Federal law requires that everybody have an opinion on Richard Sherman the last couple of weeks. The Seattle Seahawks defensive back, at a moment you'd expect him to be shouting something like "WE'RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!" in one of those silly post-game interviews the NFL and its broadcast lackeys insist on foisting upon us, instead chose to go off on a rant about the San Francisco 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree, against whom he had been matched most of the game and against whom he had made a sterling defensive play to seal the victory. (I'm not even going to try to link to it; just Google the guy.) This struck many people as odd (and rightly, in my opinion) for a player in a team sport.
Of course, as Sherman's mouth continued to run for several days thereafter, opinion camps formed quickly. There was the rather quick assertion that Sherman was totally justified in any- and everything he said and further that any criticism of Sherman for anything whatsoever was inherently and unforgivably racist. There were strange slingings of the word "thug" against Sherman (that's silly; we know what a real NFL thug looks like). There were even stranger statements that Sherman couldn't be a thug because he went to Stanford. There was eventually a sort of apology from Sherman himself, once he figured out that by basking so much in his own personal glory he was kinda throwing his teammates under the bus.
I'll confess I tried not to pay too much attention to the fuss, though since I continued to check Facebook and Twitter on occasion that attempt was doomed to be futile. As noted above, January was a busy month, and I was trying to avoid too many distractions. However, one statement, which didn't necessarily draw as much attention as most others from Sherman, actually ticked me off a little bit, and even most of two weeks later I am compelled to voice my objection.
From his own fingertips, so to speak, Sherman put up this column in the days immediately after that NFC Championship game. Much of it is devoted to the roots of his animus against Michael Crabtree (for the rest of this entry I'll stipulate that Michael Crabtree is a two-bit jerk. I have no idea if it's true or not, but just to keep things simple I'll accept that so it doesn't become a distraction). But before too long Sherman makes a statement that I can't accept. Cut-and-pasted to insure that I'm not misinterpreting, here it is:
"To those who would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football field—don’t judge a person’s character by what they do between the lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his community, what he does for his family."
Not just no, hell no.
I refuse to accept the claim that an NFL player (or any athlete) is somehow to be excused for being an ass on the field because he does some nice things off it and doesn't beat his children. You and I don't get a pass for our deportment on the job. I don't care how hard it is, Sherman doesn't either in my book. If I behave like an ass on the job I get called out on it, if I'm lucky enough not to get fired. You do too, I'm guessing. So does the President. So does your pastor. So does your child's classroom teacher. Point is, the rest of us don't get to be obnoxious on the job and claim "adrenaline" and "the other guy was worse" as excuses. Athletes shouldn't get that privilege, and in most sports they don't. In most other sports a player who did that might run the risk of being ejected from the game if it were still in process, or at least enough of a fine to be embarrassing. That didn't happen to Sherman (he got fined, basically the change a pro athlete can find between the couch cushions), which more or less suggests the NFL had no real problem with his behavior. (To be really cynical, one might suggest that the NFL was happy to have reporters talking about anything other than CTE this week and was pleased to have Sherman provide the distraction.) For that matter, Sherman's phrasing suggests that he knows he was an ass, and thinks he should get away with it because he's a nicer guy off the field, which at the minimum suggests a staggering sense of privilege, one which I hardly imagine is unique to Sherman.
At minimum, it seems perfectly fair to raise the question of the value of any job that demands that one be an ass to do it effectively. If any job requires behavior that you have to make excuses for engaging in, is it really healthy to be employed in that job?
More to the point, a would-be follower of Christ can't emulate that behavior or seek that excuse, particularly if one lives in the framework of the Reformed tradition. John Calvin wouldn't hear of it.
One of Calvin's more remarkable departures from either the secular world or the Christian tradition before him was his elevation of the idea of labor or work to the level of "vocation." Most Western tradition assumed a definite hierarchy of work, with manual labor of any sort seen as low or beneath an individual of any stature. In Greek thought (so significant in shaping Western thought after) manual work was the province of slaves. Even most Christian traditions bought into this to some degree. One can still hear echoes of this attitude in modern conversation, particularly if one speaks of leaving behind a job to pursue some sort of "higher calling." (Augustine may have pushed back against this a little bit, but not in a way that had great impact, except perhaps on Calvin.)
Calvin would have none of that. To him, work was in its way a sacred thing, no matter what kind of work it was. No particular labor was to be disdained by the church, no matter how low the world considered it to be. For that matter, no particular work was necessarily to be the subject of undue veneration. The civil magistrate held an important role in society to Calvin, to be sure, but to respect the work of the civil magistrate did not give reason to belittle the work of sweeping streets or laboring in the field -- those were important and needed as well, and Calvin would even argue that the work done by those laborers was sanctioned or even ordained by God for the good of society.
John Calvin throws a flag on Richard Sherman
*Disclaimer: I'm sensitive to the importance of this; I am, if you read the bio alongside this blog, a person who gave up being a college professor to pursue this ministerial vocation. I don't ever want it said of me that I'm pursuing a "higher calling."
A vestige of this kind of thought can be found in the modern Presbyterian Book of Order, in a part known as the "Directory for Worship." I hear you: Directory for *Worship*? What does that have to do with work? Hang on to your hats, kids:
"God hallows daily life, and daily life provides opportunity for holy living. As Christians honor and serve God in daily life, they worship God. For Christians, work and worship cannot be separated." (Directory for Worship 5.6003; hat tip to Shelby Etheridge for the reminder)
Wow.
Let that roll around in your brain. Work and worship cannot be separated. What we do in our daily labors, whatever that labor may be, is intricately and inseparably knit up in the worship of God. What a staggering thought.
It provides a serious difficulty for the dividing of "work" from "having a life." It becomes a problem for the whole idea of waiting for the weekend to "live." It calls into question any kind of job in which being demeaned or scorned is "just part of the job," or which expects its laborers to be satisfied with poverty as its reward (Luke 10, particularly verse 7, suggests that the laborer ought to get paid; it doesn't seem hard to extrapolate that poverty wages for hard work is unacceptable). And it certainly calls into question any work that requires its laborers to demean others (or seems to do so; plenty of other football players manage to do their jobs and do them well without behaving like an ass).
I should hope it's obvious, but just in case: Richard Sherman has not set himself up as all that great a role model. I have no particular problem with his knowing he's good at his job and saying so (although the calculated nature of that interview is bothersome). False humility is pointless. But it isn't necessary to descend to the level of the two-bit jerk you've just conquered, and in fact it's only damaging to your case. But there's just no way to justify being an ass on the field for any reason. Feeling the need to do so only calls into question the very justification of your profession. To say that an NFL player (or any other athlete) has to be an abusive jerk in order to play well only calls into question whether a functional society should tolerate the NFL (or any other sport).
And right now the NFL has enough questions about its place in a functional society. It doesn't need any more.
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