Kids and Sports: How Young is too Young? How Much is too Much?

For those of you who live in the Bay Area, many of you may have seen the article in the San Jose Mercury News this past Sunday about kids and sports (it appeared in the Oakland Tribune a couple of weeks earlier): "How young is too young?". Its basic premise is that many of us parents start our kids out in sports at too young of an age, assuming (incorrectly) that the earlier they start, the better they'll become. However, as Mark Hyman, author of "Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids" notes,

"If I had any advice for parents it would be to relax, and let your child's natural interests lead. Parents are invested in this idea that they can turn their kids into... super athletes. The psychology of parenting is: Earlier equals better. There is not a lot to support that, except our own insecurities as parents."

What researchers have found is that when kids begin a sport too young, there is an increased chance of burnout (the game ceases to be fun -- 70 percent of kids drop out of organized sports by age 13) and injury. And one of the most common type of injuries (over half) are "overuse injuries," that is, injuries that come from repeating the same motion for too long a period without taking time off (three months rest is the recommendation I usually see).

I would add that it is not only a question of "How young is too young?", but also of "How much is too much?" Our kids are playing the same sport year round on travel baseball teams, club soccer teams, and the like, without giving their bodies time off to rest, which is why the rate of arm injuries among baseball players and knee injuries among soccer players have been increasing exponentially. Moreover, if they play baseball, soccer, volleyball, football, etc. so much that they are no longer fun for them to play (but are more like a job), then they'll probably stop playing and do something else. As Hall of Famer Willie Stargell once noted, "When they start the game, they don't say 'Work Ball!' They say 'Play Ball!'"

Since I have written about this previously ("Aristotle, Virtue & the Youth Sports-Injury Epidemic"), I won't belabor the point any further. The bottom line is that if our kids play too much of any one sport without any rest, whether from starting too young or playing year round, they will either burn out or sustain potentially career-ending injuries. So, read the article, spread the word and let our kids try something different.

Courtesy and Costco Shoppers

This article came across in one of my emails (from my cousin Jon) and is just too funny ("Small Wonders: Courtesy and Costco Don't Get Along"). It is written by Patrick Caneday and appeared in the Glendale News-Press. It recounts, in often hilarious detail, how inconsiderate shoppers can be -- in this case, Costco shoppers. Here are a couple of gems from the article:

Dear Costco shopper: It occurred to me last Saturday, as 200,000 of us simultaneously ran out of toilet paper and converged upon our Wholesale Mecca, that we need to get a few things straight:

• You are not the only person on this planet.
• Please take the first empty parking space you see. Blocking the driving lane with blinker on watching Grandpa load his ’81 Pinto hatchback takes more time than if you’d left your car at home and walked.
• Once inside, DMV rules of the road apply. Would you stop your car in the middle of a busy street, get out and walk to the sidewalk for a cup of lemonade? Then please don’t do that with your cart in the middle of the main aisle for one free tortilla chip. Pull over.
• This is not England. Please drive on the right side of the aisle. Keep up with the flow of traffic. No faster, no slower. Blindly cutting across four lanes because you spotted a good price on Jordache jeans is likewise ill-advised. If driving an oversized flatbed cart laden with a barbecue, sauna or Hummer, you have a greater responsibility to be careful. Our shins and ankles thank you.
• Despite his seeming wisdom, the smooth-talking gent selling “nutritional” supplements is not a doctor. Tomorrow he will be hawking ShamWows at JC Penney. The only harmful “toxins” to eliminate are the ones coming out of his mouth.
• The register is no place to ask for a price check. There are 18 very pissed-off people behind you with crying children and weakening bladders. It's a 3-square-mile warehouse, not the corner market. In 1994, an employee went to price check a 20-pound bag of diced Guatemalan pineapple and was never heard from again.
• The giant red border painted on the ground surrounding the store is a “No Parking” zone, not a “Just Waiting for My Wife” zone. No one “is coming right out” of Costco. I saw a baby conceived and delivered during a single trip to Costco. Please find a parking place.

Check out the entire article. I think you'll find that it is worth it.

Tony Campolo and the Essence of the Gospel

When he was fresh out of seminary, Baptist minister Tony Campolo climbed into the pulpit and blurted out:

"I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a $%^&. And what's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said $%^& than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

Not that I'm advocating cussing in the pulpit, but I dare say that Tony was probably right. We often confuse what's central to the Gospel and what's peripheral, and I'm relatively confident that God is more concerned with the plight of children suffering from malnutrition than whether a Baptist minister slips in a swear word into his sermons every now and then (those of you from the Bay Area may be familiar with Father Jim Mifsud, who experienced similar "difficulties" in his youth).

Campolo is an interesting character. An evangelical Baptist minister with a liberal bent who ran for State Senator as a Democrat and served as one of President Clinton's counselors after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he is unapologetically pro-life and consistently opposes same-sex marriage (although his wife Peggy supports it). His views tend to align with what is known as the "completely pro-life" stance associated with the Sojourners Community, which means that he opposes warfare, abortion, poverty, capital punishment and euthanasia, which in turn puts him at odds with many political groups (Wikipedia, Tony Campolo).

He speaks at numerous Christian conferences (in the past his appearances in a given year have sometimes outnumbered the number days in the year), and he is probably best known for his sermon, "It's Friday, but Sunday's Coming!" and book by the same name (the "Friday" in the title refers to Good Friday, while the "Sunday" refers to Easter Sunday). He is at his best when telling stories (like how he through a birthday party for a hooker in downtown Waikiki) and uttering memorable quips. To wit (mostly from Wikipedia):

"How many people are working in Valley Forge (where American Baptist Churches USA headquarters is located)? About half of them."

"I think that Christianity has two emphases. One is a social emphasis to impart the values of the kingdom of God in society - to relieve the sufferings of the poor, to stand up for the oppressed, to be a voice for those who have no voice. The other emphasis is to bring people into a personal, transforming relationship with Christ, where they feel the joy and the love of God in their lives. That they manifest what the fifth chapter of Galatians calls 'the fruit of the Spirit'. Fundamentalism has emphasized the latter, mainline churches have emphasized the former. We cannot neglect one for the other."

"There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor."

"A person is as young as their dreams and as old as their cynicism."

"Jesus transcends partisan politics. That's what's wrong with the religious right... they have made Jesus into a Republican, and he's not!"

"I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that."

"Those in favor of Darwin’s theory usually act as though his explanation of evolution has empirical validation. It doesn't! It’s just a theory. A very reasonable theory, to be sure, but still a theory. The highly-touted biologist, Kenneth R. Miller, supports evolution and not ID. But even he claims that rabid Darwinists go 'well beyond any reasonable scientific conclusions that might emerge from evolutionary theory.' To prevent discussion of any other explanations of human origins is hardly what I would expect from open-minded educators."

"When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you die, will YOU be happy when everybody else is crying?"

"I've always been skeptical of those television healers who are bald. I mean, if I had that gift, that would be the first thing I'd fix."

He's written a number of books. My favorites include, The Kingdom of God is a Party, A Reasonable Faith and 20 Hot Potatoes Christians are Afraid to Touch. His sermons and other talks are available from his website as well ("Tony Campolo").

Success is...

Here's something that came across on email. Evidently, what constitutes success at different ages follows a chiastic pattern:

At age 4 success is.... not piddling in your pants
At age 12 success is.... having friends
At age 17 success is.... having a driver's license
At age 35 success is.... having money
At age 50 success is.... having money
At age 70 success is.... having a driver's license
At age 75 success is.... having friends
At age 80 success is.... not piddling in your pants

The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Part III: The Jesus Seminar

The Jesus Seminar is a group of about 150 biblical scholars founded by Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan under the umbrella of the Westar Institute. It held its first meeting in March of 1985 at the Pacific School of Religion. The seminar votes to decide their collective view of the historicity of the deeds and sayings of Jesus of Nazareth. The seminar has produced a new translation of the New Testament and published their results in three books: The Five Gospels in 1993 (the 5th Gospel is the Gospel of Thomas), The Acts of Jesus in 1998, and The Gospel of Jesus in 1999. They also run a series of lectures and workshops (The Jesus Seminar on the Road) in various cities across the United States.

 One of the stated purposes of the Jesus Seminar was to develop a scholarly consensus on the sayings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament and other early Christian writings. Another was to raise the biblical consciousness of people in the pews. Many of the Jesus Seminar's members lament the fact that pastors do not pass on to their parishioners what they learned in seminary.

Typically, the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar have earned a Ph.D. in New Testament studies although there are exceptions, such as Paul Verhoeven, who doesn't hold a Ph.D. in biblical studies but a M.Sc. in mathematics and physics and has made his mark primarily as a film director.  Most are professors at North American universities although there are a few from overseas.  They come from a variety of Christian denominations although most are either Roman Catholic or from Mainline Protestant, rather than Evangelical Protestant, denominations.

Data and Methods

The Fellows met twice a year, and each meeting focused on a particular collection of sayings.  Members would write and circulate papers on the collection of sayings that was being discussed at the upcoming meeting, so that at the meetings themselves the Fellows would discuss the sayings rather than listening to people presenting their papers.  Each saying was discussed until no one had any more to say, and then they would move on to discuss the next one.  Once they completed their discussion, the Fellows would then vote by secret ballot, dropping one of four differently colored beads into a ballot box.

• A red bead meant that a Fellow believed that the words were the authentic words of Jesus
• A pink bead meant that they believed that the words closely approximated what Jesus said
• A gray bead meant they believed the words weren’t Jesus’ but they may reflect his ideas
• A black bead meant Jesus definitely did not speak them

Someone else proposed that the meanings could be understood as follows:

• Red = “That’s Jesus”
• Pink = “Sure sounds like him”
• Gray = “Well, maybe.”
• Black = “There’s been some mistake.”

They then tallied the votes and the results are summarized in “The Five Gospels,” which represented the first phase of their study. A second study examined the historicity of the events surrounding Jesus, "The Acts of Jesus." More recently they've turned their attention to Paul's letters.

Rules of Evidence and Assumptions

Like all contemporary biblical scholars, the Jesus Seminar follows a number of rules of evidence, which I'll cover in a later post since they are not unique to the Jesus Seminar. However, in their discussion of these rules (The Five Gospels, pp. 16-34) they include a number of rules that are actually a priori assumptions concerning Jesus and the Gospels, which not surprisingly influence their conclusions about Jesus. Here are a few examples:

• The oral memory best retains sayings and anecdotes that are short, provocative, memorable--and oft-repeated (p. 28)
• The most frequently recorded words of Jesus in the surviving gospels take the form of aphorisms and parablies (p. 28)
• The earliest layer of the Gospel tradition is made up of single aphorisms and parables that circulated word of mouth (p. 28)
• Jesus’ sayings and parables cut against the grain of the dominant society (p. 31)
• Jesus rarely makes pronouncements or speaks about himself in the first person (p. 32)
• Jesus makes no claim to be the Messiah (p. 32)

Results and Conclusions

The Seminar concluded that of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the five gospels, only about 18% of them Jesus actually said (red and pink sayings). Other findings included:

• Parables and Aphorisms: Jesus’ parables and aphorisms consistently ranked highest in the voting. This is not terribly surprising considering the first three assumptions listed above. That is, if prior to voting one of your "rules of evidence" is that the only sayings in the Gospels that can be traced back to the historical Jesus take the form of aphorisms and parables, then you shouldn't be too surprised when the votes are tallied that Jesus' parables and aphorisms end up at the top of your list.
• Jesus’ self-understanding: Jesus did not speak of himself as “Messiah” or “Son of God,” nor did he think of his death as having some greater purpose. Again, not a surprising conclusion given that one of the Seminar's a priori assumptions was that Jesus rarely made pronouncements about himself. spoke about himself in the first person (I guess he was kind of like Bob Dole in that regard) and made no claims to be the Messiah.
• Gospel of John: They concluded that John’s Gospel reflects little of the historical Jesus but is rather the creation of the community formed after the resurrection. Again, not surprising, since in the Gospel of John Jesus speaks in long discourses rather than in short pithy sayings.
• Eschatology (Last Things): The Seminar consistently voted “black” all sayings in which Jesus speaks about the “end of the world,” the last judgment, the coming of the Son of man, his own second coming, and so on.  Marcus Borg says this is “news” because it is a rejection of Albert Schweitzer’s conclusion. Not all NT scholars agree with Borg, however; in fact, most disagree (e.g., Bart Ehrman, Amy-Jill Levine & Paula Fredricksen).
• Kingdom of God: The Seminar voted “black” all the sayings of Jesus where Jesus speaks about the kingdom of God as occurring in the future. The Seminar voted “pink” and “red” many of those where he speaks about the kingdom as being in the present.
• The Lord’s Prayer: The Seminar voted that Jesus did not teach the Lord’s Prayer as we find it in the Gospels. They did conclude that parts of it were traceable to the historical Jesus.

As should be clear a number of the Seminar's conclusions follow directly from their prior assumptions, which has made them the target of a number of criticisms, often from other contemporary (liberal) scholars who don't share all of their assumptions (e.g., the agnostic Bart Ehrman), which is one of the reasons why the Seminar's goal of developing a scholarly consensus on the sayings attributed to Jesus has not been reached. However, the Seminar has done a fairly decent job of raising biblical consciousness of people in the pews. The introductory chapter of "The Five Gospels" is an excellent summary of what contemporary New Testament scholars do, and Robert Funk was a master at marketing the Seminar's work.

The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Part II: Background

In an earlier post ("Why the Quest for the Historical Jesus is Good for Mainline Protestant Ethics") I argued that quest for the historical Jesus was good for mainline Protestant ethics because it provided mainline Christians with a sense of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection from which they could derive an ethic that distinctly Christian. I also hinted that there were some methodological problems associated with the quest, and it is to that topic and others that I will begin to take up.  Before all of that, however, I thought it would be helpful to provide some historical background on the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus. Generally, scholars divide up the quest into three different quests, so that is how I organize this post.

The First Quest for the Historical Jesus

The first quest for the historical Jesus refers to the numerous attempts by various scholars from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century to use modern biblical criticism to discover who Jesus was, what he said, and what he did.  Most of the early quests were attempted by deists. Most assumed that Jesus was not divine, or at least not uniquely divine, and that God does not get involved in human affairs.  From their perspective, God is like a great clock maker, someone who wound up the world and let it go.

Although Hermann Reimarus (1695 – 1768) was not the first person to quest after the historical Jesus, he is generally seen as the founder of the movement. Reimarus concluded that Jesus wasn’t divine, that the miracles of the Bible didn’t happen, and so on.  Reimarus did not publish his findings during his lifetime, probably out of fear of what the Church might do to him. Instead, his student and friend Gotthold Lessing published his study after he died.

Reimarus heavily influenced David Strauss (1808 – 1874), who argued that there should be an "unprejudiced" investigation into the life of Jesus, by which he meant an investigation that was untainted by religious convictions (he evidently believed that it was OK, though, for such an investigation to be tainted by agnostic or atheistic convictions). Strauss assumed that the Gospels were full of myth and could not be taken at face value, so to discover what Jesus actually said and who he was, we need to first peel away the Bible’s myths and the miracles, and that is what he attempted to do.

There were a number of others who attempted to uncover the historical Jesus, and most of them assumed at the outset that miracles couldn’t happen, that Jesus wasn’t divine or at a minimum, that he did not consider himself to be divine, that the Resurrection didn’t happen, etc., but then along came Albert Schweitzer.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) was something of a renaissance man. He was an academic, a world-renowned organist, a medical doctor and a biblical scholar who gave up his academic career to found a mission hospital in Africa (Lambaréné Hospital – Republique du Gabon) for which in 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  In 1906, when he was 31, Schweitzer wrote a book called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” in which he summarized the various attempts to discover who Jesus actually was, what he said, and what he did. He concluded that most of these accounts were more autobiographical than historical. He believed they reflected the biases of the scholars themselves, rather than told us much about who Jesus actually was. “These scholars looked in the mirror, saw themselves, and said, ‘That’s Jesus.’”

Schweitzer’s book essentially ended the first quest for the historical Jesus. Part of the reason was that his analysis presented a Jesus that many academics were not interested in following.  Most of the first questers assumed that central to Jesus’ teachings was what Jesus called the “kingdom of God,” and that this kingdom, rather than something that would arrive in the future, was something that we can discover here and now.  Schweitzer argued that just the opposite was true. He concluded that Jesus truly believed that arrival of God’s kingdom was a future event that would occur in the near future.  Schweitzer didn’t believe in such an event, but he did believe that Jesus believed in one. In other words, Schweitzer thought that Jesus was mistaken, and because most academics concluded that Schweitzer was right, they were disheartened. They didn’t want to study, follow and worship an apocalyptic (and apparently mistaken) Jesus – so much of the motivation lying behind the first quest went away.

Schweitzer’s study also raised the question whether anyone can be objective enough to bracket out their own personal biases when studying the historical Jesus. Many concluded that it was impossible. Some went so far to argue that the historical details of Jesus’ life and ministry aren’t important for the Church. What is important, is the Christ of faith, by which they seemed to mean how Christians encounter the risen Christ in their lives.

The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus (1950 – 1970)

By the 1950s, however, scholars began to reject this position, arguing that if historical details of Jesus’ life could be uncovered, then they should be relevant for the Christian faith. Ernst Kasemann (1906-1998) helped give birth to the second quest, and he was joined by several other scholars, such as Herbert Braun (1903-1991), Ernst Fuchs (1903-1983), Gunther Bornkamm (1905-1990), Gerhard Ebeling (1912-2001), Hans Conzelmann (1915-1989), Walter Schmithals (1934- ) and James Robinson (1924- ) (Robinson is also considered as an active participant in the third quest).

The second quest viewed Jesus as completely dissimilar from the Judaism of his day and early Christian teaching, and from this perspective there developed one of the most important rules that scholars still use in identifying whether a particular saying of Jesus is genuine: namely, the principle of "discontinuity" which holds that when the Gospels report that Jesus did or said something that was different from prior Jewish tradition or later Christian teaching, then the saying or deed is probably authentic. They based this rule on the belief that that Jesus must have stood out from "human culture in order to have been memorable, compelling and original" (Catherine Murphy, The Historical Jesus for Dummies, p. 57).

While the principle of discontinuity still functions as one of the rules for identifying authentic deeds and sayings of Jesus, a lot of scholars found (and find) the rule implausible. "They wondered how anyone could have understood Jesus if he was so unusual" and "how could a tradition have developed after him that had so little continuity with his teachings?" (Murphy, p. 57). Thus, scholars started to develop new approaches to understanding the life of Jesus, one that argued that Jesus was best understood as a Jew and that his authentic teachings could be distilled from early Christian teaching, and it was these new approaches that helped set the stage for the third quest.

The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus (1980 – Present)

The 1980s mark the beginning of the third quest. Several scholars began drawing on the different critical methods of studying the Bible in an attempt to reconstruct what we know about Jesus in his historical and cultural context.

Instead of looking for Jesus' discontinuities with Judaism, early Christianity, and human culture, the third-quest scholars seek the opposite: continuities. For them, the goal is to create a plausible portrait of Jesus. In other words, they want to create a portrait that best explains all the evidence, fits Jesus into his time and place, and accounts best for what happened (Murphy, p. 59).

As Murphy points out, the final portrait that emerges from these scholars efforts depends largely on their assumptions/conclusions are about Jesus' primary activities, teachings and concerns as well as how they understands Jewish and Roman society at the time of Jesus. Consequently, in spite of determined efforts to be more objective than were the first questers, a number of different portraits of Jesus have emerged over the last 30 years (Murphy, p. 59):

• A wandering cynic philosopher who used primarily parables and pithy sayings to communicate his vision of God's kingdom
• An anti-Temple wisdom teacher
• A charismatic holy man and miracle worker
• A spirit-filled exorcist
• An end-time prophet
• A radical social reformer
• A rebel and social bandit

The best known scholars include John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, Bart Ehrman, N. T. Wright, Amy-Jill Levine, Paula Fredricksen, Geza Vermes, E. P. Sanders and John Meier. Perhaps the best known group of scholars that has pursued this topic is the Jesus Seminar, which is a group of scholars who met regularly for a number of years to vote on the authentic sayings and deeds of Jesus. The group, to say the least, is a bit controversial, and since they are a topic in their own right, the next post will be dedicated to them.

Unintended Consequences and Social Policy

In a recent podcast, Freakanomics author Stephen Dubner tells why he wears noise reduction headphones on his morning commute on the NY Subway ("Bring on the Pain"). It isn't so that he can listen to music (he generally doesn't). It isn't because he wants to block out the sound of the subway hurtling down the tracks (he actually enjoys listening to the "clackety-clack" of the trains traveling over the rails). It's because when he arrives at the station, the alarms set off by commuters exiting through "emergency exit only" doors are, according to Dubner, "downright painful" to listen to. At least they are to him.

Why do commuters use the emergency exit doors rather than the turnstiles that they are supposed to use? Because the new turnstiles that NY Metropolitan Transit Authority recently installed to prevent commuters from using the subway without paying aren't as efficient as the old ones, so they take longer to pass through, which causes lines to form and leads impatient commuters to use the emergency exit doors.

This is an example of what is commonly referred to as an "unintended consequence." The new turnstiles were installed to prevent cheating, but in so doing, they created a situation that ultimately generated a tremendous amount of noise pollution not to mention the fact that once an emergency exit door is opened, people can get on the subway for free (so much for preventing cheating).

Another example of an unintended consequence can be witnessed on many (if not most) airplane flights these days. With more and more airlines charging for baggage, more and more passengers have decided to carry their baggage on to the plane. However, because their carry-ons are often quite large, airline stewards spend an substantial amount of time arranging and rearranging luggage in order to get them fit into the overhead bins, and if that doesn't work, they have to gate-check them.  What's the unintended consequences here? Overhead bins are fuller, it takes longer for passengers (and their luggage) to settle into their seats, planes are often late in leaving the gate, and connections between flights are tighter.

Or, consider one of the reasons why the unemployment rate tends to be higher in European countries than it is in the US: it is because the "replacement rate" in Europe is higher. That is, because unemployment benefits are typically higher in Europe than they are in the US, there is less incentive for European workers to seek employment than there is for US workers. Hence, the unemployment rate in the US tends to be lower, which helps the US economy outperform most European economies, which in turn places additional downward pressure on the US unemployment rate.

This last example is why many lawmakers and policy wonks often oppose certain social programs -- not because they think the program's intended benefits don't help people (they almost always do) but because the unintended costs (e.g., higher unemployment, lower economic output) cause more harm than the good the programs generate.

Of course, such criticism are empirical in nature, which means that they can be put to the test. In other words, just because a particular social program has unintended costs doesn't mean that they outweigh the benefits the program confers. However, it does seem to me that if we want to defend a particular social program, we must first acknowledge that there could be costs associated with it that may not be immediately obvious, and then we need to do our best to determine what those costs are. Only then, I believe, can we have an honest debate about whether it is worth keeping or not. My guess is that there are a number of programs out there that appear wonderful on the surface but either do more harm than good or provide few net benefits which means that our money could probably be better spent. But until we do our homework, we won't know. However, in an era of severe budget constraints, this seems like the moral thing to do.