The Adjustment Bureau was a provacative one.  Or, it was a provacative preview if you are suspicious about the existence of "free will."  The trailer simply assumes that everyone believes in free will and that an organization (like, say, an Adjustment Bureau) that would try to curtail it would be the embodiment of evil.  After all, isn't our free will what makes us...well, us?

In the film, Matt Damon plays a congressman who accidentally sees "behind the curtain," and is made aware of a team of agents whose job it is to keep human beings "on plan."  A plan has been written by "The Chairman" and is unquestioned by his minions in fedoras.  Well, except by enlightened Anthony Mackie, who eventually helps Damon get the better of the whole Bureau and forces The Chairman to change his/her plan.

In the below scene, the always wonderful Terence Stamp responds to Damon's question about "free will:"

Now, don't get too bogged down in Stamp's historical games here.  I'm only really interested in his last sentence, because it strikes me as profoundly true.  "You don't have free will.  You have the illusion of free will."  In fact, just after this clip, Damon protests that he makes thousands of decisions every day, about clothes, coffee, etc.  Stamp suggests that he has free will in the unimportant things but lacks it in the vital things of life.  This sentiment is echoed by Martin Luther, who suggested that we have free will in "things below us" (e.g. what to eat for lunch, who to ask to the prom) but lack it in "things above us" (e.g. being in a right relationship with God).  The movie, though giving Stamp its best speech, comes down on the side of free will. the Bureau can only attempt to keep people "on plan."  They have some limited supernatural powers, but are ultimately hamstrung by the will of their charges.

Funnily enough, though, the most persuasive argument in the film is in an early scene, and it argues against the film's point, and even against Stamp's.  If Luther (and Stamp) said that we have free will in the things below us but not in the things above us, what are we to make of this?

Now, in the film, this scene is used to illustrate Matt Damon's decision not to be bound by market research anymore, i.e. to make use of his free will.  But aren't we all bound by the sort of forces he mentions in his speech?  We want to be perceived in a certain way, and so dress accordingly.  Even those among us (hippies, punks, goths, etc) who claim to be rebelling against "society's rules" find themselves constrained to think, act, and dress a certain way.  I submit that the evidence of our lives suggests that we don't even have free will in those things "below" us.  We imagine that our choices of clothing, coffee, and career are free.  But think about all the sources (parents, society, friends, goals, etc) of pressure that push us one way or another.  Suddenly, our "freedom" begins to reveal what it actually is: an illusion.

The final nail in The Adjustment Bureau's coffin is an ironic one.  It is his love for Emily Blunt that compels Damon to continue bucking the Bureau and attempting to make his own way.  The Bureau keeps trying to bump him back on plan, and the reason he's so resistant is that he wants to be with Blunt.  But he hasn't made a rational free will decision to desire Blunt!  No one does!  We call it "falling" in love for a reason!  It happens to us; it's not chosen by us.  And thank goodness it does.  As Terrence Stamp's speech illustrates, our track record of rational decision-making isn't great.  Perhaps the illusion of free will is preferable to the real thing after all.

Summer Film Series: Some Kind of Wonderful

John Hughes was the muse of the 80s high schooler. His writing credits include such giants of the genre as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In 1987, he finished his run of high school smash hits with Some Kind of Wonderful, the story of a guy (Eric Stoltz) who falls in love with a girl (Lea Thompson) who is completely out of his league. He recruits his best friend (Mary Stuart Masterson) to help him win Thompson's heart, never knowing the obvious truth: Masterson is desperately in love with him.

In true rom-com form, Thompson proves not the vision of perfection she seemed to be from afar, and Stoltz realizes that the girl he really wanted, Masterson, was right there all along. This is not a unique trope, but it might be the clearest distillation of the Christian life, both misguided and proper, that we could ever hope to find.

Christians begin their life (we'll say after conversion, for the sake of the comparison) desperately seeking to know more about God. We sing songs like "In the Secret," which include the lines:

I want to know you

I want to see your face

I want to know you more

I am reaching for the highest goal

That I might receive the prize

Pressing onward

Pushing every hindrance aside

Out of my way

'Cause I want to know you more

At first blush, there is nothing wrong with this goal. Theologian Gerhard Forde would, however, have referred to this as a "tightly woven theology of glory" (On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 6). Luther himself said that the quest to know God was folly, and that the only reason we seek to know God was to domesticate and control him. It is Jesus who we draft into service as our guide to "become more like God" or to "get to know Him more." I think Hughes agrees, but I don't think Hughes thinks it works. John Hughes is with Martin Luther and Gerhard Forde!

Eric Stoltz thinks that he can turn himself into someone that Leah Thompson will love. This is the Christian quest to "know God." To know him, to become like him, so that he will love us more. We call this quest innocuous things like "deepening our relationship" and the goal seems laudable. But it doesn't work. Lea Thompson is inscrutable. Hard to understand. Counterintuitive. Like God, she can't be "gotten to." It just doesn't work.

It is Mary Stuart Masterson, in the Christ role, who is there for us. Stoltz sees her as a means to an end...and yet, she is the end. She is the love of his life. We too often see Christ as a means to get us closer to God, but it is Christ who is there to pick us up when our quest for God ends as it must: in bitter defeat and failure.

John Hughes puts in our common language what Luther and Forde, and before them John the Evangelist (John 1:17-18), said in theological language: We cannot know God. To try is to waste our time, at best, and to struggle for independence from him, at worst. God, though, has made himself known, in God the Son, Jesus Christ. The one we try to use as a means to an end is, in fact, the end in himself. He is the Savior.

Michael Jordan is (Metaphorically) Killing His Sons

One of the lessons assigned in my church this past Sunday was a selection from Ephesians 4 and 5, wherein the writer implores the Ephesians to live a holy life, ultimately calling them to "be imitators of God" (Eph 5:1).  This is, no doubt, a heavy burden, laid crushingly bare by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: "Therefore you must be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). This is The Law, in its most capitalized form. It brings about the death of the one who tries to live up to it.

A similar thing is happening to Jeffrey and Marcus Jordan.

In his "The Fix" column for ESPN the Magazine, Chris Jones notes the pressure that Michael Jordan's sons live under:

Most of us probably last gave thought to Michael Jordan's kids during his sometimes vicious Hall of Fame induction speech back in 2009. Interrupting his blistering of former coaches, employers and teammates, Jordan turned to his three children (he also shares a daughter with his ex-wife, Juanita) and said: "You guys have a heavy burden. I wouldn't want to be you guys if I had to."

In his tactless way, Jordan couldn't have been more right about that burden, borne especially by his sons. We might have forgotten about them -- Jeffrey's now out of basketball, and Marcus is likely about to play his last meaningful season, even if he puts Omaha behind him -- but they have never been able to forget what they always will be. Our sons should be better than we are; as fathers, that should be all of our dreams -- that they will be taller, richer, healthier, happier. Jeffrey and Marcus Jordan have no chance of eclipsing their dad. It's their destiny to remain his satellites.

This "no chance" that Jones refers to for the Jordan heirs is the same "no chance" that we have at being passable "imitators of God." So, what recourse do Jeffrey and Marcus Jordan have? They've taken a shot at individuality (sort of) with Heir-Jordan.com, but that site, intended as a way to "leave their own legacy," at this point "contains nothing more than dead links." This sort of father/son pressure is certainly nothing new, and not really anything profound. What is at least a little bit profound is Jones' solution to the problem: Fathers need to leave their sons. He opens his column with these words:

There are no faultless fathers. Some are better than others, but it's just not a job that allows any of us to be perfect. It's too hard, too ever-changing. It requires too many different skills, from tenderness to absolute resolve. And even if there were such a thing as a perfect father, our children would still slip out of our careful reach, because that's the natural order of things: One day we won't be their fathers anymore. Even if by some miracle our lives go exactly as planned, one day we will leave them.

He closes with these:

It's not all bad for the junior Jordans, of course. Our children will probably never have their millions or their high-end legal representation. But at least we can give our kids all of us. And no matter what mistakes we've made, we still have the chance to give our own children, our own sons, something that even Michael Jordan could not give his: One day we won't be their fathers anymore. We will leave them.

God the Father must leave his children in order for them to be saved. In other words, allow God the Son's atonement (tenderness) to satisfy his justice (absolute resolve). As Jones says, this isn't an option for the Jordan children. It is something, though, thank God, that has already been afforded us.

Olympic Stars -- They're Just Like Us! (In That They Usually Lose)

It has been noted that there are 302 gold medals up for grabs at this year's London Olympic Games (or, as Bob Costas insists on calling them, The Games of the Thirtieth Olympiad), which might sound like a lot until you account for the 10,490 athletes bent on attaining them. What this means, of course, is that most competitors come away from the Olympics as losers. Now, before you stop me and say, "Hey, silver medals aren't too shabby, and certainly those who win them aren't losers!", I submit exhibit A: the glowering Russian gymnastics team. Nary a smile cracked their lips...until, that is, Gabby Douglas made a costly error on the uneven bars, clearing the way for Aliya Mustafina to win a gold medal. I don't begrudge the Russian gymnasts their desire for gold...I'd be the same way and would happily celebrate a competitor's mistake (it is a competition, after all), I only bring it up to note that second place, for many of these athletes, is still losing.

But still, the vast majority leave with no medals at all.

In a recent interview with SI.com, graphic artist Sarnath Banerjee was interviewed about an extensive art installation in and around Olympic venues in East London. The installations feature depictions of Olympic failure and self-doubt, and was funded by the Frieze Foundation. The highlights of the interview are actually the images of Banerjee's billboards:

(the caption here is: "In the company of winners")

("Sometimes, in the middle of a jump, Au Dolanbay wonders whether, 

perhaps, he might just have chosen the wrong sport.")

Consider this additional juxtaposition: Though interested in, and identifying with, the losers, Banerjee admits that, like the rest of us, when he watches the Olypmics, he'll be "focused on winners." This is so typical of us humans: we identify profoundly with losers (we are them!) but we want desperately to identify with winners (we could be them!). It takes an honest man to admit that though he's fascinated by losing (and is an athletic loser himself), he'll be focused on the winners at these Games.

Banerjee is able to bring to vivid portrayal the self-doubt and fear that all of us face, whether we engage in competitive athletics or not. Winning is fleeting...just ask Bruce Jenner. Losing, though, is a thing to be lived with, felt, and sublimated. After all, it's not until we admit that we're losers that we can reach out for help.

The Low-Hanging Fruit of the ESPN "Body" Issue

Around these parts, sometimes we have to go looking for law/gospel illustrations in the nooks and crannies of the popular world. Sometimes, though, they come and browbeat us. Such is the case with the annual ESPN "Body" issue, on newsstands now. A "celebration of the athletic form," the Body Issue is supposed to be, I think, an equal-opportunity (and more obviously sports-oriented) answer to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Oh, and there aren't any swimsuits. Birthday suits only, in this one.

Interestingly (perhaps) is the fact that it's not really the athletes bodies themselves that are the law to me. I hope that our female readers are as able to dismiss Kate Upton's proportions as I am to dismiss Rob Gronkowski's. The Body Issue, though, is even a level more nefarious than the Swimsuit Edition, in my opinion. In its desire to do more than simply objectify its models, the issue focuses on what it takes to "create and maintain" those bodies. At first blush, this is a nice touch, clarifying the fact that while God's gift certainly contributes to a glorious physique, it takes a lot of work to maintain the gift. But then, as you digest the articles surrounding the photos, a new law (ht Derek Webb) emerges.

While I don't beat myself up (too much) about not having the body of Gronkowski or Jose Bautista, I feel really badly about not even having the remotest desire to work as hard as they do...or at all. Indeed, if my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (and again, I'm content for my temple to be St. Olaf the Slightly Bloated rather than St. Adonis the Sculpted), then my temple has cobwebs in the corners, a crumbling foundation, and Brazil-style trash blowing around it.  It is, you might say, um...neglected.

Physical attractiveness is one of the most universally-felt laws in the world. We all too often feel inferior (and therefore judged) for our looks. ESPN has taken it one step further and made us feel judged for our efforts, too. The Good News is that we are as justified in the face of our failure of effort as we are for the insufficiency of the end result.