Early on Saturday morning, Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, then drove to the Chiefs facility, thanked his coach, Romeo Crennel, and general manager, Scott Pioli, before shooting himself. Belcher and Perkins leave behind an infant girl.
As many have said more eloquently than I ever could, this is an unspeakable tragedy. Belcher’s teammates have spent the weekend with microphones in their faces, trying to come up with something to say about a teammate that they, all of a sudden, fear they never knew.
There is no easy transition from the facts of the story to a discussion of anything else, which is why Bob Costas’ attempt to do so on Sunday night has made some people angry. At halftime of the Sunday Night Football game, Costas made the following comments about what he heard people saying in the wake of the tragedy:
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOi7If0zW9s&w=600]
For our purposes, the gun control issue will be set aside. However you feel about the issue of the availability of guns in our nation, it is Costas’ opening comments that seem to cut deepest.
“That sort of perspective has a very short shelf life, because we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please. Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.”
Like so many thoughtful people, Costas’ diagnosis is as on-target as his prescription is impotent. In fact, one might well argue that Costas isn’t even offering a prescription at all, simply relegating those without perspective to the trash-heap of lost causes. He is precisely correct that everyone will be saying the same thing after the next tragedy. I’m reminded of the Onion article “Nation Somehow Shocked by Human Nature Again.” There are, however, two truths that he’s missing.
First, no one has any perspective. We are all absolutely convinced that we are the center of the universe, that we are in control of our lives and and at least somewhat in control of the lives that come into our orbits, that good deeds reap good rewards, and that a host of other “truths” define our lives when they do not. Even in the most basic sense, sports fans tend to have no perspective. My attitude rises and falls with the performance of my teams, despite the fact that they play children’s games that needn’t affect my life in the slightest. One might wager on the fact that Costas himself has lost perspective a time or two, feeling that a sporting event meant something far more than one team ending the evening with more points, goals, or runs than the other.
Second, everyone needs profound events for recalibration. This is the genius of the church. Each week, we must be brought, again, into contact with a truth that we forget, week by week: Our righteousness is secured by the perfection of another, and this righteousness has been gifted to us with no expectation of recompense. The way in which we commonly view the world (that we are the center of things, and in control, and will get what we deserve) is so profoundly backward that it takes a profound event (a humbled diety, dying a criminal’s death) to recalibrate us.
As the days pass, and we forget, as we inevitably will, the ugly truth about the world and about ourselves, let us rest on the truth that profound events have happened (especially at Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter) that can recalibrate us, give us hope, and offer true perspective.
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5 responses to “Bob Costas and “Perspective””
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Excellent post, although “My attitude rises and falls with the performance of my teams, despite the fact that they play children’s games that needn’t affect my life in the slightest” That cuts a bit too close!
I do tend to sleep better if my team wins.
Even as a person who wishes there were much less guns available, I found it interesting that Costas believes that if Jovan Belcher “didn’t own a gun they would both be alive”. Obviously there are other ways to kill yourself or someone else without a gun. Even without premeditation. It seems to me that Costas is jumping to the temptation of blaming outside forces (guns in this case) instead of the inward issue (whatever it was) of Jovans mental state. From out of the heart, as Jesus said, comes evil thoughts murder etc. Matthew 15:19-20. The heart defiles, not the gun.
Why don’t people scream let’s ban cars after every car death?
A gun also has purpose and real use, even sitting idol on the shelf: deterence!
Great post, Nick. Yes, we all need profound events for recalibration! It seems Costas sort of wanted to overlook that somewhat nuanced point about human reality, to make his simpler and more abstract point about guns. And thanks, Alex, for the reference to Jesus’ teaching on the inward problem of the heart (rather than the gun itself). Right on!
Your other point was that ‘no one has any perspective’. I’m not trying to pick a fight here, because I agree with you in principle. I know it was meant as hyperbole, and I grant what you’re getting at: We are all self-centered at the core and have all kinds of priorities that we shouldn’t, at least, without God rearranging things. But this brings up an interesting discussion about perspective, and maybe theology in general. For instance, perhaps our worldview is not only shaped by selfish priorities but also by our experiences of (and belief in) a great many things that are good and right about this world – love, friendship, marriage, children, football games – which are, of course, profoundly meaningful and valuable at times. And that’s obviously one of the major reasons that people are shocked by tragedies such as this one.
In other words, part of the reason that people are shocked by tragedies is simply because they are shocking and tragic. They are a disruption from any number of things that we know to be good. So what I’m getting at regarding ‘perspective’ and ‘theology’ is this: I think we suggest too much if we suggest that our Christian theology, understood correctly, would hypothetically allow us to be less shocked by such events. That is to assume that what we think and expect of human nature is fundamentally and, even solely, tragic. But life and Scripture refute this notion at every turn. Life is, in countless ways, still good; that’s why tragedies can be felt rightly as tragic, even though we lack so much perspective.
Granted, things are clearly not as they should be, and we are not as we were meant to be. And as you have said, tragedies always seem to remind us of this fact (in a good way). But it seems to me we’ve got to look for a more nuanced approach to communicating and understanding this fact, as I think, the Bible does. Theology is so prone to artificial, polarized abstractions, probably because they are an easier means to making us think that we understand, and perhaps an easier means to refute others. But the reality (of depravity and goodness in the world or in the human heart, for instance) is usually much more complex than our descriptions of it tend to let on.
Anyway, again, this wasn’t meant to be an argument with you, Nick. Just seemed like a good context to think out loud about how we do theology. And, as I was writing those last few lines, Romans 3:10-18 came to mind: “No one understands…no one seeks God…no one does good, not even one.” Ha! That could certainly be used to argue against what I was just saying! But of course, Paul’s theology too is full of complexities.