No, I’m not talking about the World Cup, tempting though it is to do so, especially after the US’s excellent start to the tournament. (As I write, England have not played a game yet, and so they proudly boast an undefeated record.) No, I’m talking about something that is not even a game, even though people treat it like it were.
The point of professional sport is to win. That’s all. Sure, we’d all rather see our team win an exciting and attractive contest than a boring one, but beauty is not the most important goal for the players or the fans. Entertainment is less important than beating the other team. I’d rather win ugly than lose pretty.
And if we can get away with bending the rules, conning the officials (the catcher quickly moving his mitt into the strike zone when he has just caught an obvious ball, hoping to convince the umpire it was a strike) then we don’t mind. As long as it’s our team that does it. Yes, we will do anything to win.
The other day I heard someone give a brilliant diagnosis of American life. “We no longer have political parties. We have teams.” she said. She was right. The point of political parties used to be policy. Parties were united around a small number of principles. The parties would then devise policies that stemmed from those principles. But, at some point, parties stopped being all about policy and concerned themselves only with winning. They stopped being parties and became teams. Their purpose ceased to be devising solutions to real-world problems, and became beating the other side. Today policies don’t matter much. The ‘teams’ can change them dramatically and quickly and no one minds, as long as it leads to beating the other team. Winning is all that matters.
I stewed on this terrible truth. But last week I read an essay by a former Alabama State Representative that shocked me by its old-fashioned brilliance. I won’t mention the author’s name because I know what will happen – some people will instantly disagree with them because they play on the evil team and some will approve of them because they play on the good team. I hope that by keeping this former elected politician’s identity hidden we can all read these words, let them touch us, and say ‘Amen’.
What they say sums up perfectly what a truly Christian attitude to politics should be...
“An intensely partisan mindset distorts whatever truth it begins with and magnifies the fears it produces. Those fears are then used by headstrong people with oversized egos, people who convince themselves and others that they are heroes in shining armor, sent to protect us from the villains on the other side. Meanwhile, the other side is doing the same thing in the opposite direction.
“For now, suffice it to say that politics is often an ugly game, one in which manipulation and intimidation are the tools most often used by the players. But that is not the only way to play. But it is not for the faint of heart. It requires a foundation of counterintuitive faith. Its true heroes are usually the ones who receive the least recognition: those who offer themselves as living sacrifices to something greater than ego, tribe or victory.
Something that loves harmony.
Something that calms chaos.
Something that binds together rather than tears apart.
Something that compels us to resist our prideful tendency to justify ourselves by blaming, shaming and stigmatizing others.
“True heroes in politics are few and far between, and they usually do not look heroic at all. They do not get many headlines. They do not waste their time blaming the other team while ignoring the failures of their own. They do not set fires. They extinguish them.
“Those who believe in this better way are the salt of the earth, sprinkled throughout our communities, doing what they can to change the taste of politics a little at a time.
But they are hard to find, especially if you are looking for a hero to come riding in on a white horse to satisfy your desire to destroy whatever bogeyman you fear most. Those grandstanding pseudo-heroes do not care about serving anyone but themselves.
We do not need hero-leaders. We need servant-leaders, modeled after the one who demonstrated true leadership by washing dirty feet. Unfortunately, many people who profess the Christian faith seem to accept that standard of leadership in theory, but not in practice.”
I could not have put it better myself. So I’m not even going to try.