The pursuit of excellence...

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear:

O clouds unfold!Bring me my Chariot of fire!

- William Blake

Although I recognize that the word amateur often has pejorative connotations, I am personally drawn to the idea and ideal of the amateur. I generally prefer amateur to professional athletics and deplore the intrusion of a professional ethic into lower levels of athletics—until even youth sports are deadly serious, drained of the joy of the game by the relentless pursuit of quasi-professional athletic excellence. I am likewise suspicious of advertisers' attempts to convince me to hire professionals because as an amateur I would surely botch the job. We live in the age of the professional. I long for the age of the amateur, when a da Vinci could excel in science and art and a Newton and a Leibniz could not only each independently invent calculus but explore moral philosophy and theology as well.The word amateur derives from the Latin for "love." An amateur is at root a lover—a lover of sport, science, art, and so forth. It is this sense of amateur that I believe we must preserve if we are to achieve a more excellent way. There is much to recommend the professional ethic, including rigor, methodology, high standards of review, and so forth. Yet I hope we never cease to be amateurs in our professions—that is, passionate devotees of our disciplines.

The film Chariots of Fire is organized around the contrast between the professional and the amateur. The movie tells the true story of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell—both gifted sprinters and both, eventually, gold medalists in the 1924 Olympics. Abrahams exemplifies the spirit of the professional: he is driven, highly coached, obsessed with winning and personal glory. Liddell, by contrast, embodies the spirit of the amateur: he is joyous, heartfelt, animated by the love of running and the glory of God. Abrahams runs on his nerves; when asked why he runs, he says winning is a weapon against pervasive anti-Semitism. Liddell runs from his heart; he says he runs for God.We see this contrast in their respective running styles. Abrahams' running is technically sophisticated and fierce; he scowls his way across the finish line. By contrast, Liddell runs like a wild animal across the hillsides. At a certain point in each race, Liddell leans back his head, opens his mouth, and turns on the jets—abandoning himself to the pure expression of his divine gift. This accurate portrayal of Liddell's running style symbolizes that his running is inspired. Inspire literally means "breathed into" by God. Liddell's inspired passion for his sport is captured by a famous line from the movie spoken to his sister Jenny, who is worried that he is forgetting his higher commitment to God and to an eventual mission to China:"I believe that God made me for a purpose. For China. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. To give it up would be to hold Him in contempt. You were right. It's not just fun. To win is to honor Him."Liddell is required to choose between God and a possible Olympic gold medal. His qualifying heat for the 100-meter dash is scheduled for Sunday. Against great pressure, including from the Prince of Wales, he refuses to violate the Sabbath. Fortunately, he is given a chance to run the 400-meter dash instead and wins the gold.As an amateur runner, Eric Liddell exemplified a more excellent way to greatness—a way rooted in love for his discipline and the divine. I see Liddell as a model for the kind of excellence we should seek in our lives. Most of you will agree that we need to be committed not just to winning but to the larger purposes of existence. By the same token, we need not only to run like the wind, figuratively speaking, but to run for God; delight in the intellectual gifts that make us strong of judgment and quick of wit, yet exercise them in the context of our covenants; pursue our careers with vigor, not for laud but for love. Which is to say that we need to be professionally excellent but still retain the spirit of the amateur.

Ours should be a more excellent way to personal excellence.I am constantly reminded of my childhood whenever i think of excellence. I grew up in a town called Jamshedpur, which is home to the Tatas. Tatas exemplify everything about excellence in the ways which they operate their conglomerate. JRD Tata, the doyen of indian industry, was the driving force behind the Tatas' philosophy, where excellence is a way of life. In fact, every new manager in any Tata group company is required to understand two things during his induction : the Tata code of ehtics and the Tata model of excellence. Hence i refute my own argument and prove that professionalism and excellence can flourish symbiotically, albeit under extremely unique conditions.

But I have a deeper concern about the uncritical pursuit of excellence. Excellence was originally a pagan concept. It comes from the Greek areté, which means being the best, whether as an athlete or warrior, sculptor or shoemaker, poet or prostitute.Christianity has traditionally been ambivalent about this ideal of excellence. The desire to excel is generally wrapped up with pride, vanity, selfishness, and other attitudes opposed to Christian humility, meekness, and cooperation. Our contemporary ears may be tone deaf to the divine dissonance regarding the word excel here. We might say, "I thought God wants us to excel." Well, He wants us to be good. And He expects us to do our very best but not to lust for excellence as the world does.

A Hellenized Jew, Paul daily negotiated the tension between the Greek culture of excellence and the Christian culture of humility. He knew about the problematic pagan connotations of areté; he also knew its power. The phrase "a more excellent way" derives from Paul's first epistle to the Corinthian Saints. Corinth was the site of the Isthmian Games, whose fame rivaled that of the Olympics. Paul alludes to these games, encouraging the Saints to devote themselves to righteousness with the same dedication athletes bring to the pursuit of victory:Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Paul co-opts the Greek ideal of athletic excellence to describe the Christian quest for perfection. Christians must strive for excellence in the race of life—not for a fading crown of laurel leaves but for an immortal crown. Paul later describes his own life in such terms:I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. For Paul, Christian excellence entails the same striving and effort as does Greek excellence. The Christian, however, doesn't look sideways at his competitors but upward to a "righteous judge" who passes out victor's crowns to all who love Him. This is a more excellent way to professional excellence. It is the way of pure love. Areté is grounded on agape—that is, excellence on charity. In fact, the phrase "a more excellent way" serves as a bridge to Paul's great discourse on charity. Charity is the more excellent way.My school ,Loyola, has a motto: In caritate et justitia, in charity and in justice. This summarizes the Jesuit way of life, where the pursuit of excellence is only superseeded by the pursuit of love towards humanity. May we bring this pure love to our professions and qualify for crowns that never fade.