The View From My Bicycle (COLUMN)

God Blessed the Bulls

So this weekend South Africans turned blue with cold, and celebration as the Afrikaans (and Christian-mostly) rugby team known as the Vodacom Blue Bulls pulled off a record breaking massacre against the Chiefs at Loftus. A preacher remarked this morning that the first thing the Chief's captain said was, "I'd like to thank my sponsors..." whereas Bulls captain Matfield and one-time IRB rugby player of the world Bryan Habana first thanked 'God.' So, did God play eeni meeni meini mo, which team is praying to me the most...? Hardly. If one teams prays to God and another doesn't, does God play favorites and have his team win? You could do an experiment and sorry to say, having God on your side doesn't assure of victory. But, it probably won't harm your chances.

Gasp! What did he say?

Victor Matfield, while crediting his beliefs and his team's beliefs for their win, also went on two make two other points.
1. He said the team were blessed to have had no injuries the previous two weeks.
2. He said the team that works the hardest wins.
By now a broader picture ought to be emerging. If you co-operate under united beliefs and motivations, this tends to inspire superlative performance. It's motivating. It gets you to work hard, it infuses your psychology with something more than positive thinking, and that's faith in one another, and that reflects back as faith in oneself.

There is also more to acknowledging God than the act itself and the religious hue that surrounds it. It means you are not arrogant. You're humble, you're aware what has to be done, and you're perceptive, listening to what 'God' says. God may be gut feel, and if you're on song, that gut feel is going to resonate with reality.

As far as I know, and I could be wrong, but other Super 14 sides also pray before and after matches. I'd hazard a guess that if the majority of players share the same beliefs, hang out at the same church on Sundays, they'll probably play better and with more cohesion than an Irish team composed of half Catholics and Protestants, say.

Over the weekend I found a book titled, How to read the Bible. It's an economical slim little paperpack that cost me less than R50. It's been a fascinating read so far. It suggests two ways of understanding the Bible (three if you want to get technical). Either it is the divine complete perfect word of God jotted down (or interpreted by man and thus slightly error-prone), and thus gets its inspiration explicitly (from a source outside of our experience). Or it is an entirely man-made construction, and has intrinsic value, in the way that any powerful story has (such as Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe or, say, the works of William Shakespeare.)

I take the latter view. The book, written by the Archbishop of Canterbury, goes on to say that Bible scholars were asked to verify texts in the synoptic scriptures
They were asked to color code phrases by Jesus that were very likely spoken by him, and then those unlikely to be spoken by Jesus. Red meant there was a strong possibility Jesus had been quoted accurately, pink meant a fair possibility, grey meant it was somewhat doubtful and black meant it was highly unlikely. When they were finished, the synoptic gospels were covered in red, pink and gray. Here's where it becomes interesting. They were then referred to the gospel of Saint John. Here page after page was overwhelmingly black. Why? Because this gospel was written much later, and is a more modern book of the bible.

Interestingly, today I was in church, and I was quite attentive to which books the preacher would refer to. It also occurred to me to suggest that preacher try to spend one month reflecting on what God has done without any reference to the Bible. If he is a living God, as much as a living person, he should have had a lot to say and there should be plenty of news. Why then is the bible so heavily referred to each and every Sunday?

Whether it was coincidence I don't know, but 90% of the sermon was based on John. And guess what? It is in John that Jesus apparently claims to be God. "Who is it you say that I am?" Jesus says, "I am," after the pharisees can't figure how Jesus cured a blind man with spit mixed with dirt. The pastor went on to say that only two men were accused of being God in their lifetimes. Buddha and Jesus. Buddha said, "I'm not God, don't worship me, but I'll point you towards enlightenment." Jesus said, "Worship me." Jesus said in John, the only way to salvation is through me.

As you can imagine, if Jesus was a political leader like, say, Nelson Mandela, it's unlikely he would have called himself God. People may have expected certain things from him at the time the Jews were being wiped out by the Romans. And what happens to revolutionaries in such times? What happened to Mandela? They are detained. They are tried. And if they're considered a big enough threat, they're killed. That's what happened to Jesus.

The Jews said, Jeepers, we thought this guy was going to save us, but he couldn't even save himself. The Christians said, wait a minute. He didn't die. He didn't come to just save us from these circumstances, he came to save our souls (of course, soul saving implies invisible action, changes in hearts, not necessarily lifting a finger to wage war etc). Here Judaism and Christianity split. The Jews are still waiting for their saviour. The Christians said, "He's this guy, Jesus," and produced the New testament to testify to this.

It is interesting to note that God was a sort've businessman back from work, taking a stroll through the garden of Eden in Genesis. He's around but you don't really see him. In Exodus God actually speaks. His finger carves words on rocks, he appears as a pillar of fire and a burning bush. The persona is not there but there is some suggestion of God. And here, interestingly, God did take sides. He called the Israelites 'my people' and was willing to pummel the Egyptians to restore their fortunes.

If you are not Jewish, it is laughable of course to think that God could have a chosen people. This suggests that they are precious and worth saving, and of course, the rest of us trailer trash are expendable heathen rats. And John encourages that idea of a club or tribe that gets special treatment. Christians say that all people can be Christians (Jews and Gentiles) but they have to follow a few rituals. It may include taking communion, getting married by a Christians preacher, being confirmed, baptised etc. That's little different from being born or otherwise belonging to a tribe. Now you simply sign on.

Going into the future I wonder whether the recession and the troubles we face will lure 1.1 billion atheists to join the 2 billion Christians. It's hard to say. Right now Christianity is losing converts at 32% per annum. Those with no religion are declining at12%, while atheists are growing at 2%. Islam is growing at 19%. I believe many people will be re-examining their beliefs during the coming trials and tribulations. I don't think human beings are smart enough to compute that it was our own ignorance that brought us where we are now (and not God's punishment).

Probably we will do better, unified and safe under some umbrella faith (whatever it is) to cope with a contracting, collapsing world. I hope we will learn our lessons - excess and materialism will probably be a big no no in the future. Many preacher's now say that God wants us to prosper. They don't really imagine how every human being could prosper, and what this might do to the environment (imagine every single person in the world owning a car - right now 700 million do, that still leaves a large majority without cars, over 6 billion.

So, I wonder. Whose side will you be on? The safe side? God's side? The side with the most numbers? The side with the best weapons? My view is that we are moving to a scenario where we will have to declare our position. Our views on economics, on God, on how we live and move. What I think will shake up any conventions that still exist, will be the momentous collapse of American society. In that vacuum we will have to come up with something new. Perhaps a new kind of socialism. Perhaps what comes next will have no name but be represented by one thing. Darkness. Disorder. Hands and faces may scramble to claim the high moral ground or the case for future prosperity. I have a feeling all these claims will be washed away by the winds of a world that has grown uneasy with so many of us gnawing at the Life Force. Finally what remains may be men who respect simply the primal moods of Nature - the surf, the storms, the sunrise, and crops able to deliver on the soils that hold them.