Taking a Knee on the Field - In Prayer
In the opening game of 2023's Monday Night Football, the Buffalo Bills took to the field against the Cincinnati Bengals. Among the players was Bills’ safety, 24 year old Damar Hamlin. At 9:05, the ball in play, Hamlin tackled Bengals’ receiver Tee Higgins, then suddenly collapsed on the field in full cardiac arrest. Fans and players stood in stunned disbelief as team medical personnel and EMS first responders performed CPR for more than 9 minutes to revive and stabilize him enough to be able to remove him from the field, then transfer him to the hospital where he remained in critical condition.
Ultimately, play was suspended. Yet something amazing happened, both on and off the field. America collectively took a knee — in PRAYER!
Pastor and evangelist Dave Kistler, founder and leader of H.O.P.E. Ministries International, made this powerful observation:
The world of social media, in fact the world in general, is abuzz over Damar Hamlin’s collapse on the field last evening. Thankfully, quick responding sports physicians were able to perform aggressive CPR and evidently get Hamlin’s heart beating after a reported cardiac arrest.
Photos have flooded Facebook, including pics of stunned and weeping players and coaches. But, none deserves more attention than the one of players from both teams KNEELING in unified and energetic prayer as the ambulance carried Damar Hamlin from the field.
Over the course of the last 11 hours, the requests for prayer from fans, players, coaches, and even sports broadcasters and media pundits have absolutely flooded social and mainstream media.
My dad used to say, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Evidently, there are no atheists amid a stunningly frightening incident like the world witnessed last night in Cincinnati.
Coach Joe Kennedy of the Bremerton High School in Bremerton, WA must be smiling right now, not for his recent religious freedom win at the Supreme Court only, but for the glaringly obvious fact that human beings’ first and correct response in tragedy is to turn to God.
That response occurred last night on a global stage and NO ONE could stop it! No Freedom From Religion Foundation staffer complained, no “separation of church and state” advocate protested. NO ONE wanted to!
Kistler concluded:
The seriousness of the event demanded nothing less than earnest, aggressive, and united prayer - prayer to a God who cares and loves, and prayer that has been answered, as Damar Hamlin is alive with reported normal vitals, though in VERY serious condition.
Human beings everywhere, especially God-deniers, would do well to recognize that there is a God-shaped void in all of us - a void that no amount of athleticism (and I’m ALL for health, exercise, and fitness) money, fame, pleasure, or notoriety can fill!!!
... [Man] DESPERATELY NEEDS the comfort of God found ONLY in the God of all comfort - Jesus Christ! Mankind needs a relationship with Jesus for life here on earth, but more importantly for eternity!
"Pray without ceasing," (1 Thessalonians 5:17, ESV).
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need," (Hebrews 4:16, ESV).
The Selective Search for Intelligence
In the movie Contact, Jodie Foster plays Dr. Arroway, an atheist scientist who works for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program at an observatory in Puerto Rico. She and her colleagues work tirelessly using high-tech equipment to analyze the airwaves for possible signals sent by extraterrestrial life.
After years of patiently scanning the skies, they finally hit the jackpot -- a strong signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers, apparently emitting from the Vega star. The moment Dr. Arroway hears a pattern in the signal, she immediately recognizes that it was produced by an intelligent source.
"Those are primes!" she exclaims. "Two, Three, Five, Seven...those are all prime numbers and there's no way that's a natural phenomenon!"
Dr. Arroway's reaction to the pattern in the signal is a reasonable one. The human mind naturally recognizes purposeful patterns when it encounters them, and logically infers that they are the product of intelligence. But for those who have made up their minds that God does not exist, the search for intelligence is highly selective. Dr. Arroway, like her atheist colleagues, is only prepared to see intelligence where they want to see it. The complexity they encounter in nature, and even in their own DNA, though far more complex than a list of prime numbers, does not impress them in the same way.
It seems that the weighty implications that come with an admission to the existence of God have closed their minds to what should be obvious to them.
"So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts" (Ephesians 4:17-18).
The Drowning Stranger Dilemma
This is from the Well Spent Journey blog.
Excerpt:
Here’s a thought experiment.
_____
Imagine that you’re a healthy, athletic, 20-year-old male. It’s the morning after a thunderstorm, and you’re standing on the banks of a flooded, violently churning river.
You notice an object floating downstream.
As it moves closer, you suddenly realize that this object is a person. The head breaks the surface, and you see a panic-stricken elderly woman gasping for air. You’ve never met her before, but vaguely recognize her as an impoverished widow from a neighboring village.
You look around for help, but there’s no one in sight. You have only seconds to decide whether or not to jump in after her – recognizing that doing so will put your own life in significant peril.
The author continues:
Is it rational for you to risk your life to save this stranger? Is it morally good to do so?
For the Christian, both of these questions can be answered with an emphatic “yes”.
The Christian is called to emulate the example set forth by Jesus, who not only risked, but sacrificed his life for the sake of others. The Christian believes that the soul is eternal, and that one’s existence doesn’t come to an abrupt end with death. Additionally, he can point to the examples of countless Christian martyrs who have willingly sacrificed their own lives.
For the secular humanist, the answers to these questions are much more subjective. When I previously asked 23 self-identifying atheists, “Is it rational for you to risk your life to save a stranger?” only 4 of them responded with an unqualified “yes”.
Biologically speaking, the young man in our scenario has nothing to gain by jumping after the drowning woman. Since she’s poor and elderly, there are no conceivable financial or reproductive advantages involved. Evolutionary biologists often speak of “benefit to the tribe” as a motivation for self-sacrifice…yet the young man’s community would certainly place greater practical value on his life than that of a widow from a neighboring village.
Secular humanists argue that people are capable of making ethical decisions without any deity to serve as Moral Lawgiver. On a day-to-day basis, this is undeniably true. We all have non-religious friends and neighbors who live extremely moral and admirable lives.
In the scenario above, however, secular ethics break down. The secular humanist might recognize, intuitively, that diving into the river is a morally good action. But he has no rational basis for saying so. The young man’s decision is between empathy for a stranger (on the one hand) and utilitarian self-interest & community-interest (on the other).
In the end, there can be no binding moral imperatives in the absence of a Moral Lawgiver. If the young man decides to sit back and watch the woman drown, the secular humanist cannot criticize him. He’s only acting rationally.