The Theology of Baseball, or Why Words Matter (to god) and Outfielders

When a fan topples to his death in a tragic accident at a baseball game, I can think of several things a player should not say after the game. I'm not trying to be irreverent or disrespectful here, so I'll skip the obvious (too soon) jokes. Nothing could be less funny than the six-year old son sitting in the stands watching his father plummet (20 feet, really?) to his death. He actually died en route to the hospital, but either way, the horror that kid must have been experiencing is awful. Bobby Ross, my former editor at the Oklahoman when I wrote a weekly faith and culture column for Mordor, does an excellent job of covering the MSM's response at Get Religion. Bobby closes his piece with the journalistic restraint that has always defined his writing:

In a perfect world, reporters would ask Hamilton to elaborate on what he means when he suggests that “God has a plan” in a situation such as this. Might even be a story there.

He's talking about Josh Hamilton's post-game interview. It was Hamilton who tossed the ball stands-ward in a move that precipitated Shannon Stone's unfortunate overreach. (I have no criticism for that move. Players and fans have been doing it since the game existed.) If you don't know, Hamilton is current Rangers outfielder badass and outspoken born-again Christian. (I'm avoiding the term evangelical until fundamentalists and evangelicals actually decide who owns it and what it means. Until then, I will revert to the born-again verbiage when describing fundangelicals.) After fans and players were made aware that Stone had died, Hamilton was rightly approached by the media. Full transcript is here, but the response I'm focusing on is this one:

I can't imagine what they're going through right now. I can't imagine. All I can think about is praying for them and knowing that God has a plan. You don't always know what that plan is when those things happen, but you will."

David Fitch will forgive me for assuming that the phrase "God has a plan," is yet another empty signifier. It's hard to be angry at Hamilton for what can only be described as a poor choice of words based on a stock phrase in fundangelical Christianity, one that is uttered often and seldom parsed. Still, resorting to trite clichés in the midst of tragedy is a mark of Christianity that needs to be corrected. Why? Well, here are some of the possible meanings of Hamilton's assertion. The order should not be construed as an indication of importance, truth value, or excessive lunacy.

• God wanted Stone to fall out of the stands and die while his son looked on. We can't know why, but we can trust that God had a very good reason for traumatizing a six-year old and killing his father, even though we can't know it.
• God has a plan, but it's too big to know and this may have nothing to do with it.
• God's plan wasn't for Stone to die, but shit happens.
• The devil fucked up God's plan.
• God's plan is subject to the freewill of humans.
• I don't really know what to say, so I'll say something that sounds spiritual and reassuring (which is actually ghastly).
• We will eventually know what the plan is when we reconstruct history later based on how things have developed. We will, of course, give God credit for all the good that came from it while ignoring all the other shit, and we will never consider the possibilities that: a) there is no god, or b) if there is a god, he surely doesn't plan on shit like this.
• We will know the plan later when we follow Stone through the gates of death, where god will apparently have a spreadsheet detailing all the algorithmic variables of his plan and how he fuckin' nailed it!

Okay, so some of that was snarkier than other parts, and the first one was listed because it's a hideous thing to say to a child, so fundangelicals who have lost the gift of critical thinking use this shorthand version of "God killed your dad." Lest you think I mean all fundangelicals, I don't. Some have learned to simply be present when tragedy strikes rather than offer up torturous explanations for why a clearly monstrous god—according to the ramifications of their theology—is fully good. May their tribe increase.

Clearly, the phrase is offered as some sort of comfort, but a very simple parsing, as above, shows that it means everything and nothing, and in the Zizekian world of empty signifiers, that epistemcially empty and contextually flexible characteristic is a dead giveaway. In fairness, it may not be devoid of epistemic content. Had the reporters followed Ross's advice and asked a simple follow-up question, we might actually know which of the above possibilities Hamilton meant. I suspect it's the first; it's almost always the first. Nothing more clearly reveals the shallowness of fundangelical thinking than embracing that first possibility. The ramifications are horrific, unless you simply mean for everyone to convert to some literalistic brand of Calvinism. If that's the case, possibility one is exactly what you mean.

The theological category here is redemption: to get something back or to bring something good from evil circumstance. It's the theology of Joseph when forgiving his brothers: You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. In the world of ancient Hebrews, YHWH was completely sovereign; the text indicates otherwise, but worldviews are worldviews and they're seldom deconstructed. A very simple exegesis of the text allows for the possibility that god can redeem any circumstance and use it for the good of humans and his glory. A darker exegesis insists that god orchestrates all these things for the purpose of glorifying himself and benefitting the few humans he's chosen to save. You decide which is the good god and which is the monster. All Hamilton had to say was, "This is a tragedy, and I can't explain it, but I believe God will ultimately bring something good out of all this." God still gets the focus Hamilton insists on giving Him, but he's relieved of the responsibility of killing a six-year old's father. It's your text; you decide how to read it.

Comments

[Leighton]

I posted something to this effect on Streak's blog too, but the part that bothers me more than the vapidity of "God has a plan" (Tywin Lannister has a plan too, but we don't praise him for it) is that the utterance doesn't seem to be directed at the grieving person. It would be one thing if Hamilton went to church with the kid and knew he would be reassured by that comment. But it reads more as "God has a plan, so I don't have to think too terribly hard about how this event challenges the simplistic way in which I see the world."

There is no perfect way to respond to a grieving person, but I do think "I'm sorry and I'm here" is a lot better than "Don't worry, your pain isn't challenging my faith."

[Arni Zachariassen]

I'm a bit perplexed why you chose the theological category of redemption. Why not providence? Obviously, they're quite closely related, but I'm pretty sure that whatever people think about when they say that God has a plan (I agree with you on the master signifier thing - people probably don't think about it much at all), it's closer to providence than redemption. Am I making sense?

Also, you should have listed the Wesleyan/open theist option of God not controlling the course of history, but actively working within it. But no bother.

Did you see this book, by the way? Touches on some of the subjects that Fitch is touching on, but from a sociological perspective. Looks pretty hot. http://peterennsonline.com/2011/07/11/have-evangelicals-made-the-bible-impossible-a-sociologist-says-yes/

[Greg Horton]

Arni, I tend to think in terms of redemption over against providence, because I think providence is a far slippier term. Until Calvinists and Arminians can agree what the word means, I tend to avoid it, as it is usually taken to mean that God is somehow in charge. In the particular case of a man falling to his death, it's nearly impossible to talk in terms of providence without somehow implying that god was at least partly responsible. Far better to speak about redemption for the family, as in the sense of ad hoc salvation, rather than how god was involved. As a non-theist, this is easy for me; I don't think it is for theists.

I used to be a proponent of Open Theism, but I decided it didn't solve the problems I thought it solved, and for every one it solved, it created another, such that one might just as well be Process as Open Theist. It strikes me as an attempt to keep the terminology of orthodoxy while redefining every inconvenient term.

I'll have to check out that book. I've always appreciated Christian Smith and Brazos. Nice to see them working together.