The Vilification of JoePa

Joe Paterno 1926-2012

Joe Paterno arrived at Pennsylvania State College in 1950.  It was located thirty miles from the nearest railroad station and you drove there on secondary roads.  It wasn’t on a route between population centers, so it wasn’t even a rest stop for travelers.  Today Pennsylvania State University enrolls over 44,000 students and is serviced by highways able to move the 107,000 fans who attend Nittany Lions football games.

In 1955 Paterno became the head football coach and turned Penn State into a powerhouse.  His teams won two national championships and he holds the major college record for wins.  He lived in a modest house on campus and didn’t seek the big money contracts other coaches demanded, preferring to donate millions to the university.    In a collegiate sports world where the ideal of “student athlete” is often an oxymoron, Paterno insisted on producing players who earned degrees for 46 years. 

Paterno lived by his Christian principles and emphasized the work ethic and the importance of fair play.  His integrity imbued the university with a sense of specialness;  if you’ve ever met a Penn Stater you know what I mean.   Joe shared his sense of decency widely, whether holding the door for a student, calling an underclassman’s  cancer-stricken parent or getting out of  his car to castigate a student he saw littering.  It was an indelible moment for the litterer, who thought it was like being reprimanded by God.

He earned the endearing nickname “JoePa.”

He was an 85 year-old man who dedicated his long life to his faith and the moral pursuit of excellence.  Thousands of kind gestures.  Generous donations.  Untold lives inspired, improved and turned around.

Then, the week after breaking the record for total wins, a former assistant coach was charged with sexual abuse of a child and Paterno was accused of quashing it.  The national media and a chorus of indignant, condescending, shrill voices demanded action against him.  Within a week, a stellar reputation was torched and a legend  fired in a phone call by trustees who didn’t have the decency to tell him in person.  They even removed his name from the Big Ten championship trophy.

In 2002 a graduate assistant told Paterno about an incident he had witnessed but withheld  the details from him.  Paterno  followed procedure and notified university officials.  He was pilloried for not doing more, but just what did they expect him to do?  Appoint himself judge, jury and executioner on the basis of hearsay?  

The Bible tells us it’s not our place to judge, and Paterno responsibly turned the case over to those in a position to investigate.   Nevertheless the media salivated over the chance to ruin a good man and dogged him with video cameras and microphones, today’s equivalent of torches and pitchforks.

Joe Paterno died last weekend, 11 weeks after the scandal broke.  History may well vacate the kangaroo court’s decision, but in the meantime the only judge who counts is no doubt welcoming JoePa with open arms.

 Photo credit: dailyherald.com

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the intense, creative, groundbreaking, domineering, obsessive  co-founder of Apple Computer was the face of cutting edge technology.   The world was stunned when he died.

 He gave a commencement speech at Stanford University.  An excerpt:

 “No one wants to die.  Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.  And yet death is the destination we all share.  No one has ever escaped it.  And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life.  It’s life’s change agent:  it clears the old to make way for the new.  Right now, the new is you.  But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become old and be cleared away.  Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true.” 

 Andy Crouch of Christianity Today saw him as a secular evangelist for technology-generated hope when he “strode on stage with a miracle in his pocket.”   But his cold outlook was godless, soulless, self-centered, morally neutral and offered no promise of an afterlife.  On 60 Minutes Jobs said “You’re born alone, you’re gonna die alone.  And does anything else really matter?  I mean what is it exactly, is it that you have to lose?  You know?  There’s nothing.”

 This was consistent with his embrace of Zen Buddhism, which is non-theistic and denies the existence of self. 

 But impending death challenged him.  He told biographer Walter Isaacson  “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t.  I think it’s 50-50 maybe.  But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more.  And I find myself believing a bit more….. maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife.’ 

 Steve Jobs was consumed with work to the exclusion of many other things, including God.  Once his illness slowed him down he seems to have sensed Him and decided there was a better than even chance for an afterlife after all.  Shortly before he died Jobs told his sister “that he was going to a better place.”

“Oh wow, Oh wow, Oh wow” were Steve Jobs’ last words.  Peggy Noonan, writing in, The Wall Street Journal, thinks they “were the best thing said in 2011.”  “What happened  there that he looked away from his family and expressed what sounds like awe?”

Noonan told of a friend whose son died at home, surrounded by family.  “As Robert breathed his last an infant in the room let out a great baby laugh as if he saw something joyous, wonderful and gestured toward the area above Robert’s head.  The infant’s mother, startled, moved to shush him but my friend, her mother, said no, maybe he’s reacting to …something only babies see.”  And the dying person experiences.

 Monumental wealth, fame and success still leaves one guessing about the afterlife.  Steve Jobs learned it exists when he finally met God.  It would have been better if he’d been a Christian and known Him long before he died.