Score Matters?

Monday Columbian sports page headline reads, “Score Is All That Matters.”  I call BS.  Since I have a BS degree, I can do this.  In the online version a less dramatic title headlined the article.  I like the print version better; it’s controversial, not just informative.  I think it comes from the journalistic confluence of art and fact.  The sports editor also wrote a commentative article entitled “Chance to Win Not Same As Ability To.”  I agree with these titles… in context.  But that’s important.  Truth spoken and agreed to out of context does more damage to faith and hope than any circumstance. 

We can interpret circumstance any way we want.  We can decide to fight back, change tactics, forgive or stay in bed.  No matter how good or bad the facts of the day read back on our ticker tape before the lights go out and sleep takes us, we have a choice.  But truth spoken out of context can trick us into agreeing.  We can be stuck believing something we never intended to accept.  This is the insidious issue of screen-oriented entertainment and all other media interacted with on a semi-conscious level.  It’s why there must be so much wakeful attention paid to the powerful synergy between art and fact. 

The story must be told true.  It must be owned by the reader, watcher, and participant and interpreted with authenticity.  In order to do that, we have to stay awake and consider what we are agreeing to and what we’ve agreed to in the past.

To be fair to Greg Jayne, he wrote well and a bit tongue and cheek with his philosophy.  I appreciated the tone of both articles and I think to a conscious reader, he elevated an idea and considered it well while maintaining journalistic impartiality.  My comments are not intended as an argument or a defense against him. 

I do, however, have arguments.  Score does matter.  The game matters.  I ask though, when is the final score computed?  Let’s take Seattle’s score on Sunday, was it 28-30 or – Look what we did second half, if we do that both halves the rest of the season, we will be unbeatable.  Should the Seahawks have come away nursing the wounds of defeat or feeding the humble understanding of their capacity?  How would things have changed if they won?  Would their comprehension of their capacity be accurate and leave them hungry or would it be too arrogant – satiation a great weakness?  Is the score computed at the end of a game, end of the season or end of the individual lives?  Who computes?

I call BS because I think most of us, myself included, will read a headline like this and nod absently.  Maybe even comment, “Yeah, they really pulled out all the stops.  Too bad they lost anyway.”  I would say something like that.  Or I would have a few years ago.  Now, I’ve had that experience.  I pulled out all the stops and lost.  I tried as hard as I was humanly capable of trying and it didn’t work.  I’ve sat over coffee with many men over the last four years.  Good and bad coffee.  We’ve wrestled with the question; am I really a failure?  Was all that a waste of time and energy?  Do I really have to start over and chalk the last 20 years up to experience?  We have asked, what is my score?

Solomon says God has made everything beautiful in its time and set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11).  That’s the context.  The score is figured by God in the context of eternity.  The score of the game counts as a measurement of a moment in eternity.  Eternity is not a time measurement as much as it is a quality measurement.  So, I think the question I have to ask is; am I living this moment fully awake and alive and in real time?  Do I see and hear right?  Am I aligned with what God is up to?

We will not even come close to understanding the score of any particular game in this life. The best we can get, if we are awake, are hints that make us suspicious, glimpses that connect with our unhealed, undeveloped eternal hearts.  There are too many stories intersecting, stories that are bound to a plot that is primarily lived in a much larger scope.  A place we do not yet see or hear clearly, though we are rooted in it.  What matters is the score at the end, when all is added up and computed by the storyteller and main character.  Will I have been what he made me to be and done what he planned for me knowingly or otherwise?  Will I hear, “well done, good and faithful servant?”  That is what matters – that alone.

The good news is:  The final score has been written.  The big question is: will it be my score?

Thank you John Gorman, Scout Master of troop 358, for your decades of commitment to young men and their families.  The difference you made ripples throughout eternity.  You played the game well and your score shows it.  May the final score reveal the greater impact you’ve had that we do not yet know.