“More than a Game”

	General George Washington

General George Washington (1732-1799) a man who enjoyed the universal adulation of a fledgling nation for having orchestrated the surrender of the British Army, responded to those at war's end who wished to make him their monarch: "'banish these thoughts from your Mind'". Washington, appointed by Congress to lead a war against a King, could think of nothing more abhorrent then to be enthroned as a despot of a freshly liberated people. When King George III (1738-1820) heard of Washington's refusal to accept the crown and thus become "King of America", the British monarch is quoted as having said in a mixture of surprise and admiration, that any man capable of refusing such an honour must be "the greatest man in the world" (Ellis, 2005, p. 139). Thus Washington, whom legend ascribes that as a boy could not tell a lie about cutting down a cherry tree, as an adult, was not prepared to live a lie.

The Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, defines 'virtue' in Protagoras as the deliberate act of the will to do good. Extending on from this definition of virtue, the same philosopher, in his Republic (Book II) provides us with an interesting scenario of a humble shepherd in the province of Lydia. A thunderstorm begins, an earthquake follows, and the ground from beneath the shepherd's feet sluices in two. Inside the crevasse the shepherd sees a corpse with a gold ring on its finger. Cutting the ring free, he places the band on his hand. Wearing the ring at a council meeting of the King's shepherds, the shepherd begins to fidget with the ring and in the process turns the face of the ring inwards. On so doing, he notices that the other shepherds begin speaking about him as if he had left the meeting. The treasure which the shepherd discovered offers him the opportunity to become invisible each time the ring is turned inward. Plato then tells us, that this once meek shepherd finds his way invisibly into the King's castle, seduces the Queen and then murders the King, taking the kingdom as his own. The purpose of Plato's story lies in the question — so what would you do if you were given such a power, would you remain virtuous in your actions, or would you become corrupt because now you have the means to be so? What price would you place on personal virtue if you were offered temporal wealth, power and prestige as an exchange?

Sadly one of the most prominent examples of virtue being under fire in our society is in the area of professional sport. Not only do we pay sportsmen and sportswomen extraordinary salaries but we idolize these men and women to the point of excusing their sometimes poor and criminal behaviours. Their salaries, and enormous public adulation like the shepherd's magical ring, seem too often to corrupt our elite athletes, forging within them the belief that their actions somehow remain unseen for what they are.

Many years ago, Frantz Fanon, in his work The Wretched of the Earth (1963, p. 158), analysed the destructive tendency of sport if not stringently combined with virtue. As Fanon wrote: "if you turn out national sportsmen and not fully conscious men, you will quickly see sport rotted by professionalism and commercialism … We ought to uplift the people; we must develop their brains, fill them with ideas, change them and make them into human beings".

	Plato

Plato also teaches us in Clitophon something very similar when he stated over two thousand years before Fanon, that: "those who discipline the body while neglecting the soul are … neglecting that which should rule while busying themselves with that which should be ruled … someone who doesn't know how to use his soul is better off putting his soul to rest and not living at all rather than leading a life in which his actions are based on nothing but personal whim". (Plato: The Complete Works, 1997, p. 997)

Thus as the athlete is trained for physical achievement, so they must train their spirits in order to be people of character and example. If the mere playing of sport indeed builds character, then our elite athletes would universally be paragons of virtue. Rather, John Wooden (b. 1910), widely regarded as the greatest College Basketball Coach in United States history, wisely comments as a retort: "Sports do not build character. They reveal it". If our sporting heroes continue to disappoint it is because they have concentrated on their physical development rather than their spiritual. Similarly if our businessmen or academics continue to disappoint it is because these people have excelled at gaining profits or writing texts, but have not sought to develop that God-given gift that lies within them — virtue.

St John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom recognizing that the practice of a virtuous life involves the deliberate choice by the individual of good over evil, spoke in his Homily 21 of the critical need for parents and teachers to educate and form children in the art of right living. In Chrysostom's words: "A pattern of life is what is needed, not empty speeches; character, not cleverness; deeds, not words. These things will secure the Kingdom and bestow God's blessings. Don't sharpen his tongue, but purify his soul". (St. John Chrysostom, 1991, p. 69)

According to Chrysostom it is the virtuous life that gives the individual strength to withstand the temptations and tribulations of the world: "All these great men looked at this present life as nothing; they did not thirst for riches or other earthly attachments. Tell me, which trees are best? Do we not prefer those that are inwardly strong, and are not injured by rainstorms, or hail, or gusts of wind, or by any sort of harsh weather, but stand exposed to them all without fences or garden to protect them? He who truly loves wisdom is like this…". (St. John Chrysostom, 1991, p. 70)

It is the choices we make that tell the world who we truly are, for each act of the will, reveals virtue or a lack thereof. In the case of Washington he gave up a kingdom in order to be faithful to a promise. Whether we like it or not each one of us is a role model for innumerable people every day in how to live or how not to live a virtuous life. Our every public action teaches others something about who we are at the core of our being, and what we value, and at what price, if any, we will "sell out". Every adult is an automatic role model to every child they meet; every older brother a role model to their younger sibling; every mother a role model to her daughter; every father a role model to his son — ad infinitum. The individual who wishes nought else but to live their life and not be an example of virtue to any other person, wishes in fact to live fully their desires, and not to be haunted by a poor conscience at some later stage that somewhere their hedonistic behaviour may have had the potential to lead someone else astray and corrupt this third party from the path of virtue. For life is more than a game, and the confines, the content and ramifications of life and living extend far beyond the perimeters of any sporting field.

The powerful account in the Gospels of Christ's temptation in the desert illustrates to all men and women that nothing the world can offer is ever worth bartering personal virtue in order to obtain. For in essence by bartering the infinite virtue for a temporal object we exchange that which is eternal for something which has the capacity to rot, disintegrate, age and be destroyed. In short, anything less than that which is eternal is not worth giving up virtue. Christ's example in rejecting the temptations offered by the devil, in turning down all the kingdoms and wealth of this world, illustrates our need to be watchful in guarding the gate to our spirit, careful not even to hint to set a price for personal virtue. For at the end of our lives as Meister Eckhart ironically reminds us, it is better to have nothing in this world but to have God, than to have everything in this world without God; for in the former case, with virtue, we have all possibilities and life, in the latter case, we invariably have a steady demise and a spiritual death.

©2007 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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