Church, religion, and a whipping Post
I’ve got a brief philosophical foray to spin out of a sports/religion story, so bear with me if you will. (Or you could just click away somewhere else — after all, it’s not like I’ll know.)
Washington Nationals OF Ryan Church has gotten into hot water following a remark quoted in a Washington Post story Sunday on the role of chaplains in Major League Baseball. Nats chaplain Jon Moeller (who himself has been suspended from his part-time duties) is quoted secondhand by Church as stating that non-Christians will go to hell, with Church expressing his shock that, according to Moeller, his Jewish ex-girlfriend would be heading south after death.
To get the theology out of the way: yes, Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that no man would go to the Father but by him (John 14:5-6). This can be read to support Moeller. I hesitate to make statements like Moeller’s, though, because we as sinners are not supposed to judge lest we also be judged (Matthew 7:1). Using the first citation to state conclusively that someone is going to hell reads as judgment of that someone to me. Yes, that’s a fine distinction; that’s why theologians have been in business for two thousand years. (And we haven’t even discussed where God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people plays into this.)
The uproar over the earthly segment of this defies a brief logical analysis, though. If you believe that your faith is true and correct, why does it matter what people of other faiths believe of your eternal destination, so long as they don’t interfere with you on Earth? If you’re right and they’re wrong, their condemnations are null and void. As a Christian and a Protestant, there are millions of people out there who think my beliefs mean that I’m going to fry, or freeze, or just plain end. I think they’re wrong. So long as neither side is a jerk about it, no harm done.
So everyone needs to settle down, not least Tony Kornheiser. The whole situation came about because Church’s ex-girlfriend is Jewish, so hysterical cries of anti-Semitism seem unfounded to me. At worst, Church is guilty of thinking out loud at work about a controversial subject, which we’ve all done. Because he’s a major leaguer, the consequences of this common mistake were a bit worse than for you or me: his (admittedly half-baked) efforts to process a thorny theological question wound up on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post. That’s not a standard I’d want to have to live up to.
22 September 2005 / 0 Comments / Tags: baseball, life, media