I was raised into the Roman Catholic rite unto the Charismatic tradition. For my time as a believer, I was afraid of vice and genuinely believed skipping Sunday Mass or premarital sex or any other grave sin would damn one to eternal hellfire lest one expressz penance. It is only recent I’ve finally reconciled my miserable experiences which forged a belligerent anti-theism. I now feel comfortable espousing more tempered apatheism which substitutes Phanaticism for civic religion as described below, and my only advice to you is to understand spirituality need not be synonymous with guilt nor self-flagellation:
Now it all makes sense.
You bleed for your team, you follow them through thick and thin, you monitor every free-agent signing, you immerse yourself in Draft Day, you purchase the jerseys and caps, you plan your nights around the games ... and there's a little rainbow waiting at the end. You can't see it, but you know it's there. It's there. It has to be there. So you believe. Of course, there's one catch: You might never get there. Every fan's worst fear. All that energy over the years just getting displaced, no release, no satisfaction, nothing. Season after season, no championship ... and then you die. I mean, isn't that what this is all about? Isn't that the nagging fear? That those little moral victories over the years won't make up for that big payoff at the end -- that one moment when everything comes together, when your team keeps winning, when you keep getting the breaks and you just can't lose.
And if none of this makes sense, well ... it does to me. My team just won the Super Bowl.
