If you watch SportsCenter, or read ESPN.com, you’ll have heard about Cassy Herkelman’s victory over Joel Northrup at the Iowa state high school wrestling tournament to become the first girl in the history of the tournament to win a match. The twist? Northrup defaulted, rather than wrestle her.
“Does any wrong-headed decision suddenly become right when defended with religious conviction? In this age, don’t we know better? If my God told me to poke the elderly with sharp sticks, would that make it morally acceptable to others?”
Now, I have several problems with Reilly’s stance on this matter. First of all, his argument (if it can be called that) is a classic straw man. He sets up something that is obviously flawed (the comparison between Northrup’s decision and poking the elderly with sharp sticks) just so he can knock it down. There is an obvious, and huge, difference, between a person declining to participate in an event (passivity) because they believe the are doing what God has required of them and actively engaging in the wounding of others for the same reason. It feels silly even to type it. Clearly, there are sins of passivity: when we say that confession each week, we confess our sins, both things done and left undone. But it is ultimately a fool’s errand to decide what God has called a certain person to do, and whether or not that person is being faithful to that call.
My larger issue with Reilly is his claim that God shouldn’t be involved at all. What good is religious conviction if there are limits to its applicability. Reilly’s use of the phrase “in this age, don’t we know better” is particularly troubling. Such language has been used to shunt God off to a supposedly impotent corner so that we can do just what we want with supposed impunity. I say “supposedly” and “supposed” because God is not impotent and we remain liable for the things we do. God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).
Again, I am not making “sinful” or “righteous” assignations to Northrup’s decision. I am merely suggesting that while, as Reilly rightly notes, it does not “say in the Bible not to wrestle against girls? Or compete against them? What religion forbids the two-point reversal?,” it is imprudent to suggest that there are areas of our lives, be they our sexual mores, our business practices, or our wrestling strategies, that are free from the touch of God’s power.And what of other things we hold dear, better than which, “in this age,” we seem to know? Like the idea that we are not ultimately judged according to our deeds or that a criminal’s death can save the world? In some sense, Reilly’s appeal to “this age” undercuts his own argument. This age is twisted like any other, and, despite our protestations, we don’t know any better.
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COMMENTS
27 responses to “God…and High School Wrestling?!?!”
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Excellent post, Nick. I applaud the kid's decision, and while there is no explicit Biblical warrant against it, it's easy enough to see where a Christian young man would be uncomfortable in that situation.
Reilly's article was just awful, and as a writer, I think the man is way past his prime. Gregg Doyel of CBS, who I normally avoid, had a nice takedown of Reilly's argument
Nick,
I like Reilly, but you are absolutely correct in your critique. This is the move so many atheists make–banish religion from the public square then justify it as eminently reasonable!
My only lingering question about the whole matter is this: From what Ive read refusing to wrestle didn't disqualify him from participating in the tournament, it only means he cannot finish higher than 3rd. I would LOVE to know would he have done the SAME thing if he already had 1 loss?
🙂
I'm with Reilly on this one: Northrup should have wrestled Herkelman.
Why "should" he have done anything other than his conscience dictated? I think where Reilly loses his way is attempting to locate a moral imperative.
As the thread moves forward, it's worth distinguishing two questions:
(1) Was the boy wrong for refusing to wrestle the girl?
(2) Were Reilly's reasons sound?
Nick, as I understood him, focused on the second question. In fact Nick went out of his way to say he wasn't saying whether the boy's decision was right or wrong. Nick was concerned about any person who'd say, as Reilly did, that God only has a claim on some parts of our lives.
So as folks chime in and say that they agree (or not) with Reilly, it's worth clarifying what question they are addressing.
Unless of course you want to say Drop That Chick In The Name of Jesus, in which case you are being fairly clear. 🙂
I'm curious: does the coach actually cite any particular religious doctrine or argument for his stance?
I can't think of what it could be, if so. It sounds to me as if religion seemed like a good place to argue from, but that the objections are not actually based in religion, but in culture.
(And wow: that almost never happens.
Ha.)
Nick/SD –
2. I don't really want to defend Reilly 🙂
1. Yes -whether he intended to or now, Northrup's decision to not wrestle Herkelman communicated that he believed that Herkelman should not be allowed compete in wrestling. Northrup exerts his male power by forcibly preventing Herkelman from competing in his sport. It's for for her own good, really.
I can't help but presume that Northrup does this because he believes Herkelman's participation in wrestling to be contrary to his ideal of womanhood. Somehow athletic competition and physical exertion have become an exclusively male trait. Real women don't run, sweat, etc.
Search as I can, I cannot find anything which substantiates all the very specific gender distinctions perpetuated within the church. Perhaps this is an instance where the Bible's silence should be followed.
Todd, aren't you jumping to conclusions? Why is it improbable that he just didn't want to hurt a girl?
Though he is passively engaging by not participating you can’t say that he hasn’t wounded anyone. It takes a lot of guts to be a woman in a man’s sport and to let her win (by default) is not exactly being respectful of her. In fact, I’d even say that it is trying to bring shame upon her decision to be on a wrestling team. Sounds like he’s using God to justify why he’s uncomfortable wrestling a girl. Why say God told him to do it? Will this same God tell him to break up with his girlfriend in the future? I'm not saying that God can't directly communicate to us personally, but I have a hard time believing that it wasn't more of a "girls shouldn't be part of this" attitude.
Kelly –
You may well be right, but don't we owe what everyone describes as a faithful and upstanding kid the benefit of the doubt? It seems like, when we assume that he must be using God to cover up more nefarious feelings, that we're falling into Reilly's fallacy: that God couldn't REALLY be involved. Of course, we've had "wolf" cried on us many times, not least of which in the matter of "faith healings" that are staged for TV. Reilly purports to take the kid at his word, and suggest that God be left out. It seems unfair (and impossible to argue either way!) to assume the kid is lying.
I think Nick is on to something, and at the risk of sounding like a legalistic neo-Calvinist, I'm perfectly comfortable with the sort of religious-infused gender distinctions that would forbid a young man from formally wrestling a girl (as distinct from "rough-housing with friends and siblings). I say that much from a religious standpoint, but from a cultural standpoint, I should hope my own son has enough gentlemanly courtesy to bow out in the same situation.
The boy's been home-schooled, which suggests that culturally and theologically he's quite conservative. I think he deserves to be taken at his word.
And while I can see that refusing to wrestle a girl can look like old-fashioned, patronizing sexism, I read it as old-fashioned chivalry. Whether it's appropriate or not, I think it deserves respect.
I'll ask again: where, exactly, do we find the religious justification for this action? I don't think it's too much to ask that if somebody claims that their religion forbids something, they ought to explain where they find the doctrine, and/or how they came to that conclusion.
It's not a matter of "taking him at his word"; it's a matter of asking at least a smidgeon of evidence for the truth he's claiming he knows. (I should add that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong about it being a cultural argument! And yes, I'd agree that it's old-fashioned chivalry. I'm simply asking for a bit of explanation of the major statement he's made there. Really, this is completely reasonable – and I notice that nobody on this thread has been able to provide the reasoning, either!)
Maybe the problem becomes clearer with an example. How about if I claim that I believe that Christianity forbids all wrestling? I would imagine I could find more justification in the Gospels for that position than for the one he advocates. (Doesn't he himself talk about the "violence" inherent in wrestling, after all?)
Football, certainly, should be banned on that basis….
Perhaps the young man is following in the footsteps of almost every bit of Christian orthodoxy that has concerned gender distinctions, at least in the physical realm.
Perhaps the young man is following in the footsteps of almost every bit of Christian orthodoxy that has concerned gender distinctions, at least in the physical realm.
Such as, for instance? I can think of this bit, off the top of my head: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."? That doesn't seem applicable to this situation, though, of course – and in fact would argue against the coach's position.
But perhaps you're thinking of the doctrine that women are not "proper matter" for the priesthood? Protestants don't argue that, as far as I know; perhaps you're with the Catholics on this, though? Anyway, we're talking wrestlers, not clergy here.
Or did you mean the theology of subservience of women to men in marriage? Well, maybe – but of course the wrestlers weren't married to each other, and Christian orthodoxy has never demanded that women be subservient to men other than their husbands, as far as I know.
Then there was the rite once called "The Churching of Women" – the thanksgiving offered publicly for a woman's survival of the ordeals of childbirth. But I can't see how that would apply, either – and might again argue against the coach's position. Women, after all, go through all kinds of physical punishment in childbirth.
So what's left? We could talk about the banishment of women to the home, I guess – but then, Christians don't really hold with that anymore. Do we? Did we ever, in fact, as doctrine? I don't see the religious justification for forbidding women to go to college, either, or to work in certain professions, either, I should add.
What, then? What, exactly, is this "orthodoxy" you're speaking of?
So how about my proposal that we ban football?
I was thinking the other day that football is a really good example of the "frog in the pot" syndrome. Over the years, these men have gotten bigger and bigger and the violence on the field has become more and more extreme – but this has happened slowly so that people haven't noticed the escalation. But football players are getting paralyzed and killed during the game – and their bodies are becoming damaged in more and more extreme ways.
Now we just had the example of the suicide of Dave Duerson, who sustained brain damage and put a shotgun to his chest last week. Head injuries are really a problem, it seems (see "The National Brain Injury League" for more) – even for younger kids.
And that's not even to get into the whole steroid and growth hormone thing. Is the TV "entertainment" culture worth all this? Is anything?
hey bls –
that last comment was too interesting not to add to! Are you suggesting we ban football (and I TOTALLY agree with your "frog in the pot" characterization: my son won't be playing tackle football) on moral grounds? Sort of "body is the temple of the Holy Spirit" stuff? Because if so, that's its own dangerous game. As Aaron Eckhart says so wonderfully in Thank You For Smoking, "the real number one killer is cholesterol." Should we then ban butter and cheese? There are plenty of great reasons not to play football (or eat butter) but "because you're not being a good Christian" isn't one of them. You're destroying the temple of the Holy Spirit no matter what you do.
Likewise, Northrup is not living up to the Christ standard for his life whether he wrestles (and "beats up" a girl) or not (and disrespects her), so he should follow his conscience, as we all must.
All I'm saying, Nick, is that an argument that "X is against my religion" needs fleshing out if no justification is given and none is obvious.
I could argue that "Football is against my religion" on the grounds that it's very, very violent. Sure, my justification can be that "the body is the temple of God," if you like. Also, perhaps, that "We are created in God's image," and the destruction of that image is a blasphemy. Or, perhaps, that Christ said to "turn the other cheek" – so that the gratuitous violence in football is wrong, wrong, wrong.
At least those are arguments – and you can read them, see whether or not you agree with them, and refute them (if you can).
But if I just say, "Football is against my religion," and never say how I got to that conclusion – then I've done what the coach did in this circumstance. To wit: claiming God's imprimatur when there's no obvious justification for it. And when I don't really feel like elaborating.
Actually, your statement that "there are plenty of great reasons not to play football (or eat butter) but 'because you're not being a good Christian" isn't one of them'" is a perfect example of why I think what the coach said was completely lame. At least you came up with a reason and proceded to refute it yourself.
So why should I pay any attention to the coach?
I'm not really arguing for banning football, BTW – it was just an example in the first post, and in the second post a trick to get some attention. I really do think that what's happening in football today is immoral, though, and actually I don't see what can be done about it. Do you? I mean, the guys are going to be huge, and the hits are going to be ridiculously violent. What's another option to deal with this?
I understood his reasoning not to wrestle a girl to be that he didn't want to risk touching her inappropriately. I've never wrestled, but it seems like there could easily be instances where he would touch her in places, or she touch him, that would cause later emotional consequence for one or both of them. He wasn't judging her participation in the competition. And I would think he could make a biblical case for that kind of touching to be only done within the context of marriage. No? Is he not free to chose to abstain from that kind of contact?
I believe the reason why he refused to wrestle her was because:
'wrestling is a combat sport and it can get violent at times… I do not believe that it is appropriate for a boy to engage a girl in this manner.'
I'm kind of with Andrea here, actually. I think at least one of the the underlying reasons is worry that the boy could get sexually aroused.
And in fact, the worry about hurting the girl seems real to me, too. Isn't it rather stupid on the face of it to have girls wrestling boys of this age? Doesn't wrestling go by weight class – and aren't boys of this age (and older) a lot stronger, pound-for-pound, in their upper bodies than girls are? And couldn't this contribute to injuries in many cases, even if not, possibly, in this one?
Actually, now that I think of it, a religious argument maybe is the only possibility, if you want to immediately get the boy out of wrestling the girl and the coach and the team out of having to go through perhaps years of mishegoss arguing in the courts over the issue.
So maybe I can understand it on that basis alone….
(I'm still surprised that Reilly bought the "religious beliefs" argument though! It seemed immediately clear to me, at least, that this was just an excuse for something else….)
This is a really interesting discussion!
If we are to be "equal opportunity Gospelers," it seems like we would have to allow for people making decisions based upon their consciences that we don't agree with, but nevertheless have to respect.
This is a perfect example. To the girl who feels "shamed" by the inaction of this guy, you could add anyone who is engaging in behaviors that other Chrsitians feel their faith prohibits them from. The question, as BLS has pointed out, is not whether there could be religious justification for his decision, but whether that case has been made.
BLS–there is a long, long tradition of Christian thought on the distinctions between men and women that could be marshaled in defense of his actions.
That Christians are all "one in Christ Jesus," is certainly true, but this, as you have pointed out, has very little bearing on height/weight ratios between men and women.
The historic arguments would be based, I think, on some Thomistic version of "Natural Law," so would be dismissed out-of-hand by anyone for whom Liberté, égalité, fraternité are the cardinal virtues. Whether those are synonymous with faith, hope and love is another question altogether, and therein lie the seeds (at least) of the current disagreement. When we start to talk about "rights," we are talking about the law, and in society women have a "right" to wrestle men, so he was wrong to refuse her and lost the match. The law has spoken.
If there are Biblical and Christian warrants for understanding a difference (any difference) between men and women with respect to the way they live their lives in the actual world, then certainly there could be a way to understand how one might make an argument from their Christian beliefs about refusing to wrestle.
The historic arguments would be based, I think, on some Thomistic version of "Natural Law," so would be dismissed out-of-hand by anyone for whom Liberté, égalité, fraternité are the cardinal virtues.
Also, I'd think, by most Protestants. 😉
No?
(I mean, seriously: does the average layperson – or perhaps even clergyperson – have any notion of what Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13th Century on the topic of gender differences?
I know I don't; perhaps a Catholic who went to parochial school and was serious about his or her studies might….)
bls – what JDK means (if I can assume) is that ideas that originated as "Thomistic Natural Law" were passed down through generations, getting into people's heads without their needing to connect them to their origins. This is common: Some of my ideas about how a nation ought to work will come from my parents, and from theirs, with my only having a basic knowledge, if any, of the Constitution.
People often have mores that they attribute to God's law in some manner without being able to site chapter and verse (or indeed, without even having chapter and verse to cite). When Noah told his family he was building an ark, he couldn't base his predicted flood on anything concrete.
The historic arguments would be based, I think, on some Thomistic version of "Natural Law," so would be dismissed out-of-hand by anyone for whom Liberté, égalité, fraternité are the cardinal virtues.
Also, I'd think, by most Protestants. 😉
No?
That depends.
If you are talking about wrestling, perhaps. But, if you are talking about making a distinction between different genders (however small), then no.
Again, this is not a question of how society should necessarily be ordered, but he wasn't saying "girls shouldn't wrestle," just "I don't feel it is right for me to wrestle a girl."
Should he have been compelled to wrestle her?
Whatever the case, I find the objections to his rationale, particularly from the "Gospel means freedom" arena, puzzling.
Whatever the case, I find the objections to his rationale, particularly from the "Gospel means freedom" arena, puzzling.
No idea what this means, sorry….