Deep Thoughts on Barry Bonds and Ecology

Deep Thoughts on Barry Bonds and Ecology

by Joshua Ashton Hill


I love 3 things: God, sports, and nature. No wonder I’m so conflicted right now: Barry Bonds broke the all-time home run record, potentially unnaturally. So how can a faithful follower of Jesus and baseball ever forgive him?

It is likely that the controversies will never totally rest unless empirical evidence sedates it. And that’s a long shot. So, perhaps better than asking if Barry Bonds took steroids, we should be examining why anyone would take them in the first place. A popular theory is that baseball—-a game requiring patience, strategy, and 7th inning stretches—-is otherwise simply losing appeal in our culture of instant gratification. It needed enhancement.

Don’t Blame Barry. Enhancement is the backbone of our economy. We have television shows called Dr. 90210 and Nip Tuck that feature anatomical enhancement. And it doesn’t stop with our bodies. We cultivate enhanced food that grows bigger, preserves longer, and ships farther. Just like baseball, regular peaches just aren’t good enough anymore.

Agreed--some enhancements are undeniably helpful. My favorite is the toilet. But the usefulness of some enhancements are disputable. Just conduct an informal poll on women’s attitudes toward “natural male enhancement.”

One would think all these enhancements would culminate in an enhanced civilization. In some ways it has, yet, enhancement partners with a dark barbarism—-ignorance of the raw inputs of our daily sustenance. What an obvious and arrogant rejection of the way things are supposed to be. And now I get preachy.

Heed the words of environmental sage Aldo Leopold: “There are two spiritual dangers of not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

Observing and obeying the natural processes of biology is the foundation for our humanity and our faithfulness to God. When we live beyond and apart from those processes, we’re doing more than enhancing our bodies, our food, and our merchandise. We’re attempting to augment our existence so that we become gods--separate from and masters over nature, exercising enhanced freedom and rationality. Scrapping our humanity.

I’m reminded of the story of Adam and Eve. They just weren’t satisfied with the perfection of the Garden of Eden, and they tried to enhance their knowledge of Good and Evil by eating the forbidden fruit. The upshot is that humans who seek immortality find shame and death. It doesn’t matter if the story is factual or not; what matters is that it’s still true today.

In addition to the spiritual problem, if you must separate the two, there are physical, ecologic crises that pour forth from our culture of enhancement. Global climate change and biodiversity loss put Barry Bonds into perspective and signal the fact that we’re repeating the mistakes of Adam and Eve. The only difference is that our forbidden fruit is fossil fuels. And we’re desperate for them like addicts who need a fix.

Consider cocaine. Its effects are caused by borrowing tomorrow’s dopamine for a double-dose today. We’re like that. We’re so desperate for our luxuries today that we’ll sacrifice the ecological integrity of tomorrow. And, unless there is a major change, we’ll crash tomorrow for the excesses of today, just like a cocaine user.

What’s crazy is that we show actual psychological symptoms of addiction to fossil fuels. We’re dependent. We take the drug in order to mitigate the sobering effects of withdrawal. We say, “Whatever we have to steal and pawn, it’s worth it if we can maintain the illusion of immortality until we die. It doesn’t matter what the lasting effects are, just so long as we can remain blissfully disconnected from the true character and pace of natural growth and decay.”

We must return to the basics of our humanity. We have to go to rehab.
I don’t claim to possess the answer to baseball’s crisis or the restoration of the Earth, but I do know one time-tested way of gaining much-needed insight and perspective.

Here’s one way to start: Sit. Breathe deeply and inhabit your body. It is fine the way it is. The eternal is fully present, even within you. Start with that. Be grateful for it. Smile and know that the truly good things in life are not only free but abundant, if we have patience.

Back when patience was a virtue and not a liability, baseball was a great game without need of enhancement. Back when we had time to sit and watch birds, we appreciated things as they were. We didn’t need “cheap” electricity. We didn’t need grapes in the winter.

If enhancements do not promote sustainability, community, health, and wholeness, they aren’t enhancements. They are distractions that divert our attention from what really matters.

For some, Barry Bonds will always represent a scar on the history of baseball. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, I suggest we look deeper. The humility and grace with which Bonds has navigated a potential crisis suggests that he has drawn strength and balance from a deep place.

So I forgive you, Barry, for what it’s worth. You have reminded us of the more important things that require our immediate attention.



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