Spotlight on ball tampering reveals bigger moral questions

At Easter, think of the importance of character and morality,

CERTAIN

moments in history matter more than others. The ball-tampering incident is one of those. Planned, collective cheating. It reflects poorly not just on Australian cricket, but Australian values.

“It’s just not cricket” was more than a sporting slogan. It meant you did the right, honourable, fair thing.

Combine this with the banking royal commission. Banks were a secure, stable institution.

The bank manager was a trusted member of the community — someone who might sign legal documents.

Bank staff now have the reputation of being brokers who sell loans, investments, and insurance, policies that maximise their personal commission and company profits.

These are two spaces where reputation and honour have been traded away for personal gain. Both are a sign of our lack of a clear, comprehensive, coherent morality.

It’s not that we don’t discuss morality in public.

We do, but only certain evils — abuse, violence, discrimination, and the like. These are wrong. And we ought to speak up against them.

But there are few if any spaces where we publicly affirm positive virtues like honesty, integrity, and humility. Being a person of character is less celebrated than being “successful”.

Once we get past naming these agreed certain evils, morality gets vague, fuzzy.

The present emphasis on the individual’s right to choose eclipses discussions about common shared values. In short our morality is something like — don’t commit one of those big evils, but apart from that you can choose what is right for you.

Our values drift — until someone drifts onto the rocks! Until someone cheats, or lies, and is caught out. Then we all declare a moral shipwreck, with shared hysteria. And can’t social media facilitate shared hysteria. We point the finger, blame, and call for heads to roll.

We now wait for the ACB, and other sporting codes to introduce yet another player education module.

I suggest education, or lack thereof, is not the problem. It is a culture wide phenomenon — celebrating success above character.

It happens in workplaces, schools, on amateur sports fields, and in our homes. Add to that our worship of sporting heroes, and the ‘bubble’ that

many professional sports persons live in. You have a recipe for a desire to win, whatever it takes.

Is there a way back for Smith, Warner, or Bancroft? That brings us to another (far more) important moment in history — the first Easter.

Jesus lived in an age with its own accepted religious practices. Get circumcised, follow the food laws, and don’t work on the Sabbath. Back in Jesus’s day, external behaviours were more celebrated than character. In contrast, Jesus lives out a positive ethic of serving others, being merciful, a peace maker, gracious and forgiving.

In the first Easter a few people also experienced a moral shipwreck.

Judas betrays Jesus, Peter disowns him, and the crowds cry “Crucify him”. Jesus does not point the finger, blame, or call for heads to roll. On the contrary. From the cross, still suffering, Jesus says “Father, forgive them”.

So does Jesus justly lightly forgive, and promptly forget? Am I suggesting we do that for Steve Smith? No.

Before the restoration of broken relationships comes repentance. Genuine contrition, a change of heart, followed by a desire to turn around, and put things right. Peter walks this path. Judas does not.

For me, there is an odd correlation between the essence of Easter — that we are called to live and serve others, forgive others, as we have been forgiven — and ball tampering. The more our cultural values drift from a shared positive moral framework, as found in the teachings of Jesus, towards self and success, the more moral shipwrecks we might see. God save us.

David Rietveld is senior pastor at Victoria’s New Peninsula Baptist Church and former minister at Wellspring Anglican Church, Sandy Bay.