Y’all know, or should, that I’m not exactly what you’d call a believer, even within my own Jewish tradition, and that I am certainly no kind of Christian.
But I came across a column from a sports writer turned newly minted pastor (via that noted evangelist, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King) who has some true truths to impart.
My favorite among David White’s sports/divinity debunkings? This one:
When thou tear an ACL, don’t say it’s because God lets everything happen for a reason. There is a reason. A 320-pound defensive tackle landed on the back of your knee.
Preach it!
__
Open thread time. Have at it.
Image: Bernardo Strozzi (maybe), Portrait of a Fat Man, 17th c.
Son of Prog
It also sounds (and feels) like a wet rubber-band snapping inside of your knee. But if the G-man wants to help reduce some of this scar tissue, I’ll get back to praying instead of rehabbing.
Alexandra
My (Trump-related) laugh of the morning.
priscianus jr
That’s an efficient cause, not a reason (final cause). The first answers the question “what happened?” the second, “why did it happen”?
Egypt Steve
Newt’s IN! What more proof of the existence of God do you need?
slag
@Son of Prog: FWIW, your experience serves as a cautionary tale. Wishing you a very speedy recovery!
Tom Levenson
@priscianus jr: Well, yeah. But I think the pastor was making the point that a final cause could be identified through human agency, with no need to disturb the deity on the matter. He’s a football writer, facrissakes.
RossInDetroit
@Egypt Steve:
Fire up the popcorn popper. It’s gonna be quite a show!
Jude
Why in the hell are you reading Roger Goodell buttboy and general owner water-carrier Peter King? There’s one reason and one reason only to read that tub of shit’s column: Mockery.
The folks at Kissing Suzy Kolber (usually Drew Magary) do it right.
trollhattan
I know what I want for father’s day: my own sub.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015001894_narcosub09m.html
Cocaine optional. I also note the revolving ad that appeared when I read this article was for boat insurance.
Zagloba
@priscianus jr: If you’re going to be a Scholastic pedant, at least be right. Efficient causes are supposed to answer the question “What was the mechanism of this happening”, while final causes answer “what was the purpose of this happening”.
Of course, the presumption in all of this is the false premise that everything happens for a purpose. The whole point of this guy’s quote is to remind narcissists like most professional athletes that just because shit happens, doesn’t mean we need to blame/praise God’s infinite wisdom for shit happening.
Yutsano
Ya know, Peter King oscillates from flaming douchebag to piles of win sometimes in the space of the same paragraph. It must be some kind of strange talent that has some evolutionary usage somewhere.
Also: if you make an appointment with your doctor for Friday the 13th and the receptionist laughs, is that a bad sign?
Tom Levenson
@Yutsano: He has consistently weird tastes in coffee, and truly untrustworthy ones in beer, that’s for sure.
KG
@Zagloba: but… but… if it wasn’t for God’s infinite wisdom and love, how would I have won the championship? I mean, it couldn’t have anything to do with months of training, hours of film study, and executing a game plan as well as possible (and then getting a few lucky breaks along the way)… I mean, that has to be God…
Just once, just once, I want to hear an athlete get in front of a mic and say, “motherfuckers, this was all me, I worked harder than the rest of these fools and that’s why I won, because I’m better than them.”
Just Some Fuckhead
I think a more appropriate picture would have been this one.
KG
@Yutsano: only if your doctor’s name is Jason Voorhees
quaint irene
My least favorite bromide, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
Oh, yeah, Newt’s in again? But what’s all this ‘will make an announcement on Thursday.” Are we all to wait breathlessly for his Twitter feed? Just say it already.
Yutsano
@KG:
You just made Terrell Owens cry. Not that it takes much.
Mnemosyne
@Son of Prog:
I don’t remember there being a particular sound when I wrecked mine, but I did it falling off a stepladder, so that noise may have masked it. Fortunately, I did it at work, so worker’s comp insurance covered everything.
My orthopedic surgeon did show me the MRI and say, “You see that little ball of mush right there? That used to be your ACL.”
fhtagn
@priscianus jr:
The efficient cause answers the question “How did X happen”.
Martin
BTW, I’m totally enjoying the Lakers self-immolation. Not as sweet as a Yankees sink into irrelevance, but enjoyable all the same.
fhtagn
@Egypt Steve:
Lock up your blonde interns with glassy eyes and fixed smiles! The Newtinator rides forth!
Zagloba
@quaint irene
I defy you to find someone who disagrees with that from personal experience. Mostly because any counterexamples are dead.
slag
@Yutsano:
And Malcolm Gladwell also too.
You don’t need to have a god in order to have a system.
You Don't Say
Is that a portrait of Charles Laughton?
cyntax
Wow. Bad news cycling fans, looks like we’ve had a fatality in the Giro d’Italia.
Wouter Weylandt from team Leopard-Trek (?) died in a downhill crash.
trollhattan
@Martin:
Damn straight! Few sports organizations conjure forth more hatred in me than the Lakers. Buh-bye.
I don’t believe Phil’s really, truly retired, but he’ll take at least a year off. I wonder who Kobe will pick for his next coach?
MikeJ
@efgoldman: Yes, please.
I propose the Mariners replace it with Seattle Ain’t Bullshittin’.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
I thought that was Neil Diamond’s time slot? Or am I confoozed, as usual?
Andrew Abshier
@efgoldman: it could be worse. It could be “God Bless the USA.”
Son of Prog
@Mnemosyne:
I think my surgeon was a little too gleeful when he showed me my MRI. I fell off a ladder a month later at work and debated pretending it had happened then, but I blew mine playing rugby. While I was laying on the ground I could see this guy sprinting toward me from the next field over. “Good,” I thought, “here comes the trainer.” The guy gets down on the ground next to me and says “bro I heard that all the way over there!” Not the most reassuring thing to hear.
scav
@KG:
It’d certainly be right up there with the dejected guy holding his helmet saying “God just hates us with reason and loves the other team more: what else can I say?”
Yutsano
@MikeJ: I propose that as Justin Smoak’s entrance song as an alternative.
MikeJ
@trollhattan:
Only in Boston, or when the Red Sox play in Seattle and I try to get the locals to sing it. I got a couple of dozen to do the “da dah dah daaaah” once, but they’re usually more reticent.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Jude:
i am all for mocking the hell out of peter king, or “mush” as he is less than affectionately known.however he does have one thing that is important, access. the nfl has a distribution system in effect for the media. they use sources such as him, schefter, mortenson, even less likely to be accurate lights like lacanfora, et al, to distribute information, so the beats never show up at a presser to get shocked by an announcement.
sadly, that is something the drew magarys of the world don’t have, and by their own credoes don’t want. they do a good job of destilling the news, but don’t report it.
i can’t vouch for peter mush’s taste in beer, either way, but his taste in coffee seems limited to, YAY! starbucks! he is an embarassment to his self glossed coffeenerdom.
handy
@Martin:
When did this happen?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@scav:
well there is ray lewis, who reliably claims that when his team loses, especially to pittsburgh, that the refs or somebody “cheat the game”.
apparently, the game’s interests are only served when he wins.
catclub
@efgoldman: Interesting that you are still overlooking Dallas. Although you post was not categorical. Dallas was really good. I think they can bea Memphis or OKC.
I will be amazed if Atlanta even gets past Chicago. I do remember that Boston could not beat Atlanta in Atlanta – but Atlanta had no wins in Boston either.
Memphis-Chicago would definitely have Stein crying.
Memphis-Atlanta would have him in a strait jacket.
If you listen to the Atlanta game call, the refs will make sure that does not happen.
scav
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Well, he’s sort of a counter-example, isn’t he? But I can see that the Repub(lication) electioneering playbook has certainly spread, although I won’t hypothesize the direction of movement (aka plagiarism).
RobertB
I have a copy of _Inside The Helmet_ sitting around here, that was pretty good for its day. Then again, I might have been a moron back then. But Jude @8 gets this one right – these days PK is every bit an idiot mouthpiece in his field as, say, David Brooks or Ross Douchehat are in theirs.
Bubblegum Tate
@Martin:
You and me both. Fuck the Lakers.
gogol's wife
@Alexandra:
That’s priceless.
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
No kidding! Veins will be opened across NBA Inc. if there’s no big market/high profile team left (is Dallas a “big market”?). I was a little surprised Stern delayed the Kings moving to OC, although I suspect that was a Buss-Sterling decision, ultimately.
There’s always the thrill of the lottery drawing!
Bill Murray
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Really I would not have guessed this came from King as there are no references to casual talks with Tom Brady or Brett Favre or Bill Belicheck. It’s nt really a King column without some name-dropping
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Bill Murray:
which would only be somewhat annoying, if there wasn’t the opposite side of it, if guys don’t talk to him, somewhere between on and off record, he takes notes and distributes retribution in his column.
what he does is more modelled on a classic gossip column, than anything typical of sports-journo.
@scav:
it really is scary how often you can see the same techniques employed by the nfl, players, media, as you do the pols, village, lobbyists,and think tankers.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Zagloba:
This.
Because, as everyone knows, while Zeus may be aware of the fates of individuals, it’s the Moirae who determine what those fates will be.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@catclub:
Shades of the ’75 finals, when the Golden State Warriors win over the Washington Bullets prompted the nation to ask, “What’s an NBA, and why should I care?”
Malron aka eclecticbrotha
Yet another example of atheists/agnostic’s perpetual need to feel intellectually superior to the rest of us.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Malron aka eclecticbrotha:
Right. As if their haven’t been millions of debates in the Christian community concerning free will. Stop it.
Keith G
Tom, thanks for the David White link. It was a fun read.
quaker in a basement
That’s pretty much how I picture Ignatius J. Reilly.
canuckistani
@efgoldman:
Best thing about the Toronto Blue Jays – major league baseball without God Bless America.
(Worst thing.. they kinda suck nowadays)
Ted
How’d that guy Strozzi manage to do a painting of Jonah Goldberg in the 17th century?
Tom Levenson
@Ted: FTW!
Darkrose
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Actually, it reminds me of the 2010 World Series. All the pundits were jonesing for a Yankees-Phillies matchup. Instead, they got the Rangers-Giants. HA!
priscianus jr
@Zagloba:
low-tech cyclist
I was with David White until the part where he said:
No, let’s not. If Tony Dungy believes homosexuality is wrong (and ditto gay marriage, obviously), that’s his business. But there’s nothing in the Gospels that says he has to harness the power of the state to discriminate against gays and prevent them from getting married.
As White himself said:
Tony Dungy chooses to nail other people to one. That’s contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. End of story.