The Jeremy Lin Problem - NYTimes.com

I am constantly amused when atheists, liberals, and socialists pretend to be experts in Christian theology, morality and ethics and try to triumphalistically "lord it" over the Christian community. The focus of this article is the accusation that Jeremy Lin is a hypocrite because sports are based on winning, victory, and overcoming adversity. As if losing is a virtue? Is is somehow un-Christian to be financially successful or to become a star of some kind? If so, I suppose all Christians should quit their jobs and become hermits on a pillar somewhere or bury ourselves in the earth so as to be in the earth but not "of the earth"?

The silliness of this editorial is just amazing. Christians are not supposed to do well at Harvard, be intellectuals, or kick the asses of pagans on the basketball court. Go figure!  (Psalm 144:1 ESV).

Maybe Mr. David Brooks should learn a bit about the Reformed/Calvinist confessions of faith and their understand of Scripture before he pretends to know the internal values, doctrines, morality and ethics of that theological tradition?

For example the Bible clearly does teach that Christians can win battles and be successful. The story of David, the shepherd boy who defeats a grown man and a giant with a rock and a slingshot, is a classic underdog story. (1 Samuel 17:26). Not only did David defeat Goliath but he went on to become the king of Israel and become a wealthy man. Although David did fall into various traps and many sins because of his success, the Scriptures tell us that David was a man after God's own heart. (1 Kings 11:4). In short, David was elect before the foundation of the world while Saul was rejected and reprobate from the foundation of the world. (Romans 9:11-13; Ephesians 1:4,5; 1 Peter 2:8).

It might be that Brooks is reading into the Jewish Scriptures more than the Old Testament allows.  Maybe it is Brooks' liberalism and his anti-Christian biases that allows him to suggest that winning is somehow irreconcilable with Christian faith?  Maybe Brooks would like to apply that ethic to Israel?  If so, the Six Day War would have never happened and the Jewish nation would have never been.  If Israel followed Brooks' mistaken ethic perhaps they should simply lie down and let the Palestinians exterminate them?  Those are strong words I know.  But the point is that there is nothing wrong in and of itself with sports, competition or success.  That principle carries over to the principle of just war.

Oddly enough it seems that Jewish theologians are now borrowing from the Christian understanding of the adamic nature or sinful nature:

The odds are that Lin will never figure it out because the two moral universes are not reconcilable. Our best teacher on these matters is Joseph Soloveitchik, the great Jewish theologian. In his essays “The Lonely Man of Faith” and “Majesty and Humility” he argues that people have two natures. First, there is “Adam the First,” the part of us that creates, discovers, competes and is involved in building the world. Then, there is “Adam the Second,” the spiritual individual who is awed and humbled by the universe as a spectator and a worshipper. 

Soloveitchik plays off the text that humans are products of God’s breath and the dust of the earth, and these two natures have different moral qualities, which he calls the morality of majesty and the morality of humility. They exist in creative tension with each other and the religious person shuttles between them, feeling lonely and slightly out of place in both experiences.

To read Brooks' article click here: The Jeremy Lin Problem - NYTimes.com