When Rav Soloveitchik Is Linked To Basketball (The Messianic Days?)

In a New York Times Op-ed, the religious struggles of a basket-ball player (Jeremy Lin) - humbleness vs Playing for glory, are compared to Rav Soloveitchik:

Soloveitchik plays off the text that humans are products of God’s breath and the dust of the earth, and these two natures have different moral qualities, which he calls the morality of majesty and the morality of humility. They exist in creative tension with each other and the religious person shuttles between them, feeling lonely and slightly out of place in both experiences.

Jeremy Lin is now living this creative contradiction. Much of the anger that arises when religion mixes with sport or with politics comes from people who want to deny that this contradiction exists and who want to live in a world in which there is only one morality, one set of qualities and where everything is easy, untragic and clean. Life and religion are more complicated than that.

I take my hat off to the author David Brooks, for this unique viewpoint on professional sports.