Late during the NFL regular season, a game between the Cowboys and Lions featured what was perhaps the most controversial officiating of the year. I’m not going to recount everything that happened; if you know, you know, and if you don’t know, you probably don’t care. The Play itself is not my point anyway. What I want is to simply observe that virtually no one I’ve seen, except for Cowboys fans, was OK with how the officials handled that penalty. It seemed to me at the time, and still seems, a clear, obvious, game-altering mental error by referee Brad Allen (the NFL eventually removed Allen from officiating rotation for the playoffs). But you know what? Clear, obvious, game-altering mental errors by officials are part of sports, and have been forever. Of course, fans on the losing end of those errors don’t tend to just let things go. But everyone else does. We accept it as the human part of the game.
I agree that trust is eroded by vice. At the same time, I've observed how differently people are willing to give trust to institutions not just based on what these institutions do, but also on their own political position. For example, some see videos of police brutality as clear evidence of systemic racism, others see these examples as outliers in a generally decent police force. Instances of church abuse lead some people to say, "I can't trust the church anymore”, others are still able to go to church and believe these instances to be just a few bad apples.
One thing I've seen in some circles is that no matter what the government does, it's always met with skepticism. While some skepticism is well-deserved, other times I thought people judged too quickly.
I remember back in the 90's or maybe early 2000's Focus on the Family had worked with a Congressional research team to see the various effects of gambling, especially on sports. Ironically - Nevada would not allow gambling on _its_ teams at the time. That position changed around the time the report was released because they found that gambling most definitely _did_ affect sports. Most of the time the effects weren't huge, but the desire to tweak the outcome to change the odds or payouts is just part of our human/sin nature. Of course, the findings for that group largely went nowhere - because they showed that the gambling industry most definitely has a good amount of negative effects on society.
My bigger issue with the bad calls these days is that with the "replay" option for reviews, it's easier than ever to see truly bad calls and adjust them. I don't know much about this particular event, but the little I've seen indicates that the call was horrible and shouldn't have been allowed to stand after a review. So I can understand the concerns about a ref being pulled into this mess to make a game-altering call like that.
Super helpful analysis, Samuel. Thank you. I'd be interested to explore how the convergence of capitalism/the church have also undermined pastoral credibility.
I agree that trust is eroded by vice. At the same time, I've observed how differently people are willing to give trust to institutions not just based on what these institutions do, but also on their own political position. For example, some see videos of police brutality as clear evidence of systemic racism, others see these examples as outliers in a generally decent police force. Instances of church abuse lead some people to say, "I can't trust the church anymore”, others are still able to go to church and believe these instances to be just a few bad apples.
One thing I've seen in some circles is that no matter what the government does, it's always met with skepticism. While some skepticism is well-deserved, other times I thought people judged too quickly.
I remember back in the 90's or maybe early 2000's Focus on the Family had worked with a Congressional research team to see the various effects of gambling, especially on sports. Ironically - Nevada would not allow gambling on _its_ teams at the time. That position changed around the time the report was released because they found that gambling most definitely _did_ affect sports. Most of the time the effects weren't huge, but the desire to tweak the outcome to change the odds or payouts is just part of our human/sin nature. Of course, the findings for that group largely went nowhere - because they showed that the gambling industry most definitely has a good amount of negative effects on society.
My bigger issue with the bad calls these days is that with the "replay" option for reviews, it's easier than ever to see truly bad calls and adjust them. I don't know much about this particular event, but the little I've seen indicates that the call was horrible and shouldn't have been allowed to stand after a review. So I can understand the concerns about a ref being pulled into this mess to make a game-altering call like that.
Super helpful analysis, Samuel. Thank you. I'd be interested to explore how the convergence of capitalism/the church have also undermined pastoral credibility.
I would add that trust can also be maintained and rebuilt through *genuine* acknowledgment of wrongdoing, repentance, and forgiveness.