Day 31: Sports Ball on the TV

We had dinner at our good friends Dan and Missy's house tonight. Dan told me about something called the "Final Four" on television. It is college basketball, where there are 64 teams, and all but four are eliminated, and then they play each other for the glory. It's called the final four because there are four teams left. "Dan, what am I going to write about tonight?" I ask my friend. "You should write about sports," he says with a smile.

I grew up playing sports. Soccer, wrestling, track and field, cross country, and bicycle racing. I was fairly competitive. I think sports are a great outlet for boys and girls, to learn teamwork, develop self-confidence, acquiring self-discipline through training and practice.

Watching sports I just can't into, though. I do try, but I just have no interest.

My first exposure to the spiritual life was, ironically, through a series of lectures I came across on Krishna-Consciousness in the late nineties. A Hare-Krishna devotee was being interviewed on why they live the lives they do, lives of renunciation and seeking pleasure in serving God rather than engaging in worldly things, and the talk turns to sporting events, and would a Krishna-devotee ever go to a football game:

"If in watching this-or-that configuration of colors running on a pasture (otherwise known as football)...if in doing that I forget my eternal nature, then it does in fact become a most relevant moral issue. After all, in the bible, does it not say, 'if the love of the world is in you, the love of the Father is not'?'

Christians do not have such an extreme outlook on the "distraction" of athletic endeavors, though I do think our culture can get into a kind of idolatry when it comes to our 'devotion' to professional sports. But engaging in sports can have benefits in that we can use those skills and training for a higher purpose. Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians:

"Every athlete exercises discipline in every way. They do it to win a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. Thus I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. No, I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified." (1 Cor 9:24-27)

And again in his letter to Timothy:

"Train yourself for devotion, for, while physical training is of limited value, devotion is valuable in every respect, since it holds a promise of life both for the present and for the future." (1 Tm 4:7-8). 

In the spiritual life, we can be devoted spectators--reading about the lives of God's holy saints, attending retreats, listening to talks and lectures on prayer, having spiritual conversations. But the hard work of training to make the team consists in the things for which there is no substitute--prayer, reading the Word, worshiping regularly on the Sabbath in fellowship with other believers, fasting, resisting temptation, givings alms, working for justice, providing for the poor and walking with them. It takes work and training to stay fit spiritually and to hone one's devotion.

Well, it looks like Gorgonzolla just beat out North Carolina to take the Final Four sports championship match. Congratulations basketball team, and don't forget to thank the Lord for your victory!

"I saw under the sun that the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the valiant." 

(Eccl 9:11)