I recently finished a book written by Nate Jackson, a former
wide receiver for the Denver Broncos. The book was entitled “Getting Up Slow”. As
a lifetime Bronco fan and relative NFL enthusiast, I was hoping for an inside
look at the NFL culture, a behind-the-scenes perspective from a player whose
time did not see much of the glitter and glam of NFL stardom. The book did not
disappoint. Jackson allowed the reader to fully experience the mental and physical
anguish that haunts most of the players in the NFL. Much of the book surprised
me. Prior to reading it, I had no concept of how fundamentally the players’ egos
and exaggerated insecurities drove the whole mess. Suddenly I recognized that
the spending of exorbitant amounts of money, steroid use, infidelity, drug
abuse, homicides, suicides, and the corruption that surrounds and plagues the
NFL were not just random disconnected acts. Instead, they were the survival
tactics and self-loathing of souls operating within a broken system that treats
its players like cattle in a highly visible and highly profitable meat market.
Other portions of the book surprised me as well. Much of the
football culture Jackson described echoed attitudes I had heard from fundamentalist
religion or extreme patriotism. I was curious about the correlation. Coaches often
sound like dogmatic preachers, spewing repetitive clichés about the will and passion
and their inspiring way of trumping logic. In another breath, they’re like a
Nazi general, barking orders and demanding the conformity of all their players
to the common goal, the right behavior, and the proper way of thinking.
What is attractive about these sorts of dogmatic systems
when it comes to religion, country, or football? Is it a desire for authority
or direction in our lives? What is so tempting about operating within a black
and white, right or wrong framework with little space or respect given to areas
that are gray or unclear? Whatever the reason we submit to such systems, there
is no doubt they find success wherever they arise. Last I checked people are
still willingly to participate on teams with “my way or the highway” coaches,
“no drinking or you’re going to hell” churches, and “anyone in a turban is
evil” armies.
Perhaps it is just simpler to operate with a strictly
dichotomous world view. If we want to believe that we are not making decisions
from a state of random anarchy, we must also concede that we have accepted some
mode that determines which actions we will perform and which we will not. While
many people may not appreciate the use of loaded words such as “good” and “evil”,
it is clear that in order to make decisions, we must place things into
categories. Something is either true or untrue, information or noninformation,
pure or perverted, familiar or other. Someone is either in or out, a part of
your religious system or not, your team or the opposing one, saved or unsaved,
a part of the American way or not, from Boston or stupid. Everyone uses
dichotomous systems, but the content of the categories differs from person to
person. These narrow frameworks offer people a legitimate shot at being
consistent, all while brushing aside the potentially frightening realities of
mystery and the unknown.
Perhaps it is uncertainty that we fear most. In order to
comprehend our existence as humans, we put limitations on ourselves. As the saying
goes, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” In a world
we have thought to be all black and white, it would completely shock us to
discover purple. We are simply looking for the world to make sense, for our
finite brains to attempt to understand and locate ourselves in infinite space
and time.
Maybe all of life does come down to a right or wrong, a 1 or
0, a + or -, a yes or a no. But maybe we also haven’t discovered the boundaries
of the whole system yet. Imagine that the universe is an expansive ocean and
each of us has a glorious oceanfront view. There is a great chance that my view
does not encompass the entire scene, especially if I have not even witnessed it
from my neighbor’s porch. If we had the humility to view an alternate
perspective, perhaps we may notice that the line which we have drawn is not quite
where it should have been. While it is impossible and undesirable to approach
life without a perspective, it is also honest to recognize that our categories and
line drawing often do not adequately describe the expansiveness of everything
that exists.
I find it interesting when different life experiences have
challenged my line drawing. A good depiction of this came to me when watching
the movie Saints and Soldiers. It did more than baffle me when the WWII German
officer wasn’t portrayed as inherently evil; he was simply wearing a different
uniform. In another WWII movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, a German boy
realizes the Jewish boy wasn’t disgusting or untouchable as he had been made to
think but simply on the other side of the fence.
While functioning within a system of delineated good and
evil or truth and untruth may be easier and simpler than living with the unknown,
it can provide us with a false sense of security. We should seek to understand
alternate perspectives in order to gain a deeper understanding of what good and
evil or truth and untruth look like in reality. We should approach life like an
artist who encircles his bowl of fruit before painting an apple in two
dimensions. We must be wary of dogmatism that limits our understanding of the
world we live in.
In a book
deliberating on the spiritual pathway of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Mansfield
gives us similar advice. “The problem seems to be that we want conclusions
rather than processes, and we want conversions rather than religious journeys.
The search for Abraham Lincoln’s faith disappoints only if we begin that
journey assuming there will be a dramatic resolution, that at the same point in
the story Abraham Lincoln will kneel at an altar and satisfy us with a verifiable
spiritual experience. It does not happen.” He continues, “The silencing of Lincoln’s
faith by the secular and the exaggerating of Lincoln’s faith by the religious
have given us a less accurate and a less engaging Lincoln. We are poorer for
the distortions.”
It would be tough to say “in conclusion” or “to sum up” in
such a post, as I have just detailed why I believe we should be slower to
conclude and quicker to delight in the process of witnessing life in its
infinite dimensions. My fear is that this post would be taken as a treatise on
relative truth or an assertion that we have no ground to make any moral
judgments on any particular subject. This couldn’t be further from my intent.
My hope is simply to investigate the possibility that we have become too complacent
and self-assured in our perspectives. In viewing our black and white world
without a moment’s pause, we fail to consider that a rock which appears to be
black is simply resting in the shadows where we have not the perspective to see
that it is indeed white. Furthermore, I would like for us to consider our time
on this earth to be like studying a masterful magician's act. If only we had the
meekness and optimism to compare notes with other spectators who have witnessed
the performance from a different angle, we may yet uncover the mystery of the
reality which we’ve seen.
~Tim
