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• Intangibles at heart of stellar Messiah College soccer program
• Reflecting on sports, holiness and Messiah College soccer
• Musing about relative truth, exclusive claims, Messiah soccer
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MESSIAH COLLEGE SOCCER has garnered media attention galore, which isn’t exactly a surprise.
The men’s and women’s soccer programs at Messiah have combined for 24 Final Fours and 15 national titles, so you’d expect their on-field success to be reported by media outlets near and far.
One such outlet is ESPN.com/espnW, as noted in my previous post:
Musing about relative truth, exclusive claims and Messiah College soccer
Yet coaches and players alike emphasize that off-field intangibles truly set the program apart.
In an excellent ESPN.com story on Messiah women’s soccer, forward Marisa Weaver (who is graduating this May) explained the program’s essential intangible:
“What makes our team so good and so together is that we love each other,” Weaver said. “But we wouldn’t be able to love each other just from ourselves. You get annoyed with people, you say things you shouldn’t have said and all that kind of thing. It’s just kind of impossible to love someone else unless you have the love of Christ in you. I think that’s what is different.”
There is ample room for reasonable disagreement on the exclusivity of such sentiment, but it bonds those who share it.
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In my previous post, I addressed one aspect of the reporter’s philosophical comment that followed Marisa’s quote — namely, exclusivity.
Now let’s examine the reporter’s reference to ample room for reasonable disagreement. He is referring, of course, to Marisa’s affirmation that it’s “impossible to love someone else unless you have the love of Christ in you.”
Her assertion stems from the belief that Jesus of Nazareth — i.e., Jesus Christ — was and is God incarnate, who in love created the universe and human beings, and who therefore is the source of true love. Presuming that reality, it is literally impossible to love others unless you have the love of Christ in you.
And here’s the irony: Supposing the Christian worldview is true, Christ is the source of love for all human beings — even those who don’t believe in Him. In other words, all the love we experience from family and friends ultimately comes from God, and this love from God enables us to love others. Whether we realize it or not, God’s love is the model for our love and the resource that makes all love possible.
Clearly, not everyone agrees with that assessment of love — since there are as many philosophies and faiths as there are booths at a flea market.
Perhaps an extended analogy will help shed light.
Let’s say an eccentric and wealthy uncle sets up a bank account with $100,000 for each of his nieces and nephews.
By the way, the nieces and nephews have never met this eccentric uncle. He resides on another continent for reasons that are mostly beyond his control, and he lives essentially off the grid — so no phone calls or FaceTime.
When necessary, he communicates with his siblings via snail mail and an occasional email sent from some out-of-the-way café, which prevents his precise whereabouts from being traced.
Upon turning 21, each niece and nephew is given access to the bank account. The wealthy uncle, for reasons only he fully knows, asks his siblings to keep his identity secret as long as they can — in fact, some of his nieces and nephews don’t know he exists until they turn 21 and receive the $100,000.
Now, let’s suppose this uncle is your uncle, and mine too. When we hit 21, we’re told we have this relative who we never knew existed who has bequeathed a sweet bank account to us.
You might wonder if the $100,000 actually came from this long-lost uncle you’ve never met.
I might question whether this uncle is fictitious. Maybe my parents fabricated an uncle. Perhaps, I muse, my parents are flush with cash (unbeknownst to me) and they don’t want me to think the money is from them because they’re concerned it might make them appear gratuitous.
But on family birthdays and holidays, all of these cousins withdraw funds from their bequeathed bank accounts, and give gifts and furnish meals — as a way of showing love.
Whether or not the nieces and nephews believe the uncle is real, he is the resource for their means of showing such love to their families and others, including strangers via food pantries and the like.
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Let’s return to the espnW reporter’s comment: In the phrase ample room for reasonable disagreement, I take him to mean that reasonable people disagree about the source of love and the meaning of life.
Yes, that sentiment resonates. Dissent and uncertainty seem to attend these big-picture issues. Yet in the face of this agree-to-disagree circumstance, it seems to me that one factor looms as the most essential: Which take on the meaning of life is accurate? In other words, which worldview is true?
An acquaintance once asked me where my son and daughter went to college, and I answered: “Messiah College.”
Apparently unfamiliar with this Christian college in Pennsylvania — a first-rate academic institution with two powerhouse soccer programs — his response was: “Are they trying to save the world?”
I sensed a quasi-mocking skepticism in the query. But a follow-up question begs to be asked: Does the world need to be saved?
I surmise that most reasonable people agree on the answer, though some might rephrase the question. For example, to some people the following might be more palatable: Is something wrong with the world? While there is plenty of good in this world, I submit that only the most deluded and out-of-touch people would say, “Nothing is wrong with the world as it is.”
Actually, a few belief systems assert just that, and claim the wrong we see in the world is merely an illusion. The devotees of such beliefs might say those who believe otherwise are deluded and out-of-touch. This brings us back to the quintessential query mentioned several paragraphs ago: Which worldview/philosophy/faith is true?
The answer to that question is the worldview worth buying into — no matter how mistaken or deluded it may seem.
If you could travel by time machine to 18th-century America and tell the colonists that someday a long oceangoing voyage wouldn’t be necessary to get to the New World because an apparatus called an airplane would be able to fly over the sea, they might have inquired about the amount of wine you had imbibed.
Of course, you would be right — your far-seeing worldview would be true.
What of traditional Christian claims such as the resurrection from the dead, the new creation and a heaven-or-hell endgame? Pie in the sky, or airplane in the sky?
Here’s another bedrock principle of the Christian paradigm: God gives people the freedom to love Him (or not) and to disagree with Him.
Which brings us back to … reasonable disagreement. Since human beings differ regarding these elemental questions and issues, consensus will be elusive. So how can we arrive at the truth?
More on that question (and potential answers) next time…
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P.S. Full disclosure: I’m a Messiah soccer parent — my daughter Kayla completed her Messiah career this past fall. And I was a copy editor at ESPN.com when the espnW feature appeared.
© Bruce William Deckert 2017
A Slow Life in the FAST Lane 