photo by Andy
For a football player best known for taking the heads off his opponents, Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu seems to have his own screwed on pretty straight.
Polamalu, one of the National Football League’s most respected and feared players, recently talked with Gina Mazza for Pittsburgh magazine about football, family … and faith.
“If anybody believes in God and believes in the Holy Bible, how can you be in any grey area?” he says. “I’m talking about myself here, how can ‘I’ think one way and do another way? To me, Christianity is very black and white. Either you take it serious or you don’t take it serious at all.”
Polamalu talks at length on how monks from the Greek Orthodox church — the wing of Christianity to which Polamalu belongs — express their theology right down to their clothes and facial hair. The monks wear beards to steer clear of vanity; they rarely talk to avoid arrogance; they turn their eyes down to stay away temptation. While he says not everyone was meant to be a monastic — and Polamalu, with his flowing hair and propensity for highlight-reel hits, doesn’t strike me as a particularly retiring soul — the NFL safety does seem to have a great appreciation of humility, saying that you can’t have an “experience of God” without it.
Thanks to Steve Beard’s Thunderstruck for steering me to this story. It’s worth a read.
