England FC
England FC
If as the Bible says, money is the root of all evil, shouldn't footballers for England sacrifice their Bentleys at 200k a go, and live a simple life as Christians, close to the bread line?
What? We say in our RSA Billtong moment. Does the Bible actually say that? That is our question to the young middle aged Questioner. England Footballers work very hard in fact for their few pennies, compared to the Jobbers that manage the national monies in the city of London, and some of them like Sterling and others have to endure lots and lots of racism directed at them before, during, and after their football games. They naturally feel that they do deserve some few perks and goods and services for their sufferings and pains in the ordinary course of performing their duty for their noble country. Gareth Southgate has done a great job - turning a fresh young team into a world-class team - especially after a 5-0 victory over Andorra. Bentley sports coupes are nice looking cars, but much depends on what a customer has for spare cash of a surplus nature - 200k might be peanuts to a footballer since he is earning that much in one calendar day, especially if he is lucky enough to be called Jack. Since many footballers are on 250k a day, then they will want to spend their surplus cash on a Bentley sports coupe maybe. In this column we try not to judge and we try not to impose outmoded conceptions of the christian faith on footballers - what do we mean? The concept of this or that car is entirely relative. If they were Jobbers in the city of London they would be out there test-driving Lamborghinis. But responding more directly to the first affirmation and the authority cited by the Anonymous QAnon writer, it is important to note that St Paul did not say such a thing at all. Money is not the root of all evil - that is a popular but false misquote of the original. The original says not that any inanimate object can be the root of all evil of a moral nature, since we as Christians know what the root of evil is on the planet, but rather, the actual quote from the gentile apostle says - The LOVE of money is the root of all evil, a subtle but huge distinction. Money then is a neutral quantum - neither unduly positive nor unduly negative, so it can be used in many ways, and sometimes it can be used for great good in society - where would charities be like ours without the money of the people?
The majority of money in British society is used wisely and positively to buy food and clothes for the kids in the family, and this is also true of footballers. Bentley sports coupes can be bought out of their surpluses but this is not a sufficient grounds for judging them unduly, given all the pressures of the beautiful game. Nor is it sufficient grounds for imposing a vow of abject poverty on the christians in society just because they are christians - that much is defeatism before a secular society - and besides such misconceptions are based on an old puritan idea of the reversals of life, driving out the colour and drama and gaiety of medieval life and trying to replace all that joy with the black and white ruffs of the German puritans. Before Luther everybody had a choice in this matter, every individual was free to choose whether he or she wished to live the christian life freely and more intensely, in the spirit of religious martyrdom in the new way, in the life of the convent, then he came along and emptied the convents but turned every parish into a black and white cloister. St Gilbert said that Luther turned the convents into a secular society and then turned secular society into a convent - he was mixed up. So this is not to happen among the conventional normative christians of the mainstream seam of Christianity. Christians are bespeakers of God's joy in the world - he loves the world and most of the humans in it, even the rogues and rampant bon viveurs that old puritan concepts like to paint into a corner. We might recall the words of Jesus - "In the world you will have trouble, but fear not, for I have overcome the world." For Jesus the mission to planet earth was a mission of imparting God the Father's joy to a seriously depressed prison planet - no wonder he asked the young cardinale Ratzinger to entitle his greatest book, a pretiosissimum opusculum, Ministers of Your Joy. Christianity is not about puritanism for the same reason it is not about Jansenism. Both of these are errors and we cannot allow them to dominate our moderne thinking in moderne ways. Besides they would strike at the heart of boyworld and girlworld in the new order of things, for whom football is a joy to behold, it is a beautiful game, and it is a quick way to the top of their chosen careers.