Isn\u2019t it degrading to suggest that God cares about sports? \u00a0Isn\u2019t that anthropomorphizing? \u00a0Are we, like the ancient Greeks with their stories of gods who did all sorts of silly and petty and naughty things, really supposed to imagine that God dons a cheese-wedge upon his head and roots for the Packers?<\/p>\n
With war and famine, death and disease, doesn\u2019t God have better things to do? \u00a0Aren\u2019t sports beneath his dignity, unworthy of his time and station?\u2026<\/p>\n
Jeremy\u2019s spiritual mentors and teachers have generally been Reformed. \u00a0The books he cites as favorites are from John Piper and C.J. Mahaney, and Jeremy\u2019s reflections on his life and career consistently refer to a close and careful divine sovereignty. \u00a0It\u2019s what theologians have called\u00a0providentia specialissima<\/em>, God\u2019s most fine-grained care in the minutiae of our lives.<\/p>\nWhen people protest the notion that God should care about sports, they tend to be (1) atheists or agnostics who doubt God\u2019s existence in the first place and find the notion of God caring about sports particularly ridiculous, (2)\u00a0de facto <\/em>Deists who believe that God created the order of things and then sits back to watch it all unwind, (3) people of faith who believe that God guides history (through natural or supernatural means) in the broadest sense but does not get involved in the sordid details, or (4) just people of faith who really haven\u2019t thought it through.<\/p>\nOf course <\/em>God cares about sports. \u00a0The Christian God is not a God who refuses to get in the trenches, not a God whose dignity prohibits him from getting involved in the sordid details of human life. \u00a0The single most distinctive doctrine in all of Christianity is the doctrine of the Incarnation\u2026.<\/p>\nGod cares about the details, if for no other reason, because God cares about us. \u00a0We should affirm common grace: that just as God ordains the sun to shine upon the righteous and the wicked alike, God ordains victory for believers and unbelievers. \u00a0God does not simply give the victory to the most righteous individual or team upon the field. \u00a0We should make clear that we cannot manipulate the outcome, as though the right formula of prayers and genuflections and \u201caw shucks\u201d humility can compel God to grant victory. \u00a0But we should also affirm, whether or not we\u2019re Reformed, that God cares about the details and working through sports is not beneath God\u2019s dignity.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we can be a bit more precise. \u00a0God does not care about\u00a0sports\u00a0in themselves. \u00a0God cares about\u00a0the people who play them<\/em>. \u00a0God cares about the people who watch and enjoy sports and whose lives are affected by sports. \u00a0And God works through sports, as God works through all things, for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. \u00a0Training the body is, or can be, a profound and necessary school for the spirit. \u00a0And in today\u2019s age, when so many Christians live lives of comfortable complacency, when the rigor and striving of faith have been so terribly deemphasized, sports can serve an important role in reminding us of the importance of discipline and collective sacrifice in the pursuit of a greater goal.<\/p>\nSo if sports can help us grow closer to God and more mature in our faith \u2014 and they can \u2014 then yes, God cares about sports for what can be accomplished through them.<\/p>\n
What, then, can be accomplished through them? \u00a0How do sports help us, as athletes and as spectators, to understand God, to witness God, to love and live with God better?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tim Dalrymple, who recently wrote a book on Jeremy Lin, reflects on whether or not God cares about sports, and if God does, how. Isn\u2019t it degrading to suggest that God cares about sports? \u00a0Isn\u2019t that anthropomorphizing? \u00a0Are we, like the ancient Greeks with their stories of gods who did all sorts of silly and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n
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