“AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!!”
For whatever reason, I’ve always found it highly annoying when NFL players attribute either their own successes, or their team’s wins, to the divine. It’s annoying when any athletes do this, but for some reason it seems to happen more often with NFL players, and perhaps I find it especially annoying there because, despite my strong appreciation for the game, I despise such a greedy and corporatized organization wrapping itself in patriotism and piety—and players going along with it.
The obvious objection to the claim that “God was on our side” is that this implies God was against the other side, which seems somewhat at odds with both theology and the notion that skill and ability determine the outcome of the game (rather than divine favor). This never seems to occur to the players spouting off about how Jesus helped them win—which is part of why I was so delighted to see Bills receiver Steve Johnson, after dropping what would have been the game-winning touchdown pass, make the connection and tweet the following:
I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…
—Steve Johnson. “2:12 PM Nov 28th”. Twitter, 28 Nov 2010.
Sadly, Johnson later clarified that he wasn’t “blaming God” but only asking “why”—also a reasonable position, but of course if you believe in an omnipotent God, then that God is, inescapably, to blame for Johnson’s drop, either by causing it directly or choosing not to help Johnson out. Then again, perhaps Johnson’s suffering is simply necessary as part of God’s plan, because that plan relied on some poor schmuck not getting out of debt by betting on the Bills upsetting the Steelers… couldn’t an omnipotent God have that work out as desired and still save Johnson from making such a terrible play? And on and on that spiral could go; attempting to explain the will of such a deity is near-impossible regardless of whether one believes in that deity or not.
Is Johnson’s Twitter stream, or at least this section of it, the Book of Job recast for the modern age?