Gardener

The cartoon in today’s Sioux City Journal shows a man labeled NCCA pulling down a statue labeled “Culture of Football First.”   I certainly find some truth in that assessment of the Penn State conspiracy to shelter Jerry Sandusky and thereby allow him to continue to abuse young boys.   I just happened upon something I wrote six years ago when Dordt was devoting oodles of attention and publicity to its newly created football program.   In response to an email critical of my criticism of this policy, I wrote: “You know, on many college campuses, football teams act as if they can live by their own set of laws.   What promotes that?   Well one thing might be the inordinate amount of attention we lavish on them.” So, the cartoon makes a valid point.   Still, it seems to me that the NCAA is, to a certain extent, a pot calling the kettle black.   For it has done as much as any group to promote this insane sports culture that governs many colleges and uni...

There’s an old cliché that says “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”   I have never found this idea particularly insightful or accurate.   Sometimes people who fail to learn from past mistakes simply make new bad choices.   And the verb condemned suggests that what people experience is always bad. Surely that is not always true.     But maybe what the old cliché really means to say is that our history—at least the significant events of our past—should be remembered because the act of remembering can be instructive.   And with that I whole-heartedly agree.   So does the Bible.   When the children of Israel come through the Red Sea, Joshua has each tribe take out a stone, twelve stones in all, and set them up as a memorial—a memory stimulator.   Jesus gave us the bread and wine and the ritual of The Lord’s Supper and told us to enact the ritual in remembrance of him—of his suffering and death.   There are m...