In a student’s paper I was reading, there was an insightful comment about “fans” and “teams” that got me thinking . . . who is part of the team?
How important are fans to teams? Are fans part of the team? Are the popcorn and beer vendors part of the team? What about the guy who rents out his front lawn for game parking?
What about the opposing team? How integral are “they” to “my team’s” existence and identity? In this sense, are “they” part of “us”/are “we” part of “them”?
What might be some signs of healthy patterns of relating between the fans of different teams?
Are fans part of the indifferent and the indifferent part of the fans”?
. . . any parallels to others spheres of life?
Peace, dwight
who is part of the team?
Dwight, is good defined by evil? Another way of asking this is "Would Jesus have come to earth if man hadnt sinned and needed redemtion?" Is Jesus acting from a reactionary mode? These questions bring many things into a different light than what the usual party line is. Brian McLarens new book sounds like it touches on some of these issues.
As I understand it at this point in my journey I would say; yes-in part. Anything humanity understands as good finds its source in God, but good and evil only became necessary descriptors when God created. God created the possibility of evil the moment God declared something God created as good. In order to understanding good and/or evil the possibility of both are essential. Thus, Gods pre-fall declaration that the existence of the possibility of evil is good, (remember that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is part of the created order which God said was good, very good). There is no understanding of good (which must be understood understood relationally), without the possibility of evil. And there is no evil without good, for evil is a perversion of the good (evil takes good and turns it inward toward self and self desire).
Yes, I believe God incarnate would have come to earth even if Adam & Eve hadnt eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – in fact we in Genesis we saw God walk with Adam & Eve in the Garden. Its all about presence. God seeking to offer the fullness of Gods being outside Godself. This is the missio Dei flowing from the very being of God.
there has been some interesting research as of late on the nature of ‘fandom’ as ‘civic religion’. If you are interested in this area, you should look at the Center for media, religion, and culture at UC Boulder – http://www.colorado.edu/journalism/mcm/mrc/ – which is headed up by Stewart Hoover. They have been doing some very interesting work around the typological transference of fan-based piety (chants, cheers, wearing sports team colors, wearing Trekkie gear, etc) and how that has been embraced as ‘religious piety’ within Evangelicalism.