Redemption

Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Shields in his article, “Manute Bol's Radical Christianity,” (June 25, 2010) contrasted the number of hits that a Google search for “redemption” and “NBA” yields with the number that “redemption” and “Christianity” yields. The former, with over 2 million hits, easily trounced the latter. He also learned that the term “redemption appears” in 2600 ESPN.com stories.


In sports, redemption usually refers to a player whose outstanding performance has “redeemed” poor performance in the sport or life. Manute Bol, who died in June at the age of 47, was the notable exception to that generalization.

Bol played as a center for the Washington Bullets. He averaged only 2.6 points per game but his height (7’7”) enabled him to block shots successfully. But that is not what makes Manute Bol, a Christian Sudanese immigrant, noteworthy. In a 2004 Sports Illustrated article, he said, “God guided me to America and gave me a good job. But he also gave me a heart so I would look back."

Bol began by giving away the money he had accumulated to aid Sudanese refugees. “As one twitter feed aptly put it: ‘Most NBA cats go broke on cars, jewelry & groupies. Manute Bol went broke building hospitals.’” When his money was gone, he raised more money for charity by playing the clown in various celebrity sporting contests.

Shields observes:

Yet as Bol reminds us, the Christian understanding of redemption has always involved lowering and humbling oneself. It leads to suffering and even death.

It is of little surprise, then, that the sort of radical Christianity exemplified by Bol is rarely understood by sports journalists. For all its interest in the intimate details of players' lives, the media has long been tone deaf to the way devout Christianity profoundly shapes some of them.

Obituary titles for Bol, for example, described him as a humanitarian rather than a Christian. The remarkable charity and personal character of other NBA players, including David Robinson, A. C. Green and Dwight Howard, are almost never explicitly connected to their own intense Christian faith. They are simply good guys.

Christian basketball players hope that their "little lights" shine in a league marked by rapacious consumption and marital infidelity. They could shine even brighter if sports journalists acknowledged that such players seek atonement and redemption in a far more profound way than mere athletic success.

Those of us who walk the Jesus path can do what the secular media fail to do: tell the full story about exemplary saints like Manute Bol, using our words honestly. Those of us who walk the Jesus path also need to ask ourselves if we are as successful as Manute Bol in leading a redeemed life that gives meaning to one’s own existence and life to others.

A friend who read Shields’ article offered this comment:

Maybe I am getting older, but I find more and more people know exactly what is happening, what has happened, and what to do. [My wife] has remarked to me after dinner or get together that I didn’t enter into some discussion that I had an interest in. I have said simply that I couldn’t add to the discussion since I had a different opinion, but the people didn’t seem interested in a discussion, but an argument if someone disagreed with their view. I have to admit I usually strongly disagreed with their view, not that it was wrong, but the answer was not that simple. [My wife] does admit she prefers that reaction to these occurrences rather than my other statement in these instances: I wish I were as certain in life about anything as you are certain about everything!