How the NFL Helped me Love the Law and John Calvin

From Jeff Munroe

All is right with the world: the NFL has brought back their regular referees.  A week ago the hallowed halls of the institution I serve were aflame because of the injustice wreaked on the Green Bay Packers by the NFL’s replacement referees.  Now life has moved on. 

But what did we learn from it? 

I for one reflected on John Calvin and specifically Calvin’s third use of the law.  (Alas, I fear I may be the only one inspired to think about Calvin. I told the distinguished Calvin scholar Dr. I. John Hesselink that I was going to write about the NFL referee imbroglio and John Calvin and he looked at me like I’d suggested we fly to Mars for the weekend.)

You remember the three uses of the law, don’t you?  Use number one is to convict us of our sinfulness and need for salvation.  Number two is as a deterrent to those who have no regard for rectitude and justice.  In other words, contemplating the punishment may prevent someone from sin.  Third is as a guide to righteous living for those in whom the Spirit already reigns.

But for all three to work, you have to believe there is a judge.  You have to believe someone is watching. 

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Sunday Prayer: September 30

The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: "Now," and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer. . . .

From "Today" by William Stafford
Odd Angles of Heaven: Contemporary Poetry by People of Faith
edited by David Craig and Janet McCann
(Harold Shaw Publishers: 1994)

Dr. Dawn Boelkins is Assistant Professor for Biblical Languages at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. Ordained to the gospel ministry within the Reformed Church in America in 1987, she has ministered in local congregations. She also has taught biblical languages for over 15 years at Western Seminary to those who desire to be pastors themselves.  Most recently, Dr. Boelkins served the Second Reformed Church, Zeeland, Michigan, for seven years with her husband, the Rev. Dr. John Schmidt.

The Hobbit can Save us

From Jason Lief

Most nights my family goes through the same rituals -  the kids are herded up the stairs (which isn't easy... they always have some excuse for why they need to do this or that) they brush their teeth, put on their pj's, and climb into bed.  I've made it a habit since they were very little to read to them. Over the last few years we've made it through the first four Harry Potter books - stopping only because the story seemed to be getting a bit more dark. Lately, I've been reading The Hobbit to my eight year old son (the girls were not too interested) as a way to prepare for the upcoming movie, but also to prepare for a future reading of The Lord of the Rings.  We're about 100 pages in - Bilbo has escaped Goblin mountain by tricking Gollum, and is now stuck up in a tree with the other dwarves as the wolves gather around them.  My son loves the story - he looks forward to it every night and gets irritated when I quit.  When I told him that there are three more books after this one his eyes lit up.  "Can we read those too?" he asked, to which I nodded.  Then he asked, "Did your dad read them to you when you were little?"  I responded with a laugh.  He didn't... and it's humorous to think about him doing so.  My dad did, however, introduce me to other forms of fantasy and myth.  My first movie was Return of the Jedi.  He and my uncle bought me loads and loads of comic books - Spider Man, The Avengers, Batman, and Ghost Rider, just to name a few.  He would even let me stay up late on a Saturday night to watch Dr. Who.  I think I was one of the few eight year olds who knew what the Tardus was.

I noticed something the other night when I sat down by my son's bed and opened the draw.  There, next to The Hobbit, was his bible.  I paused - "Maybe I should be reading the bible with him," I thought to myself.  I thought for a minute then grabbed The Hobbit, found our place, and started reading. 

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Did it all go wrong with the Reformation?

From James Bratt

My academic meeting for the month took place at Valparaiso University in Indiana. The occasion was a roundtable discussion of Brad Gregory’s big and big-splash book, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press 2012). The volume is complex, highly learned, insightful, sometimes shrewd, often impassioned. It mourns the loss of comity on the current scene and our degeneration to a consumer culture. (We aspire to a goods society, Gregory observes, not a good one.) It honors our public commitment to genuine equality and human rights, and worries that our standards of public discourse cannot mount a rationally convincing case for them. Lots of good insights, in other words, then the kicker: by the book’s genealogical method of explanation, the Protestant Reformation started the process that has brought us to our pretty pass. That is, Gregory’s book evokes a critique of modern civilization well-practiced in pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

So it seems to me, so it has seemed to assorted reviewers, and so it was averred by other participants at the roundtable. But the author demurred. All eras and systems have fallen short of the glory of delivering on their promises, he repeated. And indeed, his Conclusion begins with the words that drew the most attention at our meeting: “Judged on their own terms and with respect to the objectives of their own leading protagonists, medieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity is failing, but each in different ways and with different consequences….” As if to underscore his own point of view, Gregory titles this chapter “Against Nostalgia.”

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Third-rate referees: an invitation to embrace our humanity?

From Theresa Latini

For the past three weeks, I’ve watched football games that have simply astounded me. The Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens broke out into more skirmishes and fistfights than I’ve ever witnessed in an NFL game. The honorable and widely respected coach of the New England Patriots, Bill Belichick, was fined $50,000 for grabbing a referee while chasing him down and yelling at him. Then there was Monday night’s unforgettable game. None of us who watched the game or the non-stop replays of the final play of the game will forget it any time soon. The blatant offensive pass interference, the ball in the hands of a Packer (Jennings) and a Seahawk (Tate) simultaneously (which looked to most of us like it was more in the hands of Jennings), and one official signaling “interception” while another running toward the scrum signaling “touchdown:” all this has made for an incredulous week in one’s of our nation’s most cherished pastimes.

In my house, the Monday night game elicited wide-eyed and slack-jawed expressions, leaps off the couch, and exclamations unfit for this blog. All rather mild compared to the national uproar that has followed. Even the President of the United States joined in on the commentary. Consequently, those third-rate refs (and I don’t mean that pejoratively) will be heading back to what they’ve been trained to do, and the NFL refs will be returning to the game starting tonight.

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