"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."
Don’t waste your sport
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CJ Mahaney, Wheaton, Crossway, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4335-2247-5
There are many things I liked about this little booklet (c 10,000 words), like the simple statement: “Sports are a gift from God. But as soon as you introduce the human heart, things get complicated”. I also liked the way the author developed the argument into worship “and this is why worshipping God isn’t just something we do in a church. it’s something we do in all of life including our sports”.
In terms of a theology of sport, he comments: “Sports remind us of the eternal rest in God’s presence that awaits all who trust in Christ”. If that is true why, one wonders, has the church so often opposed Sunday recreational sport.
The main thrust of the author’s argument is that we are to do everything for God’s glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Bringing glory to God involves drawing attention to God’s greatness instead of our own. Our achievements are to be secondary and “our priority will be to worship God, apply the gospel to our teams, and become more like Christ”. This involves playing with humility, accepting criticism, being gracious in defeat and modest in victory. It involves putting our team’s interest ahead of your own personal desires.
In the application section, I loved the question about how one can be competitive and humble at the same time. However, some of his other challenges seemed a little unrealistic: “If you’re a Christian athlete, you must study theology and not just the playbook” or “In an average week how much time do you invest in sports and how much time in reading scripture?”
He is right to acknowledge that we can be tempted to make sports a much higher priority than they should have but the questions: “When your church gathers, are you there? Or does the sports schedule trump the church calendar?” seem too black and white.