麻豆社

Good Morning

It's the climax of the Premier League football season tomorrow and also the end of an era. Three of the league's best-known referees - Mike Dean, John Moss and Martin Atkinson - are each hanging up their whistles. That's a lot of experience to lose all at once.

Like many other football fans, I have a complicated relationship with referees. Very occasionally, I feel sorry for them. But most of the time, they infuriate me, usually because of inconsistency in decision making. Surely, all they must do, without bias, is to interpret a set of rules and ensure fair play?

Often, however, the reality and the truth are altogether different. And anyone who has to make immediate decisions against a backdrop of unpredictable contributing factors which have consequences for others may sympathise.

In football it鈥檚 true that the context of each match - the crowd, the players and weather- means that no two games are the same. But that鈥檚 also the case for others in their jobs and personal lives. Interpreting rules involves making judgement calls which are rarely cut and dried or please everyone. .

Whilst writing his book Power and Christian Theology, the late Bishop Stephen Sykes, outlines the astonishing contradictions many face when making all kinds of decisions. "Christian theology", he wrote "sets the whole human existence in a deeply ambiguous context, a world of overlapping powers in which we are enmeshed." In other words, making a judgement call is a complex process with competing factors often affecting any final decision.

So, in many ways, the vulnerability to criticism often faced by contemporary referees, despite the advent of new technology highlights the characteristic of contemporary culture to demand the right decision and to want it now. What one may see as a clear-cut case of right or wrong, true or false, is interpreted by another as the exact opposite.

For sure it鈥檚 hard to make the right decision every time. When Jesus said Let they who are without sin cast the first stone, I'm sure he鈥檚 right. And in today鈥檚 cultural context, in the heat of the moment, even more so whether on the pitch or any decision you and I may be called upon to make today.

Show less