What watching sports says about our souls

I am not much of a hockey fan, but even I was impressed by Alex Ovechkin’s record goal, passing Wayne Gretzky for the all-time record in NHL history last Sunday. Earlier in the day, I watched the Texas Rangers defeat Tampa Bay on a ninth-inning walk-off hit.

The previous day, the Houston Cougars (my hometown team) came from behind to defeat the favored Duke Blue Devils and reach the NCAA men’s final. This weekend, I am looking forward to watching the Masters, where I hope Scottie Scheffler wins his third green jacket.

All told, I have spent numerous hours in recent days watching sports and plan to spend numerous hours this week doing the same.

Why?

I’m not betting on any of this (an activity fraught with danger to finances and health). Nor have I ever participated in a fantasy sports league of any kind. I’ve also never played hockey (of any kind) or baseball, basketball, or golf beyond church leagues and with friends.

Watching sports in person or on television is not a universally human phenomenon. It holds little allure for my wife, for example, who typically joins me to watch a baseball game only if it’s the seventh game of the World Series (and usually only the end of the game at that). She will watch football, but that’s because it’s fast-paced enough to be interesting to her. She is baffled when I watch golf on TV, comparing it to observing someone fishing or watching the grass grow.

She’s such a gracious person that she is happy for me to do what makes me happy. But that’s only so long as my happiness does not require her boredom.

“We won” but “they lost”

One obvious answer to my question is that watching our teams and favorite athletes compete affords us a vicarious opportunity to do the same. I’ll never have the chance to play the Masters, but I can watch Scottie Scheffler and others while imagining myself competing with them.

There is something to this. Psychologists say “team affiliation” can advance social connectedness, leading to lower levels of alienation and loneliness while promoting collective self-esteem and positive emotion. This helps explain why fans like to wear apparel that supports their team—it also connects them with others who do the same.

But the experts tell us this only works if we value belonging over winning.

If we support our teams only when they win, we forfeit social connections with them and other fans when they lose. Here’s a telltale sign: When the Rangers win, I often say, “We won;” if they lose, I sometimes say, “They lost.”

In other words, I enjoy watching them play, but I identify with them far more easily when they are successful than when they are not.

And therein lies my point.

What God’s nature requires him to do

Even the deepest relationships we foster with each other can be broken if we sin against them on a tragic enough level. Our families can hurt us in such horrific ways that they break our bond with them beyond repair. And we can do the same to them.

But there is literally nothing we can do to cause God to respond to us in the same way.

This is not because God is God and therefore more capable of forgiveness than we are, though that is true. It is not because he is so gracious and merciful that he forces his grace and mercy upon us, because this is not true. Grace and mercy must be received to become operative. If we refuse such gifts, he honors the free will he gives us and allows us the consequences of our rejection.

But even this does not change how he feels about us. The reason has nothing to do with us and everything to do with him.

The simple fact is, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The Greek word for “love” means “unconditional commitment to seek the best for another.” This is not just what God does—it is who he is.

As a result, to put it bluntly, God loves us because his nature requires him to do so. There is by logic nothing we can do to make him love us any more or less than he already does.

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God”

Now, I assume you already know this and are wondering why I’m belaboring the point. Here’s the reason: if you’re like me, you often don’t really believe that it’s true, even if you say you do.

If we really believed God loves us without condition or qualification:

• We wouldn’t try to earn his forgiveness by punishing ourselves through guilt. We would believe that our Father forgives all we confess (1 John 1:9), forgets all he forgives (Isaiah 43:25), and then separates our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) and buries them in the depths of the sea forever (Micah 7:19). As it is, we often punish ourselves for sins God will not punish through the self-inflicted penance of guilt, discouragement, and even self-harm.
• We wouldn’t try to excuse our failures so as to minimize our need for forgiveness. As CS Lewis notes, the better our excuses, the less necessary they are. By contrast, the worse they are, the more they contribute to the problem by adding deceit to our other failures.
• We wouldn’t be tempted by transactional religion that seeks to earn God’s favor through religious activities and good deeds. Rather, we would serve because we are loved, not so we will be loved. We would give because we have received, not so we will.
• We would love and serve others whether they love and serve us or not since we are secure in the fact that we are loved by the omnipotent God of the universe and served unconditionally by his grace.

The result would be solidarity with God and humanity that makes all team affiliations pale by comparison. Rather than living vicariously through the successes of others, we would join them on the field of kingdom endeavor. And what we do in this temporal world would echo in eternity for God’s glory and our inestimable good.

Brennan Manning was right:

“We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he would bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”

Are you astonished at God’s goodness today?