Although I would not call myself a sports aficionado, I do keep up.  Given this, it was not difficult for me to miss the furor erupting in the National Football League over the actions of some of its players toward women and children.  Clearly, significant abuse has occurred, and clearly, the League needs to address it.  Moreover, the League needs to ensure that such behavior is not endemic.
     Yet I wonder if this will ever be possible.  For better or worse, sports that involve violence tend to attract people, some of whom, given certain situations or conditions, behave violently, and not just during competition.  Not to say that everyone who participates in such sports is so inclined; just to say that these sports tend to give such propensities greater reign.
     Yet there is violence in all of us.  None of us is immune from engaging in deeply aberrant behavior.  A book called Shantung Compound by theologian Langdon Gilkey, his account of his time in a prisoner of war camp in China, makes this painfully clear.  Most people, he observed, looked out for themselves, usually with whatever means they could find.  While most of us manage to control our potential for violence, some of us do not. And things happen, in sports and elsewhere.
     So what should the NFL do?  Balancing healthy competition and excessive and unhealthy fervor is highly difficult.  Maybe the real problem, however, is bigger than the NFL. Maybe it's a more human problem, one that afflicts all of us, every moment of every day.  When we make arrogance, brashness, and chauvinism, broadly speaking, the centerpieces of an activity, moral decay, of any kind, is inevitable.
     It's good to play, it's good to win.  It's not good, however, to abuse human magnificence, the remarkable athletic gifts which God has given many of us, for the fleeting evanescence of human glory.
     God, and life, deserve more than that.