Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

Well, a very happy Friday to you all. May your weekend be filled with lots of excellent football and hopefully be extended through Monday as well for the holiday. Either way, we have another mailbag, so yay! All your questions answered in wildly unsatisfactory manner, but you get what you pay for, right?

Q: The Polibyte asks: “Dear Mr. Mailman, please oh please tell us your thoughts about the 2020 CFP championship!”

A: “Mr. Mailman, did you just use a moniker to ask yourself a question and hijack the first few paragraphs of the mailbag?” Whatever could have given you that lively impression, oh so impressionable reader?

First of all, Joe Burrow made his case for the greatest college football season of all time. He broke record after record, crushed his enemies under his feet, won the Heisman trophy in a landslide, beat seven (seven, folks!) top-10 teams, and capped it all off with a dominating playoff win. Heck, the man even threw a pass to himself. Of course, the interesting thing going forward will be to see how he translates this success to the NFL. Everybody thinks he’s going to the Bengals (which he probably is), but there is an idea floating around that the Saints may be looking to trade up to get him since he’s been basically been running their offense at LSU. That could make for a very interesting transition in New Orleans; Drew Brees finishes out the next 1-2 years of his career and passes the torch off to a well-trained Joe Burrow. I’ll certainly take that. Regardless, let’s be grateful for witnessing what may be the performance of a generation.

Second, there has got to be a reworking of the targeting rule. In what had to be just a delicious, little slice of irony, it was Clemson this time that suffered under the gun of an overzealous technicality. Yes, I know what the rule says, and I think the rule is just brutal. As in the OSU-Clemson game, the LSU defender ducked his head into the hit. It’s what offensive players do, and defensive players have no time to course-correct. The tackling motion naturally brings the crown of the helmet into the play, and incidental contact is very likely on a play like that. There is a world of difference between incidental contact and actual targeting. Some have suggested a two-tier system, and I would gladly take that over the current setup. Stop throwing people out of the game for incidental contact.

Third, let me put on my bitter Buckeye hat really quick, just for my sake (skip to the next question if you’ve heard enough of this from us dissenters). The game was a lot of fun, Clemson played hard, but I think this game legitimated the case that Clemson was handed their opportunity. Last time, they needed OSU to have an unbelievable streak of scoring failures, and they needed a healthy dose of favorable officiating. They didn’t get that this time, and they got smoked. As it so happened, I watched the game with a Clemson fan, and the first words out of her mouth to me were, “You guys got cheated.” She was exceptionally gracious to say that, and I wonder if Clemson kind of knew this deep down, especially when LSU started to pull away. As I watched that game, I couldn’t help but feel like it was roughly how the OSU-Clemson game should have gone. Equal distribution of good and bad officiating, LSU capitalizing on its red zone opportunities, etc. OSU and its fanbase will eternally put an asterisk next to this playoff series. At the very least, it’s hard not to feel like we missed a better game for a good game. We talked all year about whether LSU or OSU was truly #1, but we never got the head-to-head matchup to prove it. Clemson was good, definitely top-four good, but I think they got truly lucky to be in the finals. But again, I’m rankly partisan, so what do I know?

Q: Marcus Aurelius asks: “Do you believe in the right to self-defense? If so, how does this square with the command to turn the other cheek?”

A: Tl;dr: Yes/Just fine.

Actual answer: I remember when I was high school, we had this question come up one day, and I was genuinely surprised at how many of my classmates basically said, “Yup, school shooter comes by, we’re not going to do anything to stop him,” and this was basically the command they used to justify that stance. Well, I had never really taken issue with that command, but I’d have been a monkey’s uncle if that didn’t seem like an undue application of the command. I think it was basically me vs. the high school for about three weeks on this issue, including one very odd instance where someone retorted, “That verse doesn’t count! It’s from the Old Testament.” So time passed, and the debate continued until one day, the principal was discussing some recent policy changes that were going to happen to improve school security, one of which was the possibility of having concealed carry at school for select teachers, to which one of my classmates asked, “Wait, if someone came into the school, would you shoot them?” And as my principal swiftly answered, “Oh yeah, in a heartbeat,” the stunned silence was all my smirking face needed for smug satisfaction.

I hope I’ve grown less smug since then—maybe not, but I like to think so—but my views on this issue haven’t really changed. I do not buy the whole, “let yourself be slaughtered because you’ll go to heaven, while the other guy could go to hell if you killed him” argument because it is at best very narrowly applied and breaks down as you as soon as you add other people. I’ll be honest, I really hope I never have to use my right to self-defense; the idea actually terrifies me. But if it comes down to my family or the guy with an axe, he better hope that axe can stop multiple 9mm rounds.

As for the command, I really think you have to take that command in complete isolation to get the idea that it calls everyone to complete pacifism and non-resistance. Allow me to quote from N.T. Wright on the matter:

Jesus’ teachings here are not about behaving nicely so that God will reward you with a place in a ‘kingdom’ called ‘heaven.’ The sermon [on the mount] is, rather, the agenda for kingdom-people who want to work the kingdom…These sayings are about the type of people through whom Jesus intends blessings to flow to others. When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t launch missiles. Instead, he sends in the meek, the mourners, and the merciful…

Other sayings, in the sermon point in much the same direction. ‘Do not resist evil’; ‘turn the other cheek’; ‘go the second mile’; these are not invitations to ‘be a doormat for Jesus’ [bold added]. They constitute a warning not to get involved in the ever-present resistance movement. Jesus was urging his hearers to discover the true vocation of Israel—to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the city set on a hill that could not be hidden…That was what the renewed Israel of the new age was supposed to look like.

The New Testament and Its World, N.T. Wright.

Q: Kenneth asks: “What did you think of The Rise of Skywalker? Yay? Nay? Okay?

A: Okay…a lot of okay. Faithful readers of the mailbag will know that I considered The Last Jedi nigh on sacrilegious to the Star Wars mythos, something like the proverbial “pig on the altar” of the whole saga. So, I went to see RoS just kind of wanting the whole thing to end…and it did, so I guess I got what I wanted. But, after all the retconning that went on in that movie, I wish they just would have stuck with the Last Jedi threads and built something from that. RoS had some interesting ideas, but it was horribly rushed, to the point where I just couldn’t really enjoy it all that much. “Oh look Palpatine is back! And [spoiler alert] [spoiler alert] [spoiler alert] Rey is his granddaughter, and look over here! Lando Calrissian! Leia! Sith Holocrons! All the Sith! Lightning!!!! So much lightning!!!!! Kissing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Skywalkerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Done…*exhales slowly*

Good grief, at least with Last Jedi we had a steady pace, a coherent albeit crappy plot, and some baller action sequences. RoS feels more like it’s Wednesday night, and the trashmen are coming on Friday, but you don’t want to break out another trash bag just yet, so you end up stuffing 5 gallons worth of junk into the remaining 2 gallons of space, only to have blow out the side all over your freshly bathed, wide-eyed golden lab puppy.

Moving forward, I hope Star Wars follows The Mandalorian style of story-telling. I don’t need universe-ending odds in every saga; my brain just can’t take it all seriously, but a captivating story about the budding relationship between Baby Yoda and a trained assassin? That I can get invested in. Plus, look at this kid. He’s adorable…

A Final Reflection:

I’m genuinely curious for audience thoughts on a question that’s been floating around my head. Where do you all draw the line on media consumption, if any at all, and why do you draw that line? Is it a time restraint or a content restraint or a genre restraint? Feel free to discuss among yourselves; I’d genuinely like to hear your thoughts. Until then, do enjoy the weekend and have a blessed day.