Faith and reason fighting a battle over the so-so Bears, and it’s not pretty

During the NFL season, Sunday is the day when church and football battle for position in Americans’ hearts and minds. Metaphorical elbows are exchanged. Thoughts do battle. For example, is it morally acceptable to take delight in one helmeted human being trying to destroy the helmeted human being across from him?

St. Francis of Assisi on one shoulder: “Me? I wouldn’t hurt a fly.’’

St. Ditka of Aliquippa on the other: “If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn’t have given us arms.”

There was no game for the Bears on this particular Sunday, so the spiritual side thought it had free rein. It was wrong. The spiritual side knows about implications (heaven, hell), but it doesn’t know about NFL playoff implications.

The Bears are 7-6 (purgatory) and have an outside chance of making the postseason, “outside’’ meaning “the approximate distance between here and Guam.’’ They have to win their final three games, against quality opponents Green Bay, Kansas City and Minnesota. They need the Vikings to completely fall apart. And they wouldn’t turn down a biblical plague on their enemies, if you’re offering one.

St. Paul wrote that “faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” As I write this, the Vikings are killing the Lions 17-0 at halftime. What about having faith in what you’re almost certainly not going to see — the Bears in the playoffs? What do you call that? Delusion or just being a good fan of the team you support?

That’s the situation in which Bears fans find themselves. I see it daily on Twitter and in my emails. Some fans are angry at a lost season. Some are angry with the people writing that it’s a lost season. Others are clinging to the trace amount of hope sticking to the Bears.

Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you have to admit that this season has been the strangest thing. The Bears have gone from being Super Bowl hopefuls to being playoff panhandlers. Mitch Trubisky has gone from being the top NFL Most Valuable Player candidate (according to Las Vegas bettors) to being one of the lowest-ranked quarterbacks in several statistical categories. Matt Nagy has gone from being the 2018 NFL Coach of the Year to being one, big question: What the heck is this guy doing?

But the all-out anger stirred up by the Bears’ earlier four-game losing streak has given way, in some corners, to a restlessness hinting at rosiness. After the Bears beat the Cowboys on Thursday, a reader chided me for having predicted Dallas would win the game. “Way to keep the faith, Rick,’’ he tweeted.

I didn’t know that was my job.

It’s not easy being the bearer of bad news, but it’s a lot easier than being the bad news itself. I’d rather take my lumps for pointing out that the Bears made a mistake by drafting Trubisky so high than being the person responsible for picking him so high.

Public opinion often rises and falls with the Bears’ fortunes. Trubisky was the unquestioned star in his team’s 31-24 victory against Dallas. He threw for three touchdowns and ran for another. His running was the story of the game. A mobile Mitch was last seen in 2018 and, for whatever reason, he didn’t show up again until Week 14 of 2019.

The victory allowed his supporters to clear their throats, and the true believers latched on to the idea, however slim, that the Bears could win out while other playoff contenders self-destructed. The rest of us, while praising Trubisky for his performance Thursday night, couldn’t forget how poorly he had played this season. And we were finding it hard to get excited about a Bears’ playoff equation that involved math. We were told there wasn’t going to be any math.

Clearly, a pitched battle between good and evil.

I don’t want to say that the Bears are overselling hope to their fans. Nagy understands that the only thing that matters right now is beating the first-place Packers next week in Green Bay. To talk about winning three consecutive games would be idiotic.

But there are Bears fans who are wired for total belief. You can’t convince them that their team, which has won four of its past five games, will be sitting out the playoffs this season. They only see an arrow pointing up. What came before was unfortunate and not worth discussing. Those who keep bringing it up are living in the darkness. They, on the other hand, are people of the light.

The Vikings ended up beating the Lions 20-7.

Green Bay hung on to beat Washington 20-15.

Where is God?