I have only a few observations of this subject, which I should note are all going to be influenced by the fact that I personally love Andy Pettitte.
- Pettitte claims to have taken HGH while injured. Honestly, taking HGH while injured does not bother me in the slightest, provided it is taken with a doctor's approval. In this case, Pettitte does not appear to have received this approval. This is unfortunate, and certainly implies that what he was doing was at least illegal from a U.S. law standpoint, if not a MLB standpoint. Personally, I don't see the difference between taking a drug to help you recover from injury and having surgery to help you recover from injury.
- As far as actually using HGH is concerned, I will simply reiterate that we actually don't know anything about the effects of HGH on athletic performance. In fact the best evidence that we have is that it does not help athletic performance. This is a highly relevant point.
- In some circles, there has been gloating over that fact that Pettitte, a devout Christian, has been busted doing something illegal in a very public setting. Some people, it seems, like nothing more than to see publicly religious people exposed as being just like everyone else. This is a sad situation. Being Christian means holding yourself to a higher standard. It doesn't mean that you are always going to live up to that standard. That's not hypocrisy; that's humanity. Hypocrisy is holding others to a higher standard than you hold yourself. In his statement, Andy admits that he "was not comfortable" with what he was doing, and so he stopped. It sounds to me like he was holding himself to the same standard to which he professes to hold others. When violating that standard rightly disturbed his conscience, he quit engaging in the behavior that he felt was wrong. Provided that his account is sincere, which admittedly it may not be, any gloating over the public humiliation of Andy Pettitte exposes both a misunderstanding of what it means to be Christian and a bigoted view of Christianity.
2 comments:
I agree John. Being a Christian doesn't make Andy any less of a man. And being a man doesn't make him any less of a Christian.
John - fabulous! The secularist's cure for supposed hypocrisy is to lower your standards so you have none to fail to live up to. Your explanation of hypocrisy as failing to hold yourself to the same standard you hold others is right on the mark.
Post a Comment