This is part three in a series of posts I’ve written about about my thoughts as a sports fan. Part one is here . Part two is here .
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A few months ago, back when fan attitude really started to consume my thoughts, I read an article by Adam Gopknik that struck me in an unexpected way given its topic. For reasons I’m about to explain, reading his words evoked emotions that were almost identical to the ones I was feeling in response to the local sports dialog. Gopknik is a staff writer for the New Yorker and I usually enjoy what he contributes. The piece I’m speaking of now is a soft criticism of the Gospels called What Did Jesus Do. He basically cites some contemporary books, ones that I suspect are read almost exclusively by scholars, and in doing so calls into question the authenticity of some prominent Christian events.
Personally, I think anyone questioning the authenticity of the Gospels is really missing the point. That’s sort of the message I wish to convey with this post. One particular passage in Gopknik’s piece really caught my attention, enough so that I wanted to mention it here:
"Belief remains a bounce, faith a leap. Still, the appetite for historical study of the New Testament remains a publishing constant and a popular craze. Book after book — this year, ten in one month alone — appears, seeking the Truth."
I do think it has become more difficult to justify a belief in something or someone and it’s primarily because of the existence of multiple groups of people questioning the authenticity of foundational details. There’s an incredible amount of information available to anyone interested and in any topic. This is overwhelmingly a good thing but one of the consequences as I see it is that people are becoming conditioned to ignore the essence — what you expect to gain from the involvement in something like a religion — and instead focus only on questions like, for instance, is it real or fake as it pertains to religious text. I think the correlation between authenticity or "Truth", as Gopknik puts it, and purpose is weak at best.
It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture if you spent too much time fixating on the small details. I’d like to widen the perspective even more by briefly considering both Christianity and the National Hockey League as basic entities. It’s sort of a vague concept and they’re dissimilar in countless ways but just work with me. They exist and so they fit the definition but more importantly they exist for a purpose. These two particular entities perform a specific function on their respective audiences. That function defines its purpose.
I think that when one is examining an entity, such as the two previously mentioned, there’s a limit to the usefulness of new information before it starts to undermine the purpose.
That statement requires clarification. When I reference information, I don’t mean statistics and widely accepted views like, for example, when someone says that the performance of Player-X regressed significantly in last year’s playoffs. I don’t really dispute any of that stuff so long as it’s supported. The information I speak of specifically now is that made in conclusion to that which is generally regarded as fact. So for instance if someone were to say something like Player-X regressed significantly in last year’s playoffs in comparison to his contribution in the regular season (fact) and next year the team would be better off without him (conclusion). The first part of the statement is fine; the second part is not. I see a ton of conclusion-based information for two reasons I think: (1) there’s an extraordinary amount of fact-based information available now and (2) the quantity of conclusion-based information the audience is being fed is so high that consumers feel comfortable contributing their own senseless opinions and these reactions are basically stoking the fire. I’m not sure if conclusion-based information is really appropriate in hockey discussions considering the subject matter is so random and unpredictable.
What’s the harm? Again, I think eventually if one consumes too much information it may start to cloud the purpose and take away from what’s central: the stuff we consume with our senses. In professional sports even the casual discussion is focused less on that which can be celebrated and more around an attempt to determine why a particular team is successful or unsuccessful.
Lets approach this differently. Ask yourself, what do you expect to take from the time you spend watching professional hockey? It all falls under the entertainment umbrella for me. It’s a different type of entertainment but the larger principles are the same as those that fit conventional entertainment sources like film, television, and music. If you sit down to watch a film, the appreciation you have once it’s finished is based on different indicators than that of a sports game or collection of games. You either like the film because of the emotions it caused you to feel or you dislike it because of it’s failure to evoke any emotion at all. The disappointment is rarely in the outcome in which the bad guys got away or won, as the case would be in hockey. With film, the source of the disappointment is in the story’s failure to move you; it fell short in important areas that typically make a film great. No one really goes beyond this in their reaction to film though except for film-makers. Everyone just says things like oh it was great or it totally sucked. You don’t need to learn about the process by which the film came to be made in order to enjoy it. Even if you watch a lot of films, you’re probably not referencing the director’s style when you’re talking it up at work the next day. But does that make the experience any greater or worse, all things equal? I say no. Is it any different if you were watching a television show or reading a novel? Again I say no; it’s the experience of entertainment that is the proper fit as correlation to purpose, not the authenticity of the details surrounding it’s genesis.
If you read this place, I can only assume you care deeply about hockey and sports in general and find a greater amount of satisfaction in the triumphs of your rooting interest than others who perhaps don’t have a rooting interest or do, but only casually follow. If you care about something it’s only natural to want to talk about it. The dialog is fun and I love engaging people in hockey discussions but not when the criticisms are such that they threaten to dilute future triumphs.
And that’s pretty much exactly the feeling I got when I read Gopnik’s piece. Why are people trying to examine the authenticity of certain passages in the Gospels when it’s so completely irrelevant as far as church patrons are concerned? If their participation gives them strength or courage or whatever, then who cares? Certainly not the individual in question when they’re experiencing the feelings that define it’s purpose. The validity of those feelings is the only authenticity that matters.
Opinions don’t have to be analytical to be interesting. This is not math. This is not science. It’s past time for voices to emerge willing to stop the trend of examining the particulars of sport and religion while ignoring purpose.