Theology of the Body and College Football

You may be asking yourself, "How the heck is he going to tie these two together?" Well stay tuned, young Padawan. This post should have a little something for everybody... hopefully.

I think it's (relatively) fair to say that the concept of truth in today's society has become incredulously clouded. It's hard to make out what is pure and good versus what is greedy and all about self fulfillment. I find these two sides are greatly personified in the contexts of Pope John Paul II's study of the Theology of the Body (which will henceforth be known as TOB), and College Football. Don't worry, I'll break down for you ladies and gents exactly what I mean here.

I'll start with college football, which is arguably the greatest sport in America. Now, I must preface that college football is not perfect; just look at Miami, USC, SMU, Baylor, that awful school over there in Austin with their gaudy TV network that no one watches, and others. Without the politics of conference realignment and suing because you don't want to get stuck in Conference-USA (Baylor), I would sum up the game itself in one word: pure. Pure in the sense that the word "team" still means something, and is still worth fighting for when you're backed up to your own endzone and need to make not one, not two, but THREE stops. There is more truth and purity in college football than the NFL, MLB and NBA combined. No one is worrying about multi-year, multi-million dollar deals, there are no lockouts. There is just pure, unadulterated joy in playing the game. It's about striving for perfection, however perfection doesn't mean there's a big fat zero in the losses column of your season record. Perfect is about "you, and your relationship to your family and your friends."  I'm going to let Coach Gaines explain the rest:

Now, for those of you who are not my St. Mary's friends (and for some reason are still reading my blog out of the graciousness of your hearts), TOB is essentially the way of discovering God's purpose for us though our bodies, why we were made the way we are, what this whole crazy "love" thing is about, etc. It seeks to find the truth in what human sexuality is and why it's just so gosh darn appealing to us.

See, when you stop and realize that societal norms have become completely desensitized to sex, especially outside of marriage, pornography, addiction, etc, then the real, earnest truth of why we were created is lost. Whatever fulfillment we find in those empty things becomes our relativistic "truth," often the only thing people come to know.

Living out TOB means we realize that those things are not what we're made for. Some point in the last 2000 years, we've lost sight of what the dignity of the human being is. We are meant to be pure, dignified, and live with clear eyes and a full heart. If Christianity means seeking ultimate perfection, perfection through Christ, then we owe it to ourselves and others to back away from the things that keep us from pure perfection: the metaphorical "steroids" and "contracts" of sin and addiction. Lets go out there and seek the fullness of truth. And lets start by watching some college football.

Amen.


For more information on either of these subjects you can contact any male, or email: therevolutiontob@gmail.com