Several years ago, I spoke at a camp for young people. When the first group game time came, one of the leaders told a parable based on Genesis 1-3. He described the joys of playing games in the Garden of Eden, where the emphasis was simply on the joy of play.
But one day, the serpent entered the garden and tempted the Eden dwellers with the idea of points. They gave in to the temptation and began keeping score in their games, and this led to all kinds of evils—competition, lust for winning, cheating, anger, and fights. They lost the simple joy of play. The leader told this parable to let the young people know they would be introduced to non-competitive games this week at the camp.
There were no points, winners, or losers, just the joy of play. But there was one serious problem – the games were totally and completely boring. Day after day, fewer and fewer young people showed up for the game time, so there were only a handful of young people at the last one. Is this an accurate portrayal of a theology of sports? I don’t think so. So, I want to present a brief and broad theology of sports. If you don’t like that title, you can think of it as, “Why we should watch the Super Bowl!
History can be summed up in three words: creation, fall, and redemption. So, when looking at the theology of an issue, you need to ask: What is its relation to or reflection of creation, of the fall, of redemption? In considering the sports issue, I have added two further words to expand our consideration – incarnation and salvation (both of which are tied to creation, fall, and redemption).
Creation – God could have created everything to be gray and serviceable. Rather, He made a great diversity of color, size, shape, smell, texture, sounds, and tastes. Why did He do this? He did it so that the creation would reflect His person and, in particular, His beauty. It is a masterpiece of function and form. The creation is a work of Art.
Art is sometimes thought of as consisting of two types: visual Art, like painting, sculpture, and architecture, and performing Art, like drama, music, and dancing. The Lord included both visual and performing Art in the creation. Visual Art includes flowers, mountains, and trees; Performing Art includes oceans and rivers, planetary orbits, and clouds. Some things in creation combine the two.
Sports are a reflection of this creative activity of the Lord. They combine visual Art (printed fields/courts, team colors, and logos) and withering arts (the actual play). Sports reflect the function and form of creation. There is beauty in a play that is run to perfection, in a well-thrown ball, in a diving catch, in turning a double play. Those things can bring excitement and happiness because they reflect the way the world was created to be. They are a display of Art (or artistry, if you prefer).
The Lord also created things in a specific order, not in a haphazard way, and He placed within the creation laws or rules by which nature operates. Sports also have an order to them and have rules by which they operate. Just as there are consequences for rebelling against the created order (such as disregarding gravity), there are consequences for not following the rules in sports. Sports reflect the nature and principles of creation. As in nature, this reflection, when done well, honors the Lord and gives the fan joy.
Fall – In the fall, man rebelled by sin, and the curse that resulted from that fall touches every part of everything – nothing escapes. This means that we would expect to see evidence of the fall in sports, and, of course, we do. There are sins of attitude as well as sins of action. The deadliest of these sins is sports idolatry – when it holds the highest place in the heart’s affection and mind’s thinking. When life is planned around when games are played, or a person’s entire outlook is impacted by whether his team wins or loses, he has crossed the line into an unhealthy and sinful obsession.
Other wrong attitudes—when winning becomes the only thing that matters, when a person will do whatever it takes to be successful, when personal glory becomes the end-all, and when people become arrogant or angry—are all sins of the fall. The fall is reflected in sports by actions such as steroids, fixing games, corking bats, bench-emptying brawls, and a host of other things.
Incarnation—We are embodied beings, and the incarnation validates that our bodies are more than mere containers for our souls. Even our eternal state will consist of bodies—glorified bodies, but bodies nonetheless. The Christian life is not about condemning the body but about bringing it into subjection to honor the Lord.
Sports are one of the things that help us to do that. Playing a sport requires discipline, and disciplining the body for sports can carry over into our spiritual lives. Sports require determination, delayed gratification, and a toughening-up of the body. Sports can also teach how to work with a team, how to submit to authority, how to encourage those not as naturally gifted as others, and how to hit hard. And they teach patience. Even time on the bench can be sanctifying.
Sports are one way to honor the truth and reality of the incarnation and glorify God by using our bodies in God-honoring ways. Salvation—The history of salvation is a drama. A drama, to be effective, depends at least on knowledge, motion, and timing. In the drama of salvation, the Lord had a game plan and knowledge before the beginning of time. This game plan was put in motion at the creation of what we know as the people and events of unfolding history.
According to God’s timing, it was all done – Galatians tells us that Christ came in the fullness of time. That drama continues today. It is what C.S. Lewis called the true myth. Today, actors/actresses in drama need to know their lines (knowledge), they need to know where they are supposed to be in a scene (motion), and they need to know when they are to play their part and say their lines (timing). The great drama also has that sense of being a true myth.
