My Super Bowl party was set. Fourth quarter and my Packers (hey, I am an owner) were in control, especially after yet another Seahawks interception. Cheese-head firmly on head, I said to Hope, also a Packer fanatic: “We have this. I mean: a touchdown, an onside kick, a touchdown? Rodgers has this.”
Wrong: instead of becoming a football prognosticator, I need to stick to my day job. The Packers lost what is already being called the Choke Bowl. The Super Bowl will not star Aaron Rogers, but a different godly man, Russell Wilson, in a match with the Patriots where both headcoaches send shudders through the sportsman’s soul, but the talent is truly super.
I was moved by Russell Wison’s humble approach to victory, so unexpected and the result of a team with heart. He gave God credit for the victory, perhaps less artfully stated than he should have done. And so the theological conversation between quarterbacks was joined.
Aaron Rodgers said: “I don’t think God cares a whole lot about the outcome” of fooball games and Rodgers was right. From the point of view of their shared Christianity, God knows the outcome of all football games, but as philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga have shown, His Divine foreknowledge is comptible with human freedom.
Even in my most rabid moments, I am not stupid enought to believe that God is a Packer fan. God was not wearing the Green and Gold and His Kingdom had no vested interest in the outcome of the game as a game between teams.
The Green Bay Packers (as a team) will not exist in Paradise.
However, Packer fans will be there and God cares about those people. God loves Packer players (even Bostick) and God loves Packers coaches (even the special teams coaches). SInce footbal is formative to them, God does care about their safety, health, and spiritual formation.
If all of life is a school for souls, and Christianity says it is, then football or any game is part of the curriculum. Brandon Bostick had a job to do on special teams (block) and he did someone else’s job (receiving). . . badly. Brandon Bostick is now an example of doing what you are called to do. He has learned and I can learn from him.
I am not yet as grateful to Professor Botstick as I should be.
Willson was on to something. While God did not “care” what the final score would be, the character and spirit of the players does concern Him. The fate of some misguided fan who bet the mortgage on the Packers mattered to God. The Vegas mogul who took the Seahawks by 7 mattered. The grandmother whose last game ended in tears as she saw her Packers lose mattered: her sorrow mattered. God cared about the fan who became a fanatic, giving too much of his emotions to the loss and wrote hateful tweets.
God cares about anything for which we care and He uses all of life to teach us. A Seahawk victory was partly a product of individual choices, combined with God’s curriculum for the players, and the billions of other by products of that victory.
God knew the Seahawks would win and He made it (in His providence) better that it be so. We can all choose to learn something good from it or choose to let it harm us. God cares what we choose in reaction to the fact: the Packers are not going to the Super Bowl.
God was not, therefore, rooting for the Packers, but God is rooting for us to learn and enjoy all that we find good in the fellowship, the joy, and the sheer fun of fandom because that good is eternal.
Even the “pain” of the loss is a pleasure because it makes winning someday more meaningful. Oh, the happiness of the Favre Super Bowl win if you lived through Scott Cambell and one playoff win after decades of support.
The relative unimportance of sports makes it a great learning tool. God can use a “lack of heart” on the playing field, the gasping for air due to the failure to (really) follow the workout regime you claimed you followed, and the reaction of a coach to loss to prepare for important things.
Rodgers is right: God wasn’t pulling for the Packers. Rodgers was wrong: God was pulling for the Packers people.
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