In the Arena

The Promise of Sports for Christian Discipleship

David E. Prince

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781433690235
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

We live in a sports-obsessed world. From fans wearing their favorite team’s colors to high school soccer players practicing after school, we encounter sports every day. Nothing else in our culture produces so much passion and intrigue. Such obsession, for the Christian, must produce critical reflection. How should the Christian think about sports? What does Christ have to do with athletic competition? Can sports be redeemed? In the Arena will answer these questions so that readers:

• Understand how the gospel of Christ shapes our understanding and enjoyment of sports.
• Receive practical instruction on how to use sports in parenting and discipleship.
• Become confident in using the arena of sports for discipleship, parenting, and recreation.

Chapter One

Sports Matter

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

(Colossians 3:17)

Sweating profusely, I felt like I might become physically ill. It was January 1, 1979, and Alabama was playing Penn State in the Sugar Bowl. I was ten years old and Penn State was about ten inches from the goal line at the end of the fourth quarter. A touchdown and an extra point by the Nittany Lions would tie the game and put hopes of a national championship in jeopardy for my beloved Crimson Tide. Over twenty-five years later, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think about watching that moment. I was on my hands and knees as Penn State handed the ball to fullback Mike Guman, who attempted to leap into the end zone ten inches from the goal line. Alabama linebacker Barry Krauss, like a fullback-seeking missile, met Guman over the top and stopped him in his tracks. My family went berserk with cheers and hugs. The play is simply known in Alabama football lore as “The Goal Line Stand.”

I can also recall countless memories from my days competing in sports, from coaching high school athletics, and now from coaching my own children. My children often recount every minute detail of games they have competed in as well. At any moment, my mind can be transported back to those scenes, recalling them with dramatic detail as if they were happening right now in slow motion. Some of those memories are of jubilant victories and others of painful defeats. I played on a very talented high school baseball team where many players, including myself, went on to play college baseball. It was a fantastic experience, but I still cannot get over the fact we never beat our crosstown rival, Jefferson Davis High School. During my senior season, they were our play-off opponent, and we carried a 3–0 lead into the late innings only to lose 4–3. The bitter pain of walking off that field is still with me today, and I continue to have an aversion to the green and gold of our heated rival’s school colors.

Why do sports affect so many of us in this way? Why does athletic competition touch something deep within us and sear us with profound memories that leave vivid imprints on our hearts and minds? Why do so many of us spend time following and cheering for our favorite teams? Why do we organize our schedules to get our children to and from practices? Why do we sit in the stands in the heat and the cold to watch them compete? Is it simply a matter of misplaced priorities and wasting our lives on trivial pursuits as many Christians often imply?

After giving a talk on sports and Christian discipleship in a seminary setting, a professor approached me and said, “We don’t need sports to accomplish our Christian gospel mission, so why would we care?” It is a sentiment I have frequently encountered among some evangelical Christians. I responded by asking him, “Do you read books other than the Bible, theology, and commentaries? Why?”

In the Beginning . . . Creation and Sports

It is true that sports are not fundamentally necessary for human survival but neither are singing, dancing, reading novels, hiking, or strolls on the beach. Sports may not be necessary, but they are an inevitable and reflexive response to the world God created. Our love of sport reveals something of our identity as people uniquely created in the image of God. Song is not necessary to human sustenance and existence; nevertheless, singing is an instinctive and appropriate response to God’s creative work. Such is true of all of the performing arts, of which sports are a competitive manifestation. God did not create sports—people did. But people created sports in response to the world God created. Sporting competition is capable of reflecting God’s creative glory and design in his image bearers, and thus presents an opportunity to celebrate our unique identity in God’s world.

If direct gospel ministry and Bible reading are all that matter, then we waste most of our lives in the meaningless daily stuff of ordinary living. What are sports? The answer is simple: sports are a manifestation of culture. Andy Crouch (following Ken Myers) has helpfully summarized culture as, “what we make of the world” God has created and the meaning we assign to it.1 A spirituality that does not meet us in the daily rootedness of workplaces, ball games, and house cleaning is sub-Christian. This ought to be evident to the followers of the Word, who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

What are some evidences of culture? From the podium at which I preached Sunday, to the clothes I wore, to things like ballet, drama, gardening, cooking, music, literature, hunting, and building—these are all manifestations of culture. Too often, some Christians self-righteously denounce popular manifestations of culture, like sports, as a waste of time with no self-awareness that they themselves participate in and enjoy a variety of cultural manifestations. Song, art, construction, creation, and competition are reflexive cultural responses to the glory of our Creator God.

The idea that passion for God should make us passionless for other cultural things like sports is suffocating to our worship and deadly to our gospel mission. God calls his followers to live comprehensively distinctive lives in particular places and at particular times in history. The theological commitments of those who follow Jesus as King are to be lived out daily and geographically. God’s image bearers dwelling in particular places will inevitably build, draw, sing, play, and compete. Christian distinctiveness should be evident in the corporate gospel activities and ministries of a local church, and it must also be evident as the church scatters to live as salt and light in every single area of life, including the athletic field.

The Work of Dominion and Double Plays

Sports provide us spectacular glimpses of truth, beauty, and goodness as athletes tune and discipline their bodies to perform amazing feats of skill, coordination, choreography, and strength. I have never understood why some who fancy themselves champions of the arts look down their noses at sports and athletic competition. Playing the violin or cello is a skilled and glorious feat that should be applauded, but I personally happen to think few things in the world are as beautiful and majestic as a well-turned 6-4-3 double play, and I make no apologies for it. In fact, when I witness the smooth beauty of a double play, I sense a pale reflection of the beauty and glory of God.

Answering the question of why so many of us love sports takes us back to the very beginning. According to his good pleasure, God created the world out of nothing (Gen. 1): “By faith we understand that the universe was created by God’s command, so that what is seen has been made from things that are not visible” (Heb. 11:3 hcsb). God’s creative command produced an original world without precursor. God declares that the power of his creative word produced a created world that he described as “good” (Gen. 1:4, 12, 18, 21, 25), and he described his creation of human beings in his own image as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). God is the only One who can create out of nothing, but as we make and shape necessary and nonessential things out of what God has made (culture making), we are capable of reflecting the truth, beauty, and goodness of our Creator God.

Man was uniquely created in the image of God, and as such, he was created to work and rule the world under the authority of God: “Fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth” (Gen. 1:28 hcsb). This command to rule is often referred to as the cultural or dominion mandate and reveals that worshipping and glorifying God is an active pursuit and not a passive one. God glories and delights in his creative work and calls for his image bearers to do the same in innumerable ways.

The unique responsibility of humanity involves the glory and honor of ruling God’s earthly kingdom-creation under his authority as expressed in his Word (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:19–20; Ps. 8). In so doing, humanity will glorify and delight in God’s creative work by working to shape what he has made into things that glorify him and prove good for his image bearers (Gen. 2:15–25). In order to accomplish the work of dominion, human beings have to develop, hone, and maximize their God-given abilities in submission to the Creator. Such honing can only be done through actively and aggressively exercising the gifts God provides his image bearers for the purpose of subduing and filling the earth to the glory of God. This work of honing our culture-making skills would inevitably include all sorts of competition, including sporting competition.

Redemption: Eating, Drinking, and Sports to the Glory of God

Adam and Eve’s rebellious disobedience to God’s word pervasively corrupted God’s good creation. God responded by pronouncing curses (Gen. 3:14, 17) and judgment (Gen. 3:16–19). God is later described as “grieved” (Gen. 6:6) in regard to the corruption of his creation. Body, mind, and soul were holistically marred by the fall into sin and are in need of redemption. The tragic events that disrupted the harmony of the entire created order, including the shame and alienation of man and woman in the presence of God, would not be the final word; God’s grace would be (Gen. 3:15). It is possible that Jesus began his conversation with the weary disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) with the gospel promise of Genesis 3:15. The Bible can rightly be understood as a series of extended explanations of how the prophetic word of promise in Genesis 3:15 of Christ’s final victory over the serpent unfolds in redemptive history as Jesus makes “all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Thus, the redeeming work of Christ extends to church, home, workplace, informal play, and formal sports.

The entire biblical story line follows the ongoing cosmic war between the kingdom of God in Christ and the parasitic kingdom of the serpent. The pattern of biblical history is often helpfully summarized in its broadest patterns as creation, fall, redemption, and new creation. The center of the conflict is Jesus as “the Word,” in whom “all the promises of God find their Yes” (Gen. 3:15; John 1:1–14; 2 Cor. 1:20). Christ is the promised seed, the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. The Great Commission explains how the cosmic warfare of the gospel promise of Genesis 3:15 centers on Christ and unfolds in the new covenant as his followers go into all the world in his name and make disciples (Matt. 28:16–20). Living for Christ as faithful gospel warriors means an earthy, real-world, embodied spirituality that pervades every aspect of culture in order to redeem it. Athletic contests, particularly in team sports, bear remarkable similarities to military battle, so the connection and shared metaphors between sporting competition, warfare, and spiritual warfare are readily apparent.

Biblically, we must understand that spiritual warfare is not merely a specialized ministry for select individuals. Spiritual warfare is what it means to follow Christ in a fallen world. It is all-encompassing and touches every area of our lives. The book of Revelation’s description of the eschatological (ultimate) triumph of the kingdom of Christ and the final defeat of “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9) represents the full and final vindication of the textual Word of God (Rev. 22:16–21) and Christ, the personal Word of God (Rev. 19:13; 20:4). As the redeemed followers of Christ live in the “already” of Christ’s kingdom and await the “not yet” of his final kingdom consummation, we are to reclaim all aspects of creational life for the kingdom of Christ. Living faithfully for Christ as our King is not simply a matter of a few big spiritual moments. It means that every single aspect of our lives must be surrendered to him. As some sports teams like to say, it is a matter of being all in, all the time. Scripture makes no attempt to sever the connection between the lesser and nonessential agony and conflict of sports from the ultimate and eternally significant agony and conflict of spiritual war.

The gospel is the gospel of the kingdom of God in Christ. God is at work redeeming his image bearers and ultimately the entire created order. Thus, nothing matters more than the kingdom of God in Christ, but we must also say with equal fervency that because of the kingdom of God in Christ, everything matters. Exercising dominion to the glory of God in a fallen world calls for more than utilitarian work and activity. Acting as though only directly religious activities really matter would render far more than sports as meaningless. Viewing the world in that way would constitute a refusal to delight comprehensively in God’s creative work and design. In other words, we must avoid the futile tendency to separate the world into religious (sacred) and nonreligious (secular) spheres. The responsibility of glorifying God in a fallen world does not amount to a reductionist attempt to minimize the number of activities in life that really matter. Paul captures the corrective for this mind-set when he asserts, “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for God’s glory” (1 Cor. 10:31 hcsb).

Creation, people, place, and history are not spiritual problems; they provide the strategic setting for us to make much of Christ in our daily lives. Our hope is not found in escaping our body or this world for some abstract utopian spirituality, but in living every bit of our real-world lives to the glory of God in Christ. The story of your life is uniquely situated in a community of people at a particular place in the world. In Christ, the story of our lives is woven into the story of Christ to the degree that we are to be his witnesses wherever we are. Our real-world flesh-and-bone existence in some place on the world map is our providentially given strategic opportunity to live for Christ. The writer of Proverbs urges us to see...