Given the normal matters about which I tend to blog, it would seem odd for me to write a post about whether an NFL football player deserves to get into the Hall of Fame.
Perhaps not?
Part of the "Raving" I have done on this blog over the past couple of years, is to point out the complete lack of logical consistency among those who oppose Christianity (and also those who simply oppose common sense). The Eli Manning post serves the same underlying purpose.
I don't truly care if Eli Manning gets into the Football Hall of Fame or not. I don't know him personally, so I can't say if he really cares. Here's the rub, though. Reasonable, rational thinkers ought to see that Eli as a Hall of Fame quarterback is a no-brainer. But I can tell you right now that, despite the prodigious numbers he already has and will have by the time he finishes (barring injury), there will be many questioning his credentials because he doesn't have the kind of emotional appeal necessary to gin up support for a Hall of Fame run.
Thus, our problem. As a society, we simply don't care to talk on a logical, rational level anymore. We're much more excited by hashtag blahblahblah than we are about thinking through problems and analyzing them with any alacrity.
The recent upheaval at the University of Missouri and other colleges proves the point. Students at numerous universities have made clear they are not the least bit interested in examining reality from varying points of view - no, they have made clear they are much more concerned about whether anyone is hurting their feelings. According to several news stories, there were actually certain college student groups announcing they were angry at the media for turning its attention to the recent Paris bombings rather than maintaining its focus on them. Self-absorption hardly qualifies as a rational means of discourse about societal problems. This kind of raw emotionalism, in which MY feelings matter more than any other issue fails the rationality smell test.
This, however, is where we are as a society. Feelings mean everything. Think about the recent gay marriage decisions by the Supreme Court. Whatever you think about gay marriage, Justice Kennedy's persistent focus on the notion of animus against gays as a rationale for allowing gay marriage strikes me as a bit, well, emotional. Making a ruling based on a rational understanding of the law I get. Ruling that people should receive certain treatment under the law because some other folks don't like them, smacks of fourth grade playground nonsense. Yet such is the currency of our social discourse these days. When you offer any opinion that even smacks of logic or analysis, you are branded a "hater" and, if you are well-known, get a hashtag campaign mounted against you! (I had to ask my teenage son a while back what all this hashtag nonsense meant - I still don't completely understand it).
We think emotionally all too often because we then feel justified in claiming offense (many Christians rush to get offended as well - the recent Starbucks "red cup" flap proves the point). When we "feel" offended we get all smug and self-righteous, as if we're somehow not guilty of ever, ever, ever offending anyone or doing anything that could be considered inflammatory or (OH MY) . . . wrong. Yet, of course, we pretty much manage to do wrong to others every day. For instance, my wife is such an amazing gal because she puts up with me despite my massive flaws!! Her emotions, no doubt say he's awful, but her mind says I love him and I promised to bear with him through all the ups and downs of being married because we made a covenant before the God of the universe to do so. So despite being offended by me sometimes, she actually thinks about it and stays (I have one or two good points, as well, I suppose!).
Yet, ironically, it is Christianity, not secular humanism, that faces up to the reality of our flaws and our misguided-ness. It is Christianity that acknowledges "there is not one who is good, no, not one." It is Christianity that offers, despite our penchant for being petulantly pedantic, an answer that doesn't require we avoid offense. You see Jesus accepted the greatest offense in human history - the perfect God-man, of his own free will, accepted death on a cross in exchange for everlasting life to those who would repent and believe the good news that the Messiah had come. He didn't deserve that shameful and horrific death but he didn't whine and complain about how offended he was.
So we can go on being offended basing decisions on our emotions and we'll keep getting what we're seeing regularly across university campuses. Or, we can begin to behave rationally and recognize that offense is part of the human DNA and anyone who thinks it will ever go away (until Christ returns) is, ironically, out of their mind.
Just like I'm out of my mind to think Eli Manning will be in the Hall of Fame?
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